Window on Main Street

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Window on Main Street
Format	Sitcom
Starring	Robert Young Ford Rainey Constance Moore Tim Matheson
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	unknown
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	CBS
Picture format	Black and white
Original run	October 2, 1961 – September 12, 1962
External links
IMDb profile

Robert Young
Notes (1) Of the three Robert Young television series, Window on Main Street was the only unsuccessful one, but it evoked nostalgia of an earlier, simpler time in the United States. (2) As a child actor, Tim Matheson was cast as a 13-year-old in Window on Main Street. He went on to a successful career in films. (3) Young's Father Knows Best was being carried in prime time repeats during the 1961-1962 season in which he starred and worked in the production of his Window on Main Street.

Window on Main Street is a largely-forgotten nostalgic sitcom-drama series starring Robert Young, which aired on CBS Television in the 1961-1962 season. Young, who had left the discontinued Father Knows Best a year earlier, was cast as Cameron Garrett "Cam" Brooks, a widower-author, who returns to his hometown of fictional Millsburg (possibly in New England) to renew his friendship with Lloyd Ramsey, the editor of the local newspaper, portrayed by Ford Rainey (1908-2005).^[1] The people of Millsburg become the subjects of Cam's stories.^[2]

Tim Matheson, as 13-year-old Roddy Miller, appeared in Window on Main Street eight years before he joined the cast of The Virginian on NBC in 1969 in the role of Jim Horn.^[3] Constance Moore (1920-2005) appeared as Cam's blonde female friend Christina "Chris" Logan, who had remained behind years earlier, when she was known as "Tina", and he left Millsburg for points undisclosed.^[4] Ludwig Stössel (1883-1973), a Jewish actor from Austria who fled the Nazis in the 1930s, guest starred in two episodes of Window on Main Street, having also appeared earlier on Father Knows Best.^[5]

Young, along with the Father Knows Best producer Eugene B. Rodney, worked in the writing and production of some of the episodes of Window on Main Street.^[6]

Window on Main Street premiered on Monday, October 2, 1961, and closed on September 12, 1962. In the Christmas Day episode, 1961, Cam reluctantly accepts the presidency for the Millsburg charity drive. His appointment upsets Hub Hartwig, who wanted the job himself. In the November 27 episode, Lloyd Ramsey receives an interesting "Letter to the Editor" from a young reader who asks, "I know that God started the world, but who started God"?^[7]

On the CBS schedule, Window on Main Street followed the second and final season of Pete and Gladys, starring Harry Morgan and Cara Williams, and preceded The Danny Thomas Show. The program took over the time slot vacated the previous season by the unsuccessful Bringing Up Buddy starring Frank Aletter. Window on Main Street was paired opposite The Price Is Right starring Bill Cullen on NBC and Chuck Connors in The Rifleman on ABC.^[8]

Father Knows Best was still on the CBS schedule on Wednesdays in prime time repeats during the 1961-1962 season; so Young was featured in two network comedies the same season.^[9]