Wait Till Your Father Gets Home is an animated sitcom[1] produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions that aired in first-run syndication in the United States from 1972 to 1974.[2] The show originated as a one-time segment on Love, American Style called "Love and the Old-Fashioned Father". The same pilot was later produced with a live cast (starring Van Johnson), but with no success. The show was the first primetime animated sitcom to run for more than a single season since fellow Hanna-Barbera show The Flintstones more than ten years earlier, and would be the only one until The Simpsons seventeen years later. The show was inspired by All in the Family.[3]
The show features Harry Boyle, wife Irma, daughter Alice, and sons Chet and Jamie. Harry, a restaurant supply wholesaler, often butts heads with most of his family about the social issues of the day. Contrasting that is Harry's neighbor and friend, Ralph Kane, a paranoid right-wing militia fanatic whose extreme opinions and often dangerous actions Harry can barely tolerate as much as his kids' ideas.
Like many animated series created by Hanna-Barbera in the 1970s, the show contained a laugh track created by the studio.[4] For this show, the studio added a third belly laugh to add a little more "variety" (the only TV series made by Hanna-Barbera to have this added laugh). In addition, the laugh track was also slowed considerably.[4]
Other "guests" on the series included thinly disguised versions of celebrities who did not provide their own voices, such as guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. When a crooked car dealer on another episode was perceived by real-life Los Angeles car salesman Cal Worthington as being a send-up of him, he sued Hanna-Barbera, the sponsors (Chevrolet) and the five NBC-owned stations that carried the show.[5]
On June 5, 2007, Warner Home Video released Season 1 of Wait Till Your Father Gets Home on DVD in Region 1 for the Hanna-Barbera Classics Collection. Warner Archive has yet to release season 2 and Season 3.