By
Bill Irvin

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Donna and Alex Stone will be having a wedding anniversary as ABC-TV’s Donna Reed Show begins its seventh season Thursday (7p.m., channel 7.)

It will be an occasion for celebration because seven years is a long time for a TV show.

In the season’s opening episode, “Operation Anniversary,” Donna and Alex, her TV hubby, played by Carl Betz, are making plans to celebrate their anniversary by spending a weekend away from home. But son Jeff has other plans for them.

Donna her real-life hubby, Tony Owen, who produces her TV show, were married in 1945 and have celebrated several anniversaries.

Donna’s and Tony’s off-TV family includes four children—Penny, 16; Tony Jr., 15; Timothy, 13, and Mary Ann, 6. There’s also a golden retriever named Susie, a parrot and three birds.

Donna’s TV family is slightly smaller, with only a husband and two children to look after.

It’s Donna other family that awaits her at her one-story English country-style home in Beverly Hills when she leaves Screen Gems studios in Hollywood after a day’s shooting.

There she may find some members of the household at the family’s small soda fountain or enjoying the crescent-shaped swimming pool where the Owen clan gathers with their weekend guests.

When it comes to managing her own children, Donna says she has evolved a successful parental philosophy:

“I’ve found that you can mix humor in with nagging so that it becomes acceptable and even gets faster results. I’ve always believed that any parent who says he or she has reared their children without nagging is either a genius, a liar, or has a revoltingly compliant child!"