50 Fun Facts About Family Ties

Which actor was the producers' first choice to play Alex P. Keaton?

Matthew Broderick. With him out of the picture, the show's creator had to fight his own network to cast Michael J. Fox, whom its programming chief thought too short to pass as the Keatons' son.

In which city is Family Ties set?

Columbus, Ohio. The comfortable suburb turned ugly in a two-part story from the final season: when Black friends of the Keatons move onto the street, some neighbours' racism comes out.

On which network did Family Ties air from 1982 to 1989?

NBC. In March 1987 the network took the rare step of showing the second half of an hour-long episode with no commercials at all, and that episode went on to win two Emmys.

Who created Family Ties?

Gary David Goldberg. He modelled Steven and Elyse on himself and his wife, former hippies who had hitchhiked around the world and run a day-care centre in Berkeley before he tried television.

What is Steven Keaton's job?

Manager of a public TV station. The mild-mannered Steven gets the show's gravest late storyline: in the final season he has a heart attack and needs a quadruple bypass.

What is Elyse Keaton's profession?

Architect. Her career gets its own late episode: when the first building Elyse designed is slated for the wrecking ball, the whole family joins her fight to stop the demolition.

Which actress played Elyse Keaton?

Meredith Baxter. Billed then as Meredith Baxter-Birney, she had spent the late 1970s playing a grown daughter on the drama Family before switching generations to become TV's ex-hippie mother.

Which actor played Steven Keaton?

Michael Gross. He spent the next 30 years as Burt Gummer, the gun-hoarding survivalist of the Tremors monster films: about as far from pacifist ex-hippie Steven as a role could get.

The actors who played Steven and Elyse Keaton turned out to share exactly what?

A date of birth: 21 June 1947. Both were 35 when the show began, so the 'teenager' cast as their son, Michael J. Fox, was only 14 years younger than his TV parents.

Who played Mallory Keaton?

Justine Bateman. Her contract for the show ruled out college after high school; she went in her late forties instead and left UCLA in 2016 with a degree in computer science.

In the opening scene of the Family Ties pilot, Steven and Elyse make their children watch old pictures of what?

An anti-war protest march. Elyse calls it history in the making; Alex asks, 'What were you protesting? Good grooming?', and the show's generation gap is drawn in its first scene.

Who played tomboy Jennifer Keaton?

Tina Yothers. At 13 she set out on a second career as a singer, recording two singles and making her television singing debut on the show itself in February 1987.

Which child actor played Andy Keaton from season five onward?

Brian Bonsall. Baby Andy returned from a single summer break as a preschooler, and big brother Alex set about coaching him as a pint-sized conservative.

Why was baby Andy written into season three?

The actress playing Elyse was pregnant in real life, with twins. On screen Elyse had one baby, and went into labour in the middle of singing a song in front of live television cameras.

What is the name of the Keatons' nerdy neighbor with a crush on Mallory?

Skippy Handelman. Marc Price followed the lovelorn nerd with a very different lead: a bullied heavy-metal fan haunted by his dead rock idol in the 1986 horror film Trick or Treat.

Mallory's boyfriend Nick Moore, played by Scott Valentine, was written as what kind of character?

A Sylvester Stallone-esque artist. Nick, a high-school dropout who sculpts from junk, got a spin-off pilot of his own, The Art of Being Nick, but it was never picked up as a series.

Which actress played Alex's girlfriend Ellen Reed and later married the actor who played Alex?

Tracy Pollan. She left after a single season as Ellen; the two were reunited as co-stars on the film Bright Lights, Big City and married in the summer of 1988, soon after it came out.

Which future star of a hit 1990s sitcom played Alex's girlfriend Lauren Miller in the last two seasons?

Courteney Cox. Her Lauren is a psychology student who meets Alex when he volunteers for her study of overachievers, and she later packs him off to group therapy to make him open up.

Which future Oscar winner played Elyse's brother Ned Donnelly in three episodes?

Tom Hanks. Fresh from the sitcom Bosom Buddies, he played the high-flying uncle Alex idolises, then returned a season later for a darker episode in which the family finds Ned has a drinking problem.

Which future film star played Eugene, the boy genius Alex hires as a tutor?

River Phoenix. A year before Stand by Me he played the math tutor who turns out to be barely a teenager, then loses interest in Alex's lessons as soon as he notices Jennifer.

With what pitch was Family Ties sold to the network?

Hip parents, square kids. The parents were meant to be the leads, but the response to the fourth episode, a showcase for Michael J. Fox, was so strong that the series was re-centred on Alex.

Which US president called Family Ties his favorite show and reportedly offered to appear in an episode?

Ronald Reagan. The producers never took him up on it, which suited a show that began as a parody of the values he stood for and whose liberal writers played Alex's views for irony.

The hour-long episode in which Alex mourns a dead friend is staged like which classic play?

Our Town. For the second half-hour Alex stands on a nearly bare stage answering an unseen therapist, a performance that brought Michael J. Fox the second of his three straight Emmys.

Which episode won the 1987 Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series?

A, My Name Is Alex. His grief is sharpened by guilt: the friend died in a car crash while running an errand that Alex had begged off, and Alex cannot stop asking why he was the one spared.

What is the title of the Family Ties theme song?

Without Us. Heard every week for seven seasons, the full-length recording was never issued at the time; it surfaced only in 2003, as a bonus track on a reissued album of duets.

Which duo recorded the theme song of Family Ties?

Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams. Viewers heard their duet over the titles for years but could not buy it: the full recording stayed unreleased until a 2003 reissue of their duets album.

Which 1981 Billy Vera song went to number one in 1987 after being used as Alex and Ellen's love theme?

