Smith Family: 1971 Paper Book - Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries

The Smith Family aired from January 1971 until June 1972 on ABC.

Henry Fonda starred in this half-hour comedy-drama about the home life of a big city cop. Det. Sgt. Chad Smith ( Fonda) was a Los Angeles plainclothesman , 25 years on the force, who worked on burglaries, drug busts, runaway children , bomb threats, and occasionally, homicides. His suburban family consisted of wife Betty ( Janet Blair); 18-year-old daughter Cindy ( Darleen Carr), an L.A. City College student with marriage on her mind; 15-year-old son Bob ( Ronny Howard) and 7-year-old Brian ( Michael-James Wixted)who inexplicably spoke with a British accent. Stories touched on the generation gap and the problems of youth as much as on Chad's police work, which did include some dangerous situations but not really much hard action. Captain Hughes (Charles McGraw) and Chad's partner, Sgt. Martin ( John Carter) were only seen occasionally.

Don Fedderson was the executive producer of this series.

Here is Janet Blair's Obituary from USA TODAY
Published on February 20, 2007

Janet Blair, star of '40s Hollywood musicals, dies at 85
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Janet Blair, the vivacious actress who appeared in several 1940s musicals and comedies, then turned to television and stars like Sid Caesar and Henry Fonda, has died. She was 85.

Blair died Monday from complications of pneumonia at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, her children Amanda and Andrew Mayo said.

"She was just a lot of fun and all about life," Amanda Mayo said. "She was an incredible talent and actress. They just don't make them like her anymore."

Blair was singing with Hal Kemp's band at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles in 1941 when she was spotted by a talent scout from Columbia Pictures shortly before Kemp was killed in a traffic accident. She had landed an audition with the bandleader at age 18 through a family friend.

When the musicians decided to disband after Kemp's death, Blair signed a contract with Columbia for $100 a week and changed careers.

She would languish in B pictures until Rosalind Russell recommended her for the title role in the comedy My Sister Eileen.

She won praise from critics for the role as Russell's beautiful but trouble-prone sister, and her roles quickly improved.

She appeared opposite George Raft in the gangster movie Broadway and co-starred with Cary Grant and a dancing caterpillar in the 1944 comedy-fantasy Once Upon a Time. She was the love interest in The Fabulous Dorseys, starring bandleaders Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey and appeared opposite Red Skelton in the 1946 sleeper hit The Fuller Brush Man.

She also co-starred with Don Ameche and Jack Oakie in Something to Shout About, which featured a Cole Porter score that included the song You'd Be So Nice to Come Home to.

But after the 1948 swashbuckler The Black Arrow, Columbia dropped her and she turned her back on Hollywood, moving on to the theater and to television.

"I gave up Hollywood and I gave up pictures because I was always getting parts where I'd be the girl who says, Oh, Red! in a Skelton movie," she explained. "All I got were princess parts. A girl gets tired of being a princess all of the time."

Instead, she took on the Mary Martin role in the touring version of South Pacific, clocking more than 1,200 performances in three years.

"And I never missed a performance," she noted proudly.

During the tour, she also got married to second husband, producer-director Nick Mayo, and they became parents of Amanda and Andrew.

From the late '40s through the mid-'50s she appeared in such Golden Age of Television shows as the Ford Theatre,Philco TV Playhouse,Lux Video Theatre and U.S. Steel Hour.

She returned to movies in 1957, starring opposite Skelton again, in Public Pigeon No. 1.

She made only a handful of films after that, including Walt Disney's The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band opposite Walter Brennan and Buddy Ebsen in 1968.

She joined television's Caesar's Hour in 1956 when Sid Caesar was seeking a replacement for co-star Nanette Fabray. She left after just one season, complaining she was "not given the opportunity I had been led to believe I'd get."

She returned to series television in 1971 as Fonda's wife in The Smith Family.

Born Martha Janet Lafferty in 1921 in Altoona, Pa., Blair attended public schools and sang in the church choir. She would later take the name of a Pennsylvania county in christening herself Janet Blair.

She is survived by her two children.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete.

For an episode guide go to http://www.tv.com/the-smith-family/show/4148/summary.html

For an episode guide go to http://ctva.biz/US/Comedy/SmithFamily.htm

For a page dedicated to The Smith Family go to http://onmymind1.blogspot.com/2006/07/stars-on-tv-continued-smith-family.html

For a Tribute to Henry Fonda go to http://www.classicmovies.org/articles/aa051301a.htm