The Donna Reed Show
The Donna Reed Show stars Donna Reed as housewife Donna Stone. Carl Betz plays her pediatrician husband, Dr. Alex Stone, and Shelley Fabares and Paul Petersen are their teens. From September24, 1958 through March19,1966, ABC aired the show. Patty Petersen replaced Fabares as adoptive daughter Trisha in 1963. On January31,1963, Patty Petersen appeared in "A Way of Her Own." Bob Crane and Ann McCrea played the Stones' friends the Kelseys, while Darryl Richard played Jeff's best friend Smitty. Esther Williams as a famous dress designer, baseball luminaries Don Drysdale and Willie Mays as themselves, adolescent heartthrob James Darren as a pop singer with the measles, canine sensation Lassie as herself, and young Jay North of CBS's Dennis the Menace. Reed and her then-husband, producer Tony Owen, devised the series. Episodes dealt around normal family problems of the era, such as firing a clumsy domestic, having a retirement bash, and finding time away from the kids. Women's rights and journalistic freedom were explored.