The Donna Reed Show - Production

Production

David Tucker writes in The Women Who Made Television Funny that most family sitcoms of the 1950s such as Father Knows Best, The Life of Riley, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet focused on the father figure with the mother as "adjunct". He points out however that The Donna Reed Show "established the primacy of the mother on the domestic front" and notes that Mother Knows Better was briefly considered as the show's title.

The series was created by William Roberts and developed by Reed and her husband, producer Tony Owen. Roberts intended the show to respectfully picture the many demanding roles a stay-at-home woman was expected to master - wife, mom, companion, housekeeper, cook, laundress, seamstress, PTA officer, choir singer, scout leader, etc. - all the while being "effervescent, immaculate, and pretty." Reed stated, "We started breaking rules right and left. We had a female lead, for one thing, a strong, healthy woman. We had a story line told from a woman's point of view that wasn't soap opera."

In its first year on the struggling ABC network, the show was up against Milton Berle's popular Texaco Star Theater and Reed ratings were low. ABC nearly cancelled the show, but it was renewed and ratings improved when the show was moved from Wednesday to Thursday nights. The series flourished for the next seven years, but made television's top 25 only in 1963-1964. The opening credits showed Reed answering a telephone ringing off the hook.

She hands the receiver to Alex and watches the children rush off to school with lunches and schoolbooks in hand. Alex leaves, forgetting to kiss Donna good-bye, but returns as she closes the door to give her a quick kiss. She closes the door and smiles happily. A late series variant showed Donna departing after her husband, possibly for shopping, church or community matters, or some other concern. Reed brought personal friends Esther Williams, Jimmy Hawkins, and Buster Keaton to the show in guest spots.

In 1962 Fabares debuted her single "Johnny Angel" in the episode "Donna's Prima Donna". It rose to #1 and sold over a million copies. Petersen introduced his single "My Dad" the same year. It peaked at #6.

By the start of the 1962–1963 season, Reed felt the writers were running out of fresh ideas. With Fabares planning to leave at the end of the season, Reed decided to end the show in the spring of 1963. However, since the series was still very popular, ABC offered Reed a more lucrative contract and, the show was renewed for another three years.

Episodes per season were cut back and work hours were shortened to please Reed. In 1963, the Mary character went to college, and Fabares left the show to pursue other performing opportunities. She returned to the show occasionally for guest appearances. Following Fabares's departure, Petersen's real-life sister Patty Petersen joined the show as Trisha, a runaway orphan eventually adopted by the Stones.

In the spring of 1966, Reed had grown tired of the weekly grind and wanted to retire despite the show's decent ratings. After 275 episodes and eight successful seasons on ABC, The Donna Reed Show was cancelled. Reed expressed no interest in taking on another series, declined television guest appearances, and shunned films because she thought their depictions of women vapid.

She expressed interest in a television reunion for the Stone family at one point, but the concept was discarded when Betz died in 1978. Tucker writes that women libbers of the 1970s targeted the Donna Stone character as an unrealistic portrait of a modern woman and a stereotype of the impossibly perfect wife and mother. He believes Reed "gave motherhood a tinge of glamor it usually lacked on TV".