The Toy Box

Renowned bandleader Lawrence Welk began his own variety series in 1955... and it has never stopped running. Each program was straightforward musical numbers from Welk's band (many of which had featured solos at one point or another), as well as vocal selections and dance numbers from the show's cast. Most of the introductions to the performances, read stiffy by Welk, were kept short. Many of the shows revolved around a certain theme (e.g., "The Music Man" or the Fourth of July), with appropriate songs and dance numbers. The most famous of the featured singers were the Lennon Sisters (Dianne, Janet, Kathy and Peggy), who were featured most every week for 13 years. At the end of each show, Welk would invite women from the audience on stage to dance with him as the theme, "Bubbles in the Wine" (and later, "Champagne Fanfare") played. The show enjoyed a 16-year network run on ABC, and later a successful 11-year syndicated run. Just months after the original series ended, older shows (from c. 1965-1982) were repackaged with new footage and entered a long run in both syndication and on PBS.

The Sharks give budding entrepreneurs the chance to secure business deals that could make them millionaires.

Widower Lucas McCain can fire a round with his specially modified Winchester in three-tenths of a second. Added to his high moral code and resolve enable him to help Marshal Micah Torrance maintain order in town while raising his son, Mark, on a ranch near North Fork, New Mexico.

The trials and tribulations, joyous occasions and heartbreaking moments of the Lawrence family: lawyer father Doug, housewife Kate, married (and quickly divorced) daughter Nancy, teenage son Willie and just-hitting-puberty daughter Buddy. In this critically acclaimed series, we watched various Lawrences fight, fall in love, become ill, graduate school, begin new jobs and, most of all, love each other.

Widower Steven Douglas is left to bring up three boys with the aid of his father-in-law, Michael "Bub" O'Casey, and later Bub's younger brother, "Uncle Charley." The series revolves around the trials and tribulations of life's experiences as a single parent family.

Wildfire is the story of what happens when Kris Furillo, willful daughter of a lousy mother, who took a bad start in life landing her in jail, gets parole because Pablo Betart, an excellent foreman who also had a juvenile record, gets her a job on the horse ranch of the Ritter family, where she proves her worth working with horses, especially Wildfire, but still wrestles with her past and upsets the social dynamics there, not in the least because of her appeal on the owners' teenage boys, Jean Ritter's son Matt and Ken Davis' son Kenny 'Junior' Davis.