Marcus Welby, M.D.
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| network = ABC | first_aired = September 23, 1969 | last_aired = July 29, 1976 | num_episodes = 169 | imdb_id = 0063927 |Marcus Welby, M.D. was a popular medical drama that aired on ABC from September 23, 1969 to July 29, 1976. It was produced by David Victor and David J. O'Connell. The pilot aired as an ABC Movie of the Week on March 26, 1969.Robert Young (of Father Knows Best fame) starred as the title character, a family practitioner with a kind bedside manner. As with most medical dramas of the day, the main conflict was between Dr. Welby's unorthodox way of treating patients as opposed to the strait-laced methods of Dr. Steven Kiley (James Brolin). The catch with this particular program was that the roles were reversed in that Dr. Kiley was much younger than Dr. Welby. In the similar series Medical Center, it is the older doctor who is more orthodox and the younger who is radical.The doctors worked alongside each other in their private practice in Southern California, regularly working in conjunction with the nearby Lang Memorial Hospital. At the office, their loyal secretary and friend was Consuelo Lopez (Elena Verdugo). Other characters that appeared throughout the years included Dr. Welby's frequent girlfriend Myra Sherwood (Anne Baxter), his daughter Sandy and her son (Anne Schedeen, Gavin Brendan), and Kathleen Faverty (Sharon Gless), another secretary. Dr. Kiley met and married public relations director Janet Blake (Pamela Hensley) in 1975, at the beginning of the show's last season on the air.Its intelligent handling of many varied medical cases - some common, some uncommon - made it an instant hit for ABC. Storylines included depression, brain damage, breast cancer, mononucleosis, venereal disease, epilepsy, leukemia, dysautonomia, rape, and addiction to painkillers, among others. At its second season (1970-1971), it ranked #1 in the Nielsen Ratings, becoming the first ABC show to top the list. The same year, both Young and Brolin won Emmy Awards for their work, as did the show for Outstanding Dramatic Series. Young won a Golden Globe in 1972 for his performance.The show found itself the center of protests and controversy (including an office sit-in by gay activists) when a leaked script about a homosexual teacher molesting a student was considered to conflate homosexuality with child molestation. The network yielded, and pledged to be more sensitive in the future, and the momentum from the incident helped lead to the later formation of the gay media watchdog group GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation).By the mid-1970s, the once seemingly never ending popularity of medical drama began to wane. Ratings for both Marcus Welby, M.D. and CBS' Medical Center began to drop, as did the ratings for daytime dramas General Hospital and The Doctors. The show ended its run in 1976 after a total of 169 episodes were made.In 1984, the reunion movie The Return of Marcus Welby, M.D. aired, with Young and Verdugo reprising their roles. Another movie was made in 1988, .
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