Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Adam's Rib: Ken Howard and Blythe Danner

Adam's Rib originally aired from September-December 1973 on ABC.

This romantic comedy was based on the Spencer Tracy - Katharine Hepburn movie classic of the same title.

It was about a young Assistant D.A. and his wife, a junior partner in a law firm, whose jobs often put them on opposite sides in the courtroom as well as at home. It starred Ken Howard as Adam Bonner and Blythe Danner as his wife Amanda. Adam's Rib paid homage to the Women's Lib movement by building many stories around Amanda's crusades for women's rights ( 50% of the show's writers were women).In one episode, Amanda tried to get into a classy restaurant, but was refused admission because she was wearing a trouser suit and the dress code required ladies to wear skirts or dresses. Amanda complained to her husband that this policy was discriminatory and illegal. Adam had more important things to deal with though, like prosecuting murderers and rapists. So what did Amanda do? She went out and bought a dress for a very large woman, then demanded her husband put it on, which he did. One hour-long special episode, adapted directly from the movie, pitted Adam and Amanda against each other in the courtroom : He prosecuting a woman who shot her wayward husband, she defending her. This program didn't really ever find much of an audience, however and was canceled after 3 months on the air.

Dena Dietrich ("Mother Nature" of TV commercial fame) played Amanda's secretary, Gracie, and Kip ( Edward Winter), was her law partner. Asst. D.A. Mendelsohn( Ron Rifkin), and D.A. Donahue( Norman Bartold) were on Adam's side.

A Review From Time Magazine

ADAM'S RIB. ABC. Friday, 9:30-10 p.m. E.D.T. Adam (Ken Howard) is an assistant D.A., and his wife Amanda (Blythe Danner) is also a lawyer, and the very thin rib is Women's Lib. At least that is what seems to have been intended in this half-hour comedy purportedly inspired by the 1949 classic Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn film of the same name. But the first two episodes did little to advance the cause. In the première, the woman lawyer was so emotionally shattered by having to spend a single night in the clink that she could not open her mouth in court the next day. (Hubby came to the rescue, naturally.) The next week she "proved" her right to wear a pantsuit into a fancy Los Angeles restaurant (a right won long ago by other pantsuited Angelenos) by forcing her husband to wear a dress at the office. The only thing that has really been liberated is a lot of sudsy detergent-commercial cuteness. The perfect couple call one another "Pinkie" or worse. In one episode, when She demands that they talk lawyer-to-lawyer, he says "Couldn't we just talk poopsie to poopsie?"

For more on Adam's Rib go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam's_Rib_(TV_series)