Father Knows Best
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50 free Father Knows Best trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Father Knows Best set the template for the American family sitcom. It began on radio in 1949, moved to television in 1954 and spent six seasons with Jim and Margaret Anderson and their children Betty, Bud and Kathy, a household so idealized that it became shorthand for a whole decade. This quiz covers the family and their town, the plots of well-remembered episodes, the actors and what they did next, and the production story: networks, sponsors, Emmys and the backlot house that kept turning up in other series. It is written for viewers who grew up with the Andersons and for classic-television fans meeting them in reruns. The early questions are friendly; the later ones reward real devotion.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Three years after Father Knows Best ended, ABC News interrupted a rerun with its first bulletin on which event?
Kennedy's assassination
Kennedy's assassination was first reported on ABC at 1:42 p.m. Eastern, cutting into the third-season episode Man About Town on the stations showing the rerun.
Q 02The Anderson house facade from Father Knows Best was later remodeled as astronaut Tony Nelson's home in which sitcom?
I Dream of Jeannie
I Dream of Jeannie put Major Nelson behind the same front door on Columbia's Burbank ranch. The facade also turns up in Hazel, The Monkees and The Partridge Family.
Q 03Billy Gray, Bud of Father Knows Best, lost the part of Plato in which film when shooting delays hit?
Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause went ahead with Sal Mineo as Plato, and the part brought him an Oscar nomination. Gray had to step aside when the delay clashed with his commitment to the Andersons.
Q 04The actress who played Margaret Anderson on Father Knows Best later appeared in Star Trek as which character's mother?
Spock
Spock's human mother, Amanda Grayson, was hers in a 1967 episode and again in a 1986 film. She said the part brought her more fan mail than her famous role in Lost Horizon.
Q 05Jean Vander Pyl, Margaret on radio's Father Knows Best, later became the voice of which Hanna-Barbera character?
Wilma Flintstone
Wilma Flintstone was hers from the 1960 premiere, and she outlived the rest of the original Flintstones cast. She also voiced Rosie, the robot maid of The Jetsons.
Q 06Betty Anderson of Father Knows Best signs up by initials alone for a career-day placement in which job?
Engineer
Engineer was the placement, and her surveyor boss spent the day insisting that a woman's place was in the home. The 1956 episode ends with Betty in a new dress, accepting a date with him.
Q 07Robert Young followed Jim Anderson of Father Knows Best with which title role as a caring physician on ABC?
Marcus Welby
Marcus Welby kept him on screen for seven seasons and won him an Emmy in 1970. The medical drama was the first ABC program to finish a season as the country's top-rated series.
Q 08Which actress won three straight Emmys as Margaret Anderson, the calm voice of reason in Father Knows Best?
Jane Wyatt
Jane Wyatt won an Emmy for the role in 1958, 1959 and 1960. Her film career had suffered earlier after she spoke out against Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Q 09In which town, whose state is never named, do the Andersons of Father Knows Best live?
Springfield
Springfield is generally taken to be in the Midwest. As a child Matt Groening believed it was the Oregon town of the same name, and he later borrowed it for The Simpsons.
Q 10Jim Anderson, the father in Father Knows Best, is a salesman and manager in which line of business?
Insurance
Insurance pays the bills: Jim runs the General Insurance Company office. On radio the character was noticeably more sarcastic than the gentle father of television.
Q 11Kathy, the youngest Anderson child in Father Knows Best, answers to which affectionate nickname?
Kitten
Kitten was played by Lauren Chapin, who felt she won the part by resembling one of Robert Young's real daughters.
Q 12Which pet name does Betty, the eldest Anderson child, go by at home in Father Knows Best?
Princess
Princess was Elinor Donahue's star-making part. By the end of the third season she was visibly pregnant, and the production tried to hide it on screen.
Q 13Bud is only a nickname in Father Knows Best: what is the real first name of the Andersons' son?
James
James Anderson Jr. is his full name, after his father Jim. On radio the part belonged to Ted Donaldson; Billy Gray took it over for television.
Q 21Father Knows Best ended in 1960 while still a top-ten show in the ratings for which reason?
Its star walked away
Its star walked away: Robert Young wanted to work on other projects while the series sat sixth in the ratings. Prime-time reruns kept airing for another three years.
Q 22CBS dropped Father Knows Best after one season; which network picked the sitcom up for the next three years?
