Bachelor Father

perhaps the original "single parent" television comedy. rich, handsome Uncle Bentley (forsythe) raises his orphaned niece Kelly (corcoran). series is loaded with mid-50s teenage angst, capers & madcap stunts. Uncle Bentley always had the sage wisdom & big buck$ to solve the problem, even though quasi-rebellious Kelley would never admit it till the end of show .the episodes were always sappy, saccharine & predictable. easy to watch for modicum of insight into what the era was like, or what is was supposed to be like. rent it, don't buy it

John Forsythe was in our title role as Bentley Gregg well known entertainment lawyer in Hollywood. He's quite the ladies' man and has no intentions of getting married. You get family responsibility with that.

But family responsibility comes his way when his orphaned niece Noreen Corcoran comes to live with him. This is a new world for Forsythe, but the show is essentially Forsythe coping with new situations that he never thought he would.

Completing the household is Sammee Tong as Forsythe's valet, cook, and general factotum. His is a truly tragic Hollywood story as he committed suicide two years after Bachelor Father completed its run.

Can't prove it, but I think John Forsythe's character was based on entertainment attorney and man about town Greg Bautzer. Bautzer made a lot of the gossip columns of the day escorting some of Hollywood's best known female stars. Forsythe's character is a kinder gentler version of Bautzer.

This was a nice show and again a situation where Forsythe most definitely on the B list of big screen star opted for television as many of his contemporaries did. Bachelor Father was a good career move.

I hadn't seen Bachelor Father on TV in probably 45 years until recently a local affiliate cable station started running it on weekdays in the late morning. It's enjoyable, rather amusing and very innocent. No bad language or sexual innuendo. Set in southern California, Bentley Greg (John Forsythe) is a wealthy attorney who resides in his Beverly Hills home with his orphaned niece, Kelly and houseboy, Peter. Most of the plots seem to revolve around seemingly trivial events, but that is more reflective of the 1950's and early 60's before the "sexual revolution" and wide spread drug use became common. Performances by the regular cast members are usually very satisfactory, although sometimes exaggerated to make a point. Episode plots are light-hearted if not particularly memorable, but I enjoy viewing a TV show first broadcast when I was in elementary school.

This was one of the best of the family-oriented sitcoms that premiered in the late 1950's and continued that streak until the early 1960's. And also the first ever sitcom that John Forsythe did for television and that would continued onward toward his astounding career. The series "Bachelor Father" was just that: a wholesome sitcom series that featured the easy natural charm of a young John Forysthe and the essential sweetness of his "getting into one situation after another,and managing to get herself into problems",teenage niece,caused this series to be a major hit and making John Forysthe a beloved fixture in America.

Produced by Everett Freeman and Harry Ackerman,"Bachelor Father" was one of those sitcoms that appeared on all three major television networks between 1957 and 1962. The series produced 157 episodes,all in classic black and white and was produced by Revue Studios/MCA-TV Universal Television. Actually the series premiered on CBS-TV from September 15,1957 until June of 1958,which lasted one season on the network. Then in June of 1958,the series moved from CBS over to NBC where it concluded its run on the network for three seasons ending in September of 1961. In September of 1961,the series moved from NBC over to ABC for its final season ending in 1962. The final episode of "Bachelor Father" ended on ABC on September 25,1962. Originally,the series itself ran for five seasons on all three major television networks.

This classic series,which is nowadays rarely seen or broadcast in repeats,had a premise that was similar(My Three Sons,The Courtship of Eddie's Father,Family Affair,and Nanny and the Professor)...a single individual and his niece whom he was raising were people you'd like to know-the very definition of gentility,charm,restraint-even Kelly whose problems and situations were never due to her own outrageousness,but simply her age. "Bachelor Father",however,followed the misadventures and situations of Bentley Gregg(John Forysthe),a wealthy bachelor attorney living in a exclusive penthouse complex in Beverly Hills. Gregg assumes the responsibility of raising his niece Kelly(Noreen Corcoran),after her parents were killed in an automobile accident. Other members of the Gregg household include the Chinese housekeeper and Bentley's personal assistant Peter Tong(Sammee Tong),the next door neighbor and Kelly's boyfriend,Howard Meechum(Jimmy Boyd)and the family dog,Jasper. Plots were centered on Bentley's adjustments to his new role as an adoptive parent,Bentley's search for the right woman to share his life,while Kelly deals with the usual problems of adolescence and young adulthood(and throughout the course of the series)and she goes from high school to college,and less often Peter's misadventures with some financial scheme or to make a play for attractive woman to be attached to Bentley.

Forsythe's well-dressed handsomeness,his distinguished voice,his movement and the affluence of his character gave this series an upper middle class reassurance that was unlike any other family oriented series of his day. However,the series ran five seasons in which the program never finished any of the seasons in the top 25 ratings. Had this series went into its sixth season for the 1962-63 season(which it never happened)plots would have undoubtedly extended to Kelly's impending marriage to Bentley's junior partner and seeing Kelly's graduation episode from college and her entrance into womanhood. The series ended prior to either the wedding or the college episode. After "Bachelor Father" ended in 1962, John Forysthe would return to another sitcom three years later with his own sitcom series "The John Forysthe Show"(NBC-TV:from September 13,1965 until March 1,1966),which was short-lived and another family oriented sitcom "To Rome With Love", produced by Don Fedderson(of My Three Sons and Family Affair)for CBS which lasted two seasons from 1969 until 1971.

Re:"Trpdean's" review of BF. Either you forgot the locale of BF or you never watched the series.

Attorney Bentley Gregg lived/worked in Beverly Hills, California, not the East Coast or the Midwest as you stated.

Also, he did not live in a penthouse, he lived in a home (actually two homes).

I don't know how you could come up with the scenario of living either on the east coast and/or the Midwest.

Each episode pounded into our TV heads that he lived and worked in Beverly Hills. They even had location shots of him tooling around the Beverly Hills neighborhood in his beautiful Chrysler New Yorker convertible (first season he had a 1957 Thunderbird).