'Father Knows Best' actress Wyatt dies

yahoo.com ^ | oct, 22, 2006

[lunarbicep]

Jane Wyatt, the lovely, serene actress who for six years on "Father Knows Best" was one of TV's favorite moms, has died, said her publicist. She was 96.

Wyatt died Friday in her sleep of natural causes at her home in Bel-Air, according to publicist Meg McDonald. Her death also was confirmed by Bernard Johnson of the funeral home Gates, Kingsley & Gates Moeller Murphy Funeral Directors.

[Mr. Buzzcut]

I'm an avid Griffith watcher and have read similar.

I always thought Andy shoulda hooked up with that hot county nurse, Miss Peggy (Joanna Moore), or the Darling girl, Charlene. She was a hell cat!

Helen was too high maintenance and always pouting about something!

[ErnBatavia]

More Batavia trivia...I actually got to do a backstage "meet" with Ricky Nelson a couple of years before he died.

In my single days, I hung with a crowd that included Nelson's drummer and his wife (they were a great, funny couple - and surprisingly 'normal')...one of the guys was a coporate pilot for a Kentucky distillery and needed some flight time, so he flew the drummer's wife, me and another couple over to Las Vegas from the San Fernando Valley.

We got dropped off at the airport, checked into the hotel (drummer's wife went her own way to be with hubby, of course), saw the show **, spent the night, and flew home the next afternoon.

**It'd been prearranged that we head to a stage door as the show was ending - we stood with two or three panting hardcore groupies who obviously had one thing in their minds: "Gonna get a piece of Rick Nelson" - blood in their eyes.

Anyhow, it was a quick greet-and-meet and back to the casino. Nelson was pretty disconnected and uninterested in having visitors, IMO.

The best part of the trip was when my pal and I were waiting for the pilot to show up the next afternoon, when the casino's PA system announced, "Paging Mr. Ern Batavia - your plane is ready...paging Mr. Ern Batavia" - talk about feeling like a bigshot as I did my Barney Fife strut out of there....

[Mr. Buzzcut]

Right now I'm hopelessly hooked on the Match Game

Match Game is awesome! I caught the '70's version in its first run and love the replays on The Gameshow Network!

The game itself was basically just an excuse for the drinking, smoking and double entendres!

As funny today as it was in 1974!

[Silly]

Wow, she got her nickel's worth!

LOL! Sounds like a good name for a Democratic candidate: Senator Nickelsworth.

[pollyannaish]

Glad I'm not the only one!

[brytlea]

I just kept thinking that Father might show up and tell her that Andy was too old for her! ;)
susie

[bannie]

I like corners. You can smile in 'em knowing that you're covered on 2/3's of your sides.

:-)

[floridareader1]

Who would you rather have as your mother? Jane Wyatt or Barbara Billingsly?


Bring in factual evidence to support your thesis.

[BluesDuke]

Here are some classic Fred Allen barbs at officious network vice presidents, with partner/wife Portland Hoffa aiding and abetting...

---

PORTLAND: Your program was cut off last week.
FRED: I know. Was your mother listening?
PORTLAND: Yes. Mama says she'll never hear the end of your program.
FRED: People will get to like my program---no end.
PORTLAND: Why do they keep cutting your program off?
FRED: Who knows? The main thing in radio is to come out on time. If people laugh, the program is longer. The thing to do is get a nice dull half hour to make sure that nobody laughs or applauds. Then you'll always be right on time and all the little radio executives can send each other memos and be happy.
PORTLAND: Radio sure is funny.
FRED: All except the comedy programs. Our program has been cut off so many times the last page of the script is a Band-Aid.
PORTLAND: Why is everybody in radio always in such a hurry?
FRED: It's the network policy. A program is going along---the people are enjoying it---the program gets a little long---Zip! it's cut off the air. Then a voice says, "This is the National Broadcasting Company." This is very entertaining. People all over the country have been sitting by their radios all night just waiting so that every half hour they can hear some announcer with mink tonsils say "This is the National Broadcasting Company." Then another voice says, "The correct time is nine p.m." Now you know what time it is and to what network you are listening---but nothing is going on.
PORTLAND: Mama says radio is like a cuckoo clock.
FRED: Radio is like a cuckoo clock?
PORTLAND: Every hour, every day, you hear the same thing.
FRED: Some day the whole side of Radio City will open up---a vice president will fly out and say "Cuckoo!"---and that will be the end of radio.

---

PORTLAND: What does the network do with all the time it saves cutting off the ends of programs?
FRED: Well, there is a big executive here at the network. He is the vice president in charge of "Ah! Ah! You're running too long!" He sits in a little glass closet with his mother-of-pearl gong. When your program runs overtime, he thumps his gong with a marshmallow he has tied to the end of a xylophone stick. Bong! You're off the air. Then he marks down how much time he's saved.
PORTLAND: What does he do with all this time?
FRED: He adds it all up. Ten seconds here, twenty there. And when he has saved up enough seconds, minutes, and hours to make two weeks, the network lets the vice president use the two weeks of your time for his vacation.

