The Lively Set presents Paul Petersen

PAUL: Oh, that was wonderful. I tell people over and over, there's nothing wrong with being rich and famous. I had a great time. I was working with great people and I had a good role to play that I can be proud of.

Jeff Stone, the character I played, was a decent kid. I mean, did he get in trouble? Yeah, but it was marginal trouble. You know, we're not talking about rapes here, or being busted for drugs. And it was kind of an era of innocence as well. You know, when I was working on the Donna Reed Show you could understand the lyrics to popular music and sex couldn't kill you. So I enjoyed it, yeah.

PAUL: Well, it was the most unique family I think in television history. Let me look at it going backwards for a moment. Donna Reed: Academy Award for From Here to Eternity. Carl Betz, who after the Donna Reed Show won an Emmy for Judge For the Defense. Shelley Fabares, playing my sister, twice nominated for an Emmy. Me, chopped liver!

The fact is, we had a magnificent cast. The show was created by the man who wrote Magnificent Seven. The people who were around us were the people who helped to invent Hollywood. These were pros. These were veterans ...Working with them was a wonder. These were professional, solid people.

But I was a kid and they were grown-ups, and they understood very clearly that my character development and education was way more important than being Jeff Stone. And that was true for Donna Reed, who was my boss and who, by the way, I always called "Miss Reed". Right down to the person sweeping the stage. They wanted me to learn to be a whole person. And when you work under those circumstances, it's a pleasure.

A lot of family shows ... people go their separate ways [the minute the show is off the air] and sometimes there are very hard feelings. With the Donna Reed Show, we had lunch every month throughout the duration of Donna Reed's life and Carl Betz's life. We met on any coast. When someone [was] working we all showed up. I mean, we're talking about a friendship that went past the show and overcame the disparity in ages.

PAUL: Oh, absolutely. Carl Betz was my best friend. I mean, it's hard to explain to people that you're an actor and you want to be a good one, and you're working with a classically trained actor who shared the Carnegie Award with Robert Ludlem, the award-winning novelist.

Carl, on my fourteenth birthday, gave me The Complete Works of Shakespeare, and we went to lunch probably three or four times a week, he and I. At lunch, Carl would sit down and eat his plate of pasta, and have his beer, and we would read Shakespeare - me from the book, and Carl from memory. And that's what it was like to be friends with him. He knew things were tough at my house. He knew I would not cope very well as being a star when all I wanted to do was be well-liked. And he and Donna talked about this.

You have to remember these were two adults in their thirties, and they looked at two youngsters and said "We're going to remain their friends 'til the end of our days". And they did it! What character that takes. It's so important. I can't tell you how important [it] is to not have to deal with the rejection of your co-stars. 'Cause that's what really happens. It becomes real. .

MAI-LY: So ... you're up on top of the word at the age of 21, and all of a sudden your show's cancelled.

PAUL: Yeah, it was pