If I ever saw a color episode of Donna Reed, I do not remember it. It was even a bit strange to see color photographs of Jane Wyatt in the papers recently because, with the exception of the two reunion specials of Father Knows Best, I only had memories of seeing her in black and white <br
Where did the little girl come from on Donna Reed? Did some relative die and the Stones took the child in? It sounds like what they did with My Three Sons. The original kids got too old so to keep the show from looking like a partial empty nest syndrome, they suddenly came up with reasons for having some younger kids. It was almost as fake as when the original Baxters left the show Hazel, but she and the boy stayed on in the house with the younger parents. Nothing was quite as bad, though as Ozzie's Girls, which was not about David and Rick having sex change operations, but some college girls rooming with the Nelsons. There were only two reasons for watching Ozzie and Harriette and one of them was the Hotpoint appliances which they somehow kept even when Kodak was sponsoring the program. The whole family would come out of the front door and stand in front of the house. Rick would be the last one out and he had a Kodak camera hanging from a strap around his neck. By the time it was Ozzie's Girls, all of the appliances were Norge/Fedders with a gas stove sitting where the feature-laden TOL Hotpoints had reigned. That change along with the absence of Dave & Rick, the main reason for watching the show, and that Mary Jane (could that name have been some sort of joke?), the blonde neighbor with the voice that could wear a hole through steel, probably served as a good example to other TV stars to quit before the writers ran out of ideas.