---

(This, by the way, is the routine that provoked NBC to fade away from the Allen show the night he delivered the routine until the routine finished. The incident hit the newspapers running and Allen's audience poured so many letters of protest to NBC, so it is said, that the network actually issued a formal apology--and Fred Allen was never cut off the air again in the middle of a show. His famous ad-lib ability did often get him faded off the air at the end of his show, however; there are radio historians who believe "We're a little late, so good night, folks" was used more often by Fred Allen than by anyone else in radio history.)

[Lib-Lickers 2]

Billingsly because she didn't mind when Ward was hard on the Beaver

[BluesDuke]

I like corners. You can smile in 'em knowing that you're covered on 2/3's of your sides.

:-)

That depends entirely upon your girth. If you are covered on two thirds of your sides, you are surely of the svelte and can be covered within a right angle. But for me I have no choice but to say honestly that when when I sit in the corner, at the very least I have covered my backside, at the least and at the most, with the least being 135 degrees. And that's about the size of it.

[bannie]

I'm just fluffy enough that I can mold my parts into a corner with no air pockets. My thin days are long gone.

[BluesDuke]

I'm just fluffy enough that I can mold my parts into a corner with no air pockets. My thin days are long gone.

I'm trying to get back to where I can mold my parts into a corner with no air pockets. ;)

[greccogirl]

Too young. Ms. Wyatt certainly had a long life!

[BluesDuke]

Did you know: On the original radio version of Father Knows Best, the Margaret Anderson role was played first by an actress named June Whitley but then by Jean VanderPyl---better known as the voice of Wilma Flintstone.

[Rte66]

Ha! Good one. And it's so true - I thought exactly the same thing when she first came on the show.

She had *just* graduated from pharmacy school, so she was 22-23 at most. Andy was 35-going-on-50, lol.

[Rte66]

Funny you should mention "thin" - another 1950s TV star died today - Phyllis Kirk, who had played Nora Charles on "The Thin Man" TV series with Peter Lawford as Nick.

I loved the show, but was just a little kid, so didn't know any better and didn't "know" Myrna Loy and William Powell yet at that juncture, so wasn't aware that the TV series was not popular. It sure was with me!

That was really the original "Hart to Hart," which I loved much later.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1724622/posts

[Rte66]

Jane Wyatt, for sure. She was prettier and sometimes left her hat on when they came home from church and she had already started frying the chicken for Sunday dinner.

She would just smile and make brownies to smooth things over. June, on the other hand, was stricter and more streetwise to the teen action going on around her.

You know, she didn't really believe Eddie Haskell most of the time. LOL

[Rte66]

Another thing I realized in thinking back on some of the Father Knows Best shows is that once "Father" became Marcus Welby, MD, I sort of forgot about "Father" and now it's hard to picture him in that role except as kind of a caricature of it.

[Rte66]

Heh ... so you "made the San Fernando Valley your home," huh? Good story.

I sort of lost track of Ricky after maybe "Travelin' Man" and marrying Chris (boo!), between then and "Garden Party" before he was too soon gone. He sure made some good-lookin' kids, anyway.

"Your plane is ready ..." -- I can also hear the serious Barney Fife music playing in the background when he's strutting. They have that one same "cops & robbers" kind of music they cue up either slowly or fast or kind of a quick-step march time whenever Barney is *series* about some *hugh* law enforcement issue.

You know what I'm talking about? It's sort of Jack Webb-ish Dragnet-ish. Now, when I'm watching some of them for the 3rd or 4th time, I notice those "musical moments" more and crack up every time.

Also, in the Jean Hagen episode I mentioned, she was buttering Barney up by telling him he looked like Frank Sinatra (he brings that up in another episode, too) - and he was humming "One for My Baby and One More for the Road" ... the "it's a quarter to three, there's no one in the place" part of it.

Then, at the very end, the closing music comes back to it and plays some of the rest of the song, lol, while Barn pushes his hat back up on his head, reliving his moment of fandom.

That same night (Monday mornings are twofers), they also had one where this "southern belle" comes to town and starts wooing Barney and he leaves Thelma Lou so he can go out with other girls - this new girl and Jua-ah-ah-nita, of course.

Turned out she was a con artist trying to entrap him into a breach of promise lawsuit. She was visiting Mayberry with her "father" who was Jackie Coogan, Uncle Fester on The Addams Family. (And wow, I've always wondered how such a darling little boy could make *that* drastic a transformation to adult as Coogan did - I've never figured that one out.)

Coogan was actually her husband, partner in crime. The actress was named Beverly Tyler, but she didn't look familiar to me as anyone I ever saw later.