The Stars On TV Continued: The Smith Family

By the 1970’s the half hour drama was becoming rare. If you were a drama you were an hour long. Only sit-coms were a half an hour. In 1971 on Wednesday nights ABC aired the Smith Family. It was one of those rare half hour dramas. It did have some minor success mainly because it stared Henry Fonda as Det. Sgt. Chad Smith. He was a 25 year veteran of the police force and worked on everything from robberies to runaway children to homicides. His police work was not the focus of the series. It was centered mostly on his family life. Janet Blair played his wife Betty. His children were played by Darlene Carr as Cindy Smith, Michael-Kames Wixted played Brian Smith and a post Opie pre Ritchie Cunningham Ron Howard played 15 year old Bob Smith. I am sure that Rance Howard was a good father since he did most of the fatherly work. However, with help from Andy Griffith, Henry Fonda and Tom Bosley it is no wonder that Ron Howard turned out to be pretty levelheaded. Of course I don’t remember ever episode of the series but I do remember one where son Bob got to ride along with some police for a report from school. Nothing was supposed to happen so Dad wasn’t worried but Mom was. When it turned out that something happened on ride along they both were worried till Bob got home. Another episode was probably their Christmas episode. Mr. Fonda was hanging up a sign on the house that said Merry Xmas. I asked my Dad what that meant. He told me it meant Merry Christmas. He said they took Christ out of Christmas and we should not do that. Except for this example I have always written it as Christmas.
To the best of my knowledge this is the only TV series that Henry Fonda was in unless he was he guest star on a show. He did host a special tribute to All In The Family but was never officially on the show. In 1963 he was the star of Spencer’s Mountain. It was based on a novel by Earl Hamner Jr. Eventually the TV networks asked Mr. Hamner to create a TV movie. He based his TV Movie on the same characters but made a few changes and titled the movie The Homecoming. That movie did so well it became a series. Perhaps you have heard of it. It was called The Waltons. Till very recently it was the longest running family dramas on TV. So in around about way Mr. Fonda stared in the movie that the Waltons was based on. So he was involved with two family dramas. However, The Smith Family didn’t come close to being competition to the long run of the Waltons. The Smith family only ran from January 20, 1971 to June 14, 1972. Only a year and a half run, The Waltons ran for 9 years. The Smith Family was a pretty good show and should have run longer. I hope there will be a DVD release soon of the series. The above TV Guide cover is for The Smith Family and it is the May 8, 1971 issue.
I just saw an ad for the new series Shark Starring James Woods this fall on TV. Let's hope, in this day of what seems like a million channels demanding our attention, that Mr. Woods can bet the odds and become part of a rare breed. A movie star that can transition to become a television star.