At This Moment. A writer on the show caught Vera's club set while hunting for a love song the budget could afford; after it aired, the network took more than 9,000 calls asking what it was.

What kind of dog is Ubu, seen in the closing tag of every episode?

A black Labrador Retriever. Ubu hitchhiked around Europe with the show's creator and his future wife in their penniless years, long before the company that carries his name existed.

Which line is heard over the Ubu Productions logo that closes every episode?

Sit, Ubu, sit! Good dog! The line stuck so firmly that the show's creator, whose dog Ubu was, used it as the title of the memoir he published in 2008.

In the episode 'Go Tigers', Mallory wrecks Alex's admissions interview at which Ivy League university?

Princeton. The title is its sports cheer; with the interview in ruins, Alex ends up at a local college, still living at his parents' house.

What does teenage Alex P. Keaton carry to high school that became the character's trademark?

A briefcase. Looking back in the final season, the show's creator asked: 'When else could a boy with a briefcase become a national hero?'

Which future sitcom star auditioned for the role of Steven Keaton in 1982?

Ed O'Neill. That same season he also tried out for bartender Sam Malone on Cheers; neither part came his way, and five years later he landed a very different TV father, Al Bundy of Married... with Children.

Which future Oscar winner was considered for the role of Mallory?

Laura Dern. She came to see the near miss as luck, saying she would have been heartbroken to play one person for so many years; her career ran through Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart instead.

In the 1989 Family Ties finale, Alex finally leaves the Keaton home for a dream job in which city?

New York. Alex lands a post with a Wall Street firm, to everyone's delight except Elyse's, who is upset to see her eldest go.

Which sitcom became the Thursday-night lead-in for Family Ties in 1984 and helped lift it into the top ten?

The Cosby Show. Family Ties had spent two seasons slowly finding an audience; behind Bill Cosby's smash it climbed until only The Cosby Show itself drew more viewers.

In which sitcom does Michael J. Fox's character mention meeting a Washington politician named Alex P. Keaton?

Spin City. In his 2000 farewell, deputy mayor Mike Flaherty leaves City Hall, resurfaces as a lobbyist in Washington and reports the encounter: a wink at fans of the earlier show, whose creator co-created this one.

Which Marvel series parodied the Family Ties opening in its fifth episode?

WandaVision. Its director copied the Family Ties titles step by step: he photographed his cast, had a line drawing made from the photo, then filmed it being filled in as a painted family portrait.

In the 1985 TV movie Family Ties Vacation, Alex spends the summer studying at which university?

Oxford. While Alex struggles to fit in with his English classmates, Mallory falls for his roommate and the rest of the family blunders into a spy plot in London.

With Family Ties unwilling to release Michael J. Fox, which actor spent weeks filming Back to the Future as Marty McFly?

Eric Stoltz. He was dropped weeks into the shoot, and Fox then did both jobs at once: rehearsing the sitcom from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., then filming Marty until 2:30 in the morning.

In which Alberta city was Michael J. Fox, the Canadian actor behind Alex P. Keaton, born?

Edmonton. The J came later: another Michael Fox was already on the actors' register, so he borrowed the initial from Michael J. Pollard, a character actor he admired.

Which network executive doubted Michael J. Fox's casting, saying his was not a face you'd ever see on a lunch box?

Brandon Tartikoff. He thought Fox too short to pass as his TV parents' son; once Fox was a film star he sent Tartikoff a lunch box with his own face on it, and the executive kept it on show in his office.

Before raising a family, Steven and Elyse Keaton had been volunteers with which organization?

The Peace Corps. The joke of the series was the reversal: parents who had volunteered to change the world were now raising a son who dreamed only of making his first million.

Which former president was teenage Alex P. Keaton's great political idol?

Richard Nixon. The show's liberal writers meant the worship as a joke at Alex's expense, yet the character they wrote as a parody became a hero to conservatives.

In the episode that made him the star of Family Ties, Alex falls for a student writing her thesis on which economist?

Milton Friedman. Alex wins her over by enthusing about interest rates and turns up next day in an ascot, puffing a pipe and singing 'Let's Fall in Love'; by the end of the episode she has broken his heart.

Which passion, to her brainy brother's scorn, defines Mallory Keaton throughout Family Ties?

Fashion. It leads somewhere: a boutique job first drags her grades down, and by the final season Mallory is designing clothes herself, only to catch a colleague stealing her designs.

Uncle Ned, the high-flying executive Alex idolizes, first turns up on the run from the FBI for what?

Embezzling company funds. The uncle Alex holds up as proof that business rewards the best has made off with $4.5 million, and has to tell the family why he took it and where he hid it.

The actress who played Alex's girlfriend Lauren first found fame dancing on stage in whose 1984 music video?

Bruce Springsteen. In 'Dancing in the Dark' he seems to pull a lucky fan out of the front row to dance; she was in fact an actress whom director Brian De Palma had picked at a casting call.

The boy who played Andy Keaton went on to play Worf's son Alexander in which Star Trek series?

The Next Generation. He took over from the younger boy who first played Alexander once Worf's son became a recurring character, and wore the Klingon forehead in seven episodes.

Which future Oscar winner had a recurring part as Karen, the inept housekeeper Alex hires?

Geena Davis. Karen is hopeless at the job, yet an episode later Alex needs her as his stand-in date for a fraternity dance; before the decade was out the actress had an Oscar.

Which actor, later Michael J. Fox's father in Back to the Future, played Alex's friend Doug in 1984?

Crispin Glover. He was George McFly a year later but sat out the sequels; when they put another actor in prosthetics to pass for him, he sued over his likeness and the studio settled.