Your dream dad
As Father’s Day draws to a close, I got to thinking about the TV dads we grew up with. Did you ever wish you had one of them as your own father? Sure, some of them were portrayed as lovable idiots, but a lot of them were idealized as wise, kind, and always having the right answers. Who was your dream dad when you were growing up?
June 17th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
I guess this is kind of cheating because it’s not a dad I “grew up with,” but my all-time favorite TV dad is Keith Mars of Veronica Mars. He’s not only smart and funny and kind, but trusts his daughter and treats her as an equal. It’s pretty hard to beat that! Of course, “Carson Drew” of the Nancy Drew series was similar in some ways, and his daughter was the prototype for Veronica, but Mr. Drew was usually gone. So while that gave Nancy all kinds of freedom, it also seems a bit lonely to me. I’d rather have the closeness that Veronica and her dad share.
June 17th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
I agree that Keith Mars is the best t.v. dad of all time, but when I was a kid I really liked Robert Young on “Father Knows Best”. He seemed so wise and compassionate. I had a great dad, so there was no reason for me to long for a fictional father but I did like the general household dynamics on the show. I also liked Mr. Eddie’s Father on “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” but I was already an adult by then and I liked him for a whole other reason.
June 17th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Oh, yes, Eddie’s father! What was his (the character’s) actual name? I’d almost forgotten that show, though I loved it at the time. He would have been a really cool dad in real life–he was kind and caring, smart and interesting. The survey poll lists Cliff Huxtable as one of the choices for “best TV dad” but he seemed too stern to me. Like Rebbekaj, I was happy with my own dad, who was anything but stern. Ben Cartwright was even sterner; jeez, I can’t imagine wanting him for a father.
June 18th, 2007 at 9:04 am
Tom Corbett, that was his name. I always thought that the nanny/housekeeper who called him “Mr. Eddie’s Father” was so charming and sweet the two of them should have fallen in love and gotten married. But maybe she was supposed to already be married, I don’t know. Anyway, I agree with kaforeman about Ben Cartwright. Although I had a crush on Hoss I would never have wanted Ben for a father-in-law!
September 11th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Carl Betz, who played the dad on the Donna Reed Show was pretty cool. He always semed interested, available, and not very didactic. Lew Marie, Ann Marie’s dad from That Girl was a pain in the ***. No thanks! I think I would have liked Maurice Evans who was Samantha’s dad on Bewitched. Drops in does a few scenes from Shakespere, let’s you make your own mistakes and, poof, gone in a puff of smoke. Not Cliff Huxtable by any means!
November 15th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
I think I agree with Rebbekaj about Robert Young…I followed him to Marcus Welby and always wanted a Doctor like him too!
As far as Eddie’s father, I preferred Glenn Ford of the movie version rather than Bill Bixby (but they were both caring and compassionate dads)…………oddly enough, I TOO had a crush on Hoss!
Beaver’s Dad was too stuffy, Ozzie was too befuddled, but Robert Young just seemed to be everything right in a Dad…..I was truly distressed to learn that he was a sad and depressed person in life….
November 24th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
I didn’t have a favorite tv dad because my father came to this country when he was 9 years old and he only went to the third grade, when his father passed on he and all his brothers had to take care of grandma so all of their schooling ceased, but they all managed to get jobs so they must have learned something but my dad taught himself algebra and he needed that to learn to fix radios, as a matter of fact that is what got us thru the depression.
Four of boys and my father used to go to Paramus golf course to caddy and that is also what got us thru.
December 19th, 2007 at 12:46 am
It sounds like your dad was the true American ideal: a self-made man. And a resourceful one, too. A dad that would put most TV dads to shame!