Arts Alliance America Celebrates The 50th Anniversary of “The Donna Reed Show” with its debut on DVD!
By Jill Hart

For the first time ever, the pre-eminent family television series from the 1960s has been brought back into America’s homes. “The Donna Reed Show, Season One” is now available on DVD. This beloved series, currently celebrating its 50th anniversary, has never been on home video in any format.
The “Donna Reed Show” premiered on Wednesday, September 24, 1958 at 9:00pm on ABC. Along with Donna’s husband, producer Tony Owen, the network created a show that America fell in love with instantly; they tuned in faithfully for the next 8 years (274 episodes) to watch the Stone family. Donna was nominated for an Emmy award 4 times, in 1963 won a Golden Globe as Best Female TV Star, and in 1964 won a Golden Apple award for Most Cooperative Actress.

In addition to its regular cast, including Donna Reed, Carl Betz (as Donna’s husband, Dr. Alex Stone), Shelley Fabares and Paul Petersen (as their two children, Mary and Jeff), “The Donna Reed Show” was also one of the first shows to include guests stars such as legendary silent film maverick Buster Keaton (who appeared twice on the program), “That Girl” Marlo Thomas, and one of Donna’s good friends from MGM, actress Esther Williams. Baseball greats Don Drysdale & Willie Mays (appearing on the show as themselves) also guested on the show.

For more than 10 years, syndicated re-runs of the show entertained a new generation of kids on Nick@Nite. “The Donna Reed Show” was the longest running series in Nick@Nite’s history.

Arts Alliance has digitally re-mastered all 37 episodes of the first season onto a 4 disc set. Working closely with Donna Reed’s family, they have been able to include special features on this DVD, and on subsequent seasons slated for release in 2009 will include digitally enhanced original television commercials, a tribute to Reed’s classic film “It’s a Wonderful Life” and her Oscar winning performance in “From Here To Eternity,” photo galleries of cast memorabilia, and exclusive photos of Emmy-award winning Reed.

Visit www.ArtsAllianceAmerica.com to bring the Stone family into your home!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 5:43 pm and is filed under Current Issue, Lifestyle, Vol. 7. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.