I know it’s been six years, but it just occurred to me: Suzanne Crough, little sister Tracy, was also a redhead (or at least a strawberry blonde), so Danny wasn’t that much of an outlier. Come to think of it, Johnny Whittaker–the other go-to redhead kid for 60s and 70s sitcoms–was also the only ginger in a large-ish family in Family Affair.
I figured this out a long time ago. Kate was the Madam and Uncle Joe was the Pimp/Bouncer who would deal with the guests (mostly tired big-city businessmen who needed a break in the country) if they got drunk and disorderly.
The girls came and went, but their names were always the same. The train stopped at the Shady Rest because the Engineer and Conductor were on Kate’s payroll.
Shelly Fabares was 14 when she began appearing on The Donna Reed Show, as Reed’s daughter. She went on to star in numerous movies, and later, TV shows, including the long-running Coach.
I just learned looking this up that she is the niece of actress Nanette Fabray (née Fabares).
Well ginger haired Opie certainly didn’t look like Andy.
And what grave yard did they dig up Aunt Bea from?
Come on. She clearly wasn’t related.
Apologies. I meant to post this in this thread.
In our family, babies are born nearly bald. The little bit of fuzz can be any color. But when their hair comes in, it’s blonde. It stays blonde for different amounts of time and darkens to different levels, from mousey to full-on brown.
Older relatives call it tow-headed. What genes control that?
According to his Partridge Family castmate David Cassidy, Gelbwaks “had a personality conflict with every person in the cast, and with the producers”.
That takes some doing for a ten year old.
Per the late Suzanne Crough (who was very young at the time), although Gelbwaks had issues with just about everybody, it was particularly bad with Bonaduce. Apparently Bonaduce would look for any excuse to physically assault his irritant by casually tossing him around. One of them had to go and Bonaduce was a breakout star so he was going nowhere.
– cough – Shirley wasn’t a natural blonde. Her roots were dark, and probably more brown than anything, but could have been a dark red.
At any rate, we have three kids in the preschool now who have red hair and two brown-haired parents, and I wouldn’t question the parentage of any of them, because each one has at least one sibling who could almost be a twin other than the hair color.
I also have known two people who had 2nd-Chris blond hair as children, but it had turned very dark brown by the time they were adults, and I mean seriously dark.
Nothing looks wrong about Danny’s hair to me, and he even looks a little like he really could be David Cassidy’s brother.
When my hair was still dark it was so dark brown it was almost black. My wife used to insist it was black- she said it was so black my hair had blue highlights like Superman. My wife is a redhead, but kind of a subdued red, almost auburn.
Both our kids were copper-haired gingers when they were young. One’s hair eventually changed to a sandy reddish-blond, but the other’s is still as copper-colored to this day. Probably hundreds of people have asked us “where do your kids get their hair color from?” I do have Scots-Irish blood so I carry the redhead gene.
The boychik has auburn hair, more or less, though I’ve heard it called “chestnut” as well, which it kind of is. It’s a color that hasn’t really come up much in our family, although there is one Irish great-great-great grandfather (from whom a green-eyed cousin popped up in my generation).
I have the brown-it’s-almost-black hair, and DH has sort of medium brown, with no hint of red.
There’s only one extant picture of that Irish ancestor, and it’s B&W and faded, and was made when he was middle-aged, so who knows how gray he might have been then? Definitely had light eyes, but blue, green, or gray, anyone’s guess.
I dunno - dirty blonde or just started dyeing early. Her hair looks reddish-blonde in stills from her early movie career (but who knows about colorization back then, let alone dye). But maybe dirty blondeish (?) when she was an 18-yr old Miss Pittsburgh:
Hmmm. I just saw an ep. of the show fairly recently, and I’m pretty sure she had dark roots. Maybe she had light brown hair that was lightly bleached, or even just highlighted.