Marcus Welby, M.D. is an American medical drama television series that aired on ABC from September 23, 1969, to July 29, 1976. It starred Robert Young as the title character, a family practitioner with a kind bedside manner, who made house calls and was on a first-name basis with many of his patients; James Brolin as his partner Steven Kiley, a younger doctor; and Elena Verdugo as Consuelo Lopez, Welby and Kiley's dedicated and loving nurse and office manager. Marcus Welby, M.D. was produced by David Victor and David J. O'Connell through Universal Television, which was then an MCA company. The pilot, titled "A Matter of Humanities", had aired as an ABC Movie of the Week on March 26, 1969. Overview As with most medical dramas of the day, the plots often concerned a professional conflict between well-meaning physicians. Here, Welby's unorthodox way of treating patients was pitted against the more straight-laced methods of Kiley (Brolin). The catch with this particular program was that the roles were reversed in that Kiley was much younger than Welby. The opening credits of each episode reminded viewers of the generation gap between the two doctors, Welby driving his sedan and Kiley riding a motorcycle. Welby had served in the US Navy as a doctor during the war, and was a widower. 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 Saint John's Hospital and Health Center in Santa Monica.) At the office, their loyal secretary-nurse and friend was Consuelo Lopez (Verdugo). Other characters that appeared throughout the series included Dr. Welby's frequent girlfriend Myra Sherwood (Anne Baxter), his daughter Sandy (originally Christine Belford, and later Anne Schedeen) and her son Phil (Gavin Brendan), and Kathleen Faverty (Sharon Gless), an assistant program director at the hospital, who worked closely with Welby and Kiley. Kiley met and married public relations director Janet Blake (played by Pamela Hensley) in 1975, at the beginning of the show's final 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 doctor while keeping her marriage a secret most of