The Donna Reed Show
The Donna Reed Show is an American situation comedy in which Donna Reed plays Donna Stone, a housewife from the upper middle class. Carl Betz plays her husband, Dr. Alex Stone, who is a pediatrician. Shelley Fabares and Paul Petersen play their teenagers, Mary and Jeff. The show first aired on ABC from September 24, 1958, to March 19, 1966. When Fabares left the show in 1963, Petersen's little sister Patty Petersen joined the cast as the adopted daughter Trisha. On January 31, 1963, Patty Petersen made her first appearance in the episode "A Way of Her Own." In the last few seasons, Bob Crane and Ann McCrea played the Stones' friends, the Kelseys, and Darryl Richard became almost a 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 star Lassie as herself, and young Jay North from CBS's Dennis the Menace. The show was made by William S. Roberts, and Reed and her then-husband, producer Tony Owen, worked on it together. 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 getting some time away from the kids. Sometimes, touchy topics like women's rights and freedom of the press were talked about.