The Donna Reed Show
The Donna Reed Show is an American situation comedy with Donna Reed as the upper-middle-class housewife Donna Stone. Carl Betz plays her pediatrician husband, Dr. Alex Stone, and Shelley Fabares and Paul Petersen are their teenage children, Mary and Jeff. The show first aired on ABC from September24,1958, to March19, 1966. When Fabares left the show in 1963, Petersen's younger sister, Patty Petersen, joined the cast as the adopted daughter Trisha. Patty Petersen first appeared in the episode "A Way of Her Own" on January 31, 1963. In the last few seasons, Bob Crane and Ann McCrea played the Stones' friends the Kelseys, and Darryl Richard became a near regular as Jeff's best friend Smitty. Celebrity guests on the show included Esther Williams as a famous dress designer, baseball stars Don Drysdale and Willie Mays as themselves, teen heartthrob James Darren as a pop singer with the measles, dog superstar Lassie as herself, and young Jay North from CBS's Dennis the Menace. The series was made by William S. Roberts and developed by Reed and her then-husband, producer Tony Owen. The episodes were about typical family problems of the time, like getting rid of a clumsy housekeeper, throwing a party for a coworker's retirement, or finding time away from the kids. Sometimes, controversial topics like women's rights and press freedom were talked about.