Family (TV series)

This article is about the 1970s American series. For other series with similar titles, see Family (disambiguation).

Family
Family Title Card
Format	Drama
Created by	Jay Presson Allen
Starring	Sada Thompson James Broderick Gary Frank Kristy McNichol Elayne Heilveil Meredith Baxter Birney Quinn Cummings
Opening theme	John Rubinstein
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	86 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Leonard Goldberg Mike Nichols Aaron Spelling
Camera setup	Single-camera
Running time	45–48 minutes
Production company(s)	Roundelay Productions Spelling-Goldberg Productions
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Audio format	Monaural
Original run	March 9, 1976 (1976-03-09) – June 25, 1980 (1980-06-25)

Family is an American television drama series that aired on ABC from 1976 to 1980. Creative control of the show was split between executive producers Leonard Goldberg, Aaron Spelling and Mike Nichols. A total of 86 episodes were produced.

Premise

Willie with Doug and Kate.

The show featured Sada Thompson and James Broderick as Kate and Doug Lawrence, a happily married middle-class couple living in Pasadena, California. Doug is an independent lawyer, and Kate was a housewife (she would eventually go back to school herself). They had three children: Nancy (portrayed by Elayne Heilveil in the original mini-series and later by Meredith Baxter Birney), Willie (Gary Frank), and Letitia, nicknamed "Buddy" (Kristy McNichol). (There was another son, Timothy, who had died five years previous to the series' beginning.) The show raised the profile of all of its featured actors during its run and, in particular, catapulted McNichol to stardom.

The show attempted to depict the "average" family, warts and all. Storylines were very topical, and the show was one of the first to feature shows that have recently been termed as "very special episodes." In the first episode, Nancy walked in on her husband Jeff (John Rubinstein) making love to one of her friends. During the second season she and Jeff divorced, but Jeff would continue to appear regularly as an active father, as well as finding himself involved in more of the Lawrence family's affairs. Other topical storylines included Kate having to deal with the possibility that she had breast cancer, as well as Buddy dealing with advances from boys. In the later seasons, there were instances in which Buddy had to decide whether or not to have sex; she always chose to wait, most notably in an episode with guest star Leif Garrett, who was a teen idol at the time. Another topical episode dealt with Buddy's friendship with a teacher who was revealed to be a lesbian. Family also dealt with alcoholism (Doug's sister; Buddy's old friend) as well as adoption, when the family adopted a girl named Annie Cooper (Quinn Cummings). One episode in 1979 (directed by actress Joanne Woodward) guest-starred Henry Fonda as a visiting elderly relative who was beginning to experience senility and memory loss.

Theme music

In the original spring 1976 miniseries run of Family, the theme music was a dramatic sounding, yet low key piano solo with minor orchestral contingents, composed by cast member John Rubinstein (son of famed classical musician Arthur Rubinstein). When Family was picked up as a regular series for the fall 1976 schedule, the theme music was changed to a more cheery, upbeat instrumental dominated by trumpets and horns, also written by Rubinstein. It was this version that lasted the rest of the run.

Legal dispute

Family became the subject of one of the longest running legal disputes in television history when writer Jeri Emmet Laird filed a lawsuit against Spelling Television in 1977, claiming Spelling had stolen the idea for the show from a script she had submitted entitled, The Best Years.

Spelling stated that he came up with the idea in his kitchen with then-partner Leonard Goldberg, and passed it on to Jay Presson Allen to write the pilot script. Allen, who died in May 2006, had just completed the screenplay for the film Funny Lady starring Barbra Streisand and directed by Herbert Ross.

After over a decade in court, a jury awarded Laird $1.69 million against Spelling, which she then lost on appeal. (Ssee Laird v. Blacker, 2 Cal.4th 606 (1992).)

Laird sued Spelling again in 1996 after he published his memoirs, claiming that he defamed her in his book by not crediting her with the original idea for Family, but again she lost on appeal in 2001 when the court stated, "you can't steal the same idea twice!" The litigation finally concluded some 25 years after the show first aired on television, with Jay Presson Allen retaining her "created by" credit on the series.

DVD release

On September 5, 2006, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the first two seasons of Family on DVD in Region 1. It is unknown if the remaining three seasons will be released at some point.

See also

• 1976 in American television

International Broadcast

• Argentina Canal 13 Artear
• Venezuela Venezolana de Televisión

External links

• Family at the Internet Movie Database
• Family at TV.com
• DVD release planned