The Patty Duke Show

The Patty Duke Show is an American sitcom which ran on ABC from September 18, 1963, until May 4, 1966, with reruns airing through August 31, 1966. The show was created as a vehicle for rising star Patty Duke, who had recently won an Academy Award for The Miracle Worker (1962). A total of 104 episodes were produced, most written by Sidney Sheldon.

Patty Lane (Duke) is a normal teenager living in the Brooklyn Heights section of New York City, who is into boys, ice cream, and sleepovers (and as the lyrics to the theme song point out--"Patty loves to rock 'n' roll, and hot dogs make her lose control!"). Her father is the managing editor of the New York Chronicle. In the unaired pilot episode, her "identical cousin" Cathy Lane (also played by Duke), whose father also works for the Chronicle as a foreign correspondent, arrives in the United States from Scotland to live with Patty's family and attend school.

The show's premise is that Cathy is more worldly and demure than identical looking cousin Patty. However, most storylines were standard sitcom fare where wacky teenager Patty encounters a problem at the top of the show only to experience a resolution by the end of the half-hour. In actuality, few storylines required two identical-looking, different-personality girls sharing the same family, home, and school. The remarkable physical resemblance that Patty and Cathy Lane share to each other is explained by their fathers being identical twin brothers.

Duke played a third lookalike role in the second season episode "The Perfect Hostess", in which Patty and Cathy come face to face with their southern belle doppelganger when distant cousin Betsy visited from Chattanooga, Tenn.

Rounding out the cast were William Schallert as Patty's father Martin Lane (Schallert also played Cathy's father Kenneth in a handful of episodes), Jean Byron as Patty's mother Natalie Lane, Paul O'Keefe as Patty's brother Ross Lane, and Eddie Applegate as Patty's boyfriend Richard Harrison.
In the pilot episode only, Mark Miller played Patty's father and Charles Herbert played Patty's brother. The pilot episode was not aired as such, but parts of it were used in the last episode of the first season, with Schallert and O'Keefe in their respective roles.

Special guest stars included singing duo Chad and Jeremy; teen-heartthrob singers Frankie Avalon, Bobby Vinton, Frank Sinatra, Jr., and Robert Goulet; Jimmy Dean; Sal Mineo; Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and a then-unknown James Brolin.