NBC
NBC kept the Andersons until 1958, when the series moved back to CBS for its last two seasons. Repeats later ran on ABC, so it appeared on all three major networks of its day.
Q 23After Kathy freezes on television, what do the Andersons eat for Thanksgiving in Father Knows Best?
Hamburgers
Q 14After Father Knows Best, Elinor Donahue played pharmacist Ellie Walker in the first season of which rural sitcom?
The Andy Griffith Show
The Andy Griffith Show billed her ahead of Don Knotts in its opening credits. She asked to be released from a three-year contract after a single season.
Q 15Marion Ross, a swimming teacher in one Father Knows Best episode, later played the mother on which nostalgic sitcom?
Happy Days
Happy Days cast her as Marion Cunningham for its whole run, 1974 to 1984. In the 1960 Andersons episode she is Miss Abrams, who lets slip that Jim has been asking about the pool.
Q 16Dick York guest-starred in Father Knows Best as a man Betty hauls home in a cart; which sitcom later made him famous?
Bewitched
Bewitched made him the first Darrin Stephens. In his 1958 guest spot he sneers that modern women could never manage a pioneer trek, then hurts his foot and has to be pulled the rest of the way.
Q 17On Christmas Eve in Father Knows Best, what strands the Andersons near a closed mountain lodge on a tree-cutting trip?
A snowdrift
A snowdrift traps the car after Jim insists on driving to the mountains for the tree. Their host at the lodge, Nick, turns out to be a vagrant, and Kathy takes him for Santa Claus.
Q 18What does a friend try to sell Jim in the Father Knows Best episode Swiss Family Anderson, stranding the family?
An island
An island with a beat-up shack looked less romantic once the untied boat drifted off and supper was potatoes and onions. Back home, the Andersons decided their old house was not so bad.
Q 19In the Father Knows Best episode The Gold Turnip, which heirloom does Jim Anderson hand Bud on graduation day?
A watch
A watch passed down through the family leaves Bud overcome with emotion, although he had mocked it and asked for a sports car. Jim then leads everyone outside to show him a car as well.
Q 20Which honor does Betty Anderson hold at the high school graduation she nearly skips in Father Knows Best?
Valedictorian
Valedictorian Betty nearly skipped the ceremony, convinced her best days were over. Jim found her at a grove she loved as a child and talked her round with help from Margaret's diary.
Hamburgers at home replaced the planned restaurant feast. Kathy had been due to recite the best Thanksgiving poem in her class but burst into tears, having overheard Jim say it was not very good.
Q 24Natividad Vacío appears in Father Knows Best as Frank Smith, who says his name as Fronk and does which job?
Gardener
Gardener Fronk talks his way into the job before Margaret knows what has happened, then runs up bills nobody approved. He is later arrested for taking park flowers that he was in fact planting.
Q 25Which instrument does Bud Anderson take up in Father Knows Best, dreaming of being a musician all the girls love?
Bongos
Bongos, handed on by his friend Claude, fed Bud's calypso ambitions, and for once he kept practicing. Then the girl he hoped to impress complained that Claude's playing bored everyone.
Q 26Which Brooklyn Dodgers star plays himself in Father Knows Best when Bud hopes his father can book an all-star team?
Duke Snider
Duke Snider asks for the team's expenses up front plus a quarter of the profits. A local man offers Jim the money in exchange for a political favor, and Jim turns him down.
Q 27Robert Young, the father in Father Knows Best, appeared until 1982 in television commercials for which coffee brand?
Sanka
Sanka kept him on screen long after his two hit series. He also has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one each for film, television and radio.
Q 28Rhoda Williams, Betty on radio's Father Knows Best, was the voice of Drizella in which Disney animated feature?
Cinderella
Cinderella reached cinemas in 1950, a year into her five-year run as Robert Young's eldest daughter on the air. Drizella is one of the heroine's two stepsisters.
Q 29Where does Betty of Father Knows Best choose to study instead of State University, her parents' old school?
A local junior college
A local junior college lets Betty stay with her friends and, as she tells her parents, live her own life instead of reliving theirs. A dean who overhears helps Jim accept her choice.
Q 30Elinor Donahue plays two parts in the Father Knows Best episode Betty's Double: Betty Anderson and which lookalike?
A movie star
A movie star named Donna Stuart is the double, and Betty wins a Hollywood trip for resembling her. After signing autographs as Donna, she feels a fraud and nearly skips a television interview.