This Classic Medical TV Series Was The Most-Watched Show In 1970

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Sometimes the most popular things in the world simply vanish. There was a time when "Francis the Talking Mule" movies were gigantic hits, and yet no one seems to allude to their existence. I was alive for the Little Rascals' final gasp in popular culture, and I will be shocked if the property is ever rebooted. Some deep-cut cineastes may be able to tell you about the Dead End Kids/Bowery Boys movies and that they constituted a two-decade-long, 93-film series that dominated popular culture. But apart from those deep-cut cineastes, no one recalls them. 

The same might be said of the hit medical drama "Marcus Welby, M.D.," a TV series that ran for seven seasons and 170 episodes from 1969 to 1976. Your parents might be able to tell you a lot about "Marcus Welby, M.D.," and some enterprising Gen-Xers might have watched reruns as children. Some might even be able to tell you about how the series crossed over with the legal drama "Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law." Some — but not many — might even remember that in 1984 and 1988, the series had two final grasps at popularity with a pair of TV movies. 

But "Marcus Welby" is one of those pop culture juggernauts that vanished after its last appearance. There's no talk of a modern-day reboot. To use Hollywood speak, the "Marcus Welby" IP has no value. Kids would not understand references culled from the series. And to think that, according to the Nielsen ratings (as related by the website TV-Aholics), "Marcus Welby, MD" was the single most-watched TV series of the year 1970. Heck, Steven Spielberg directed an episode.

"Marcus Welby, M.D." starred Robert Young as the title character, a kind family practitioner who took a very intimate approach to his practice. He liked to know his patients personally, which caused his younger, straight-laced partner Dr. Kiley (James Brolin), a more "establishment" doctor, to bristle. It's a classic "buddy cop" dynamic, just transposed to a hospital, and with the ages flipped; traditionally, the "straight-laced" character is the older one. Marcus Welby was said to be a World War II veteran, while Dr. Kiley was a Boomer. 

The doctors worked alongside the fictional Lang Memorial Hospital in Santa Monica, California (which was actually St. John's Medical Center, where my son was born). The third lead character of the series was Consuelo Lopez, played by Elena Verdugo, and she was a confidant, nurse, and secretary. Dr. Welby had a girlfriend named Myra, played by Anne Baxter in "All About Eve." Welby was a widower, but we often saw him interacting with his daughter Christine Belford (Anne Schedeen) and his grandson (Gavin Brendan). The show's medical practice was also a character played by Sharon Gless from "Burn Notice." 

The show was gentle and kindly, and skewed conservative. Its politics were, sadly, quite dated, even for the time. According to Steven Caputso's queer history book "Alternate Channels," there were protests over the episode "The Other Martin Loring" (from 1973) wherein Marcus Welby chats with a middle-aged man named Martin (Mark Miller) afflicted with eating disorders, alcoholism, and other afflictions associated with depression. Martin is struggling through a divorce, but Dr. Welby, through some interviews with Martin's mother, finds that he might have been gay and in the closet his whole life. 

Marcus Welby presents Martin with the truth about his sexuality but then advises him that he just needs to repress his homosexual impulses in order to live a "normal" life. Yeah, one can see why some queer rights groups would protest such an episode. 

Something similar happened with the episode "The Outrage," aired in October 1974, during the show's sixth season. Caputo's book notes that this episode, too, drew outraged protests from queer advocacy groups, as it featured a predatory queer schoolteacher who was sexually assaulting teenage boys. The episode doesn't state it outright, but queerness is treated like a dangerous mental illness. Perhaps these dated attitudes are a large part of why "Marcus Welby, M.D." isn't very well-remembered by modern audiences. 

The TV-Aholic website pointed out that "Marcus Welby, M.D." was a 10 p.m. series that drew in huge numbers, the anchor in a block of ABC programs that included "The Mod Squad" and the ABC Movie of the Week. It was far ahead in the ratings, above other hit shows of the day like "The Flip Wilson Show," "Here's Lucy" (an "I Love Lucy" spinoff), "Ironside," and the always-reliable "Gunsmoke." More people remember those other shows, though, than "Marcus Welby." Ditto programs like "Laugh-In," "Adam 12," "Bonanza," "Mannix," and "The Partridge Family," all highly rated, but all less popular than "Marcus Welby" at the time. Heck, they even tried to revive "The Partridge Family" with Emma Stone. 

The first two seasons of "Marcus Welby" are available on Prime Video and Apple TV, but the entire run of the series isn't available on any streaming service. "Marcus Welby," like the Bowery Boys and Francis the Talking Mule, just disappeared.