Having visited Coronado Island when I was in San Diego many years ago I had a
feeling for the Chadwick Family and their hometown. Coronado is a self contained community of conservative values pretty much as shown here. There's
a land bridge connection to San Diego, but a lot of people own boats.
Fred MacMurray is patriarch of The Chadwick Family, he owns the local newspaper
which has gotten a degree of fame something like William Allen White's small
town Emporia Gazette. MacMurray is mulling over an offer to move to Chicago and work for big time newspaper magnate John Larch as a columnist.
MacMurray and Kathleen Maguire have a large extended family, three daughters and a son with spouses for nearly all. The big plot element in the
film is the death of son Stephen Nathan who has a charter plane business of
a rare disease. Other parts of the film are daughter Darleen Carr who is dating
a Chinese man with his mother's non-approval.
According to Charles Tranberg's biography of Fred MacMurray this was an unsold television pilot. Had the series been picked up it would have been a more serious version of My Three Sons.
It was a decent effort. Sad it did not find an audience.
