Show Business: The Folks at Home

Week after week, the ratings of Robert Young’s Emmy-winning show, Father Knows Best, demonstrated that father really does. So it was sure as apple pie that other members of the family would gather at the festive board. Already lined up this season: one homey fracas in which mom knows best, another in which grandpa takes over the Socratic chores. ¶Donna Reed (ABC, Wed., 9-9:30 p.m.), mother of two, wife of a doctor, is an inoffensive archetype of the mythical figure whose chuckleheadedness is just a cheery wrapper around an infallible intuitive wisdom. In time for the final embrace, she usually squashes at least half a dozen domestic crises (mostly of her own making) and straightens out whatever is troubling the neighbors. But her forte is in canny diagnosis of ailments that have baffled her doctor hubby; the silly old dear could not see a wart under his own nose. Actress Reed plays mom with engaging charm. But the directors have hobbled the stride of the show with many a long, purposeless pause, as if they thought that viewers would be howling at the line that preceded it.

¶The Ed Wynn Show (NBC, Thurs., 8-8:30 p.m.) covers much the same ground with the same sentimental tarpaulin. Old Vaudevillian Wynn, who last year at 70 rose up as a dramatic actor in The Great Man, brings only hints of his legendary Palace clowning to his new home—a simple frame house in a small college town. As a kindly widower raising two grand-daughters—and all sorts of sagacious Cain with the town fathers—Wynn emits enough warmth to heat Buffalo for a month. It is as comedy that the show is not so hot.