Classic Television - Prime Time

Marcus Welby, M.D.

Original channel

ABC

Original run

September 23, 1969 – July 29, 1976

Starring

Robert Young

James Brolin

Marcus Welby, M.D. is an American medical drama television program that aired on ABC from September 23, 1969, to July 29, 1976. It starred Robert Young as a family practitioner with a kind bedside manner and James Brolin as the younger doctor he often worked with, and was produced by David Victor and David J. O'Connell. The pilot, A Matter of Humanities, had aired as an ABC Movie of the Week on March 26, 1969.

As with most medical dramas of the day, the plots often concerned a professional conflict between well-meaning physicians. Here, Dr. Welby's unorthodox way of treating patients was pitted against the more 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 opening credits of "Welby" for each episode reminded viewers of the generation gap between the two doctors, Welby driving his long sedan and Kiley riding a motorcycle. Welby had served in the US Navy as a doctor during the war, and was a widower. He owned a sail boat and enjoyed the ocean.

The doctors worked alongside each other in their private practice in Santa Monica, California, regularly working in conjunction with the nearby Lang Memorial Hospital. (This was later revealed in exterior shots to be the real-life St. John's Hospital and Health Center in Santa Monica, California now renamed simply as Saint John's Health Center.) At the office, their loyal secretary-nurse and friend, and Welby's hinted at secret lover 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 Phil (first Christine Belford, then Anne Schedeen, as Sandy and Gavin Brendan as Phil), 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.

In the episode Designs which aired on March 12, 1974. Young was reunited with his Father Knows Best co-star, Jane Wyatt; she played a fashion designer whose marriage to an embittered paraplegic led her to fall in love with the gentle doctor while keeping her marriage a secret most of the episode.