Professional Father is a 1955 CBS situation comedy

Situation comedy

A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...

 television series starring Stephen Dunne as Dr. Tom Wilson, a child psychologist successful with his patients but less than effective with his own family. Barbara Billingsley

Barbara Billingsley

Barbara Billingsley was an American film, television, voice and stage actress. She gained prominence in the 1950s movie The Careless Years, acting opposite Natalie Trundy, followed by her best–known role, that of June Cleaver on the television series Leave It to Beaver and its sequel Still...

, two years before she was cast as the concerned mother in Leave It to Beaver

Leave It to Beaver

Leave It to Beaver is an American television situation comedy about an inquisitive but often naïve boy named Theodore "The Beaver" Cleaver and his adventures at home, in school, and around his suburban neighborhood...

, played Tom's wife, Helen Wilson.Beverly Washburn

Beverly Washburn

Beverly Washburn is an American actress who appeared as a young girl in NBC's The Loretta Young Show and as an older teenager in Loretta Young's 1962-1963 CBS family drama, The New Loretta Young Show...

, later in the Walt Disney

Walt Disney

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...

 film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 Old Yeller

Old Yeller

Old Yeller is a 1956 children's novel by Fred Gipson, which received a Newbery Honor in 1957. It was illustrated by Carl Burger. The title is taken from the name of the big yellow dog who is the center of the book's story...

and in CBS's The New Loretta Young Show

The New Loretta Young Show

The New Loretta Young Show, which aired for twenty-six weekly episodes on CBS television from September 24, 1962 to March 18, 1963, featured Loretta Young in a combination drama and situation comedy about a free-lance writer in suburban Connecticut named Christine Massey, the widowed mother of...

, starred as daughter Kathryn "Kit" Wilson. Ted Marc portrayed the son, Tom Wilson, Jr., or "Twig", who played for a baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 team called "The Beavers", ironic in view of Billingsley's later June Cleaver

June Cleaver

June Evelyn Bronson Cleaver is a principal character in the American television sitcom Leave It to Beaver. June and her husband, Ward, are often invoked as the archetypal suburban parents of the 1950s. The couple are the parents of two sons, Wally and "Beaver"...

 role. Billingsley's characters on both Professional Father and Leave It to Beaver had an aunt named Martha.

Phyllis Coates

Phyllis Coates

Phyllis Coates is an American film and television actress. She is perhaps best known for her portrayal of reporter Lois Lane in the 1951 film Superman and the Mole Men, and during the first season of the Adventures of Superman television series.-Early life and career:After graduating from high...

 and Joseph Kearns

Joseph Kearns

Joseph Sherrard Kearns was an American actor, who is best remembered for his role as George Wilson in the CBS television series Dennis the Menace from 1959 until his death in 1962.-Biography:...

 played the neighbors, Madge (a nurse) and Fred Allen. Ann O'Neal starred as the housekeeper "Nana", and Arthur Q. Bryan

Arthur Q. Bryan

Arthur Quirk Bryan was a United States comedian and voice actor, remembered best for his longtime recurring role as well-spoken, wisecracking Dr...

 played Mr. Boggs, the handyman

Handyman

A handyman is a person skilled at a wide range of repairs, typically around the home. These tasks include trade skills, repair work, maintenance work, both interior and exterior, and are sometimes described as "odd jobs", "fix-up tasks", and include light plumbing jobs such as fixing a leaky toilet...

. The series was produced by Harry Kronman, directed by Sherman Marks, and partly written by Bob Schiller

Bob Schiller

Bob Schiller is an American screenwriter, most notably for the television series I Love Lucy and All in the Family . For the latter series, he received an Emmy Award in 1978 as one of the writers of the episode "Cousin Liz".Schiller, born in San Francisco, California, began writing for television...

.

In the May 14 episode, Larry J. Blake

Larry J. Blake

Larry J. Blake was an American actor from Brooklyn, New York City. In 1947 he starred in the film Backlash.Blake was also among the stars of 1953-1954 ABC situation comedy, The Pride of the Family, appearing in the role of Frank. Fay Wray played Catherine Morrison, and Paul Hartman played her...

 appeared as a neighbor, Donald Peterson, whom Dr. Wilson invites on a fishing

Fishing

Fishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....

 trip. Blake had the distinction of having been the first actor to portray Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 in a film.

Professional Father, a mid-season replacement for the sitcom That's My Boy, offered new episodes from January 8 to July 2, 1955. Professional Father aired opposite The George Gobel Show on NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 and The Stork Club, a talk show

Talk show

A talk show or chat show is a television program or radio program where one person discuss various topics put forth by a talk show host....

 on ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 hosted by Sherman Billingsley

Sherman Billingsley

Sherman Billingsley was an American nightclub owner and former bootlegger who was the founder and owner of New York's Stork Club....

. In the fall of 1955, Professional Father was succeeded in the 10 p.m. Eastern Saturday time slot with the first season of James Arness

James Arness

James King Arness was an American actor, best known for portraying Marshal Matt Dillon in the television series Gunsmoke for 20 years...

's Gunsmoke

Gunsmoke

Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West....

, which became the longest running western

Western (genre)

The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...

series in television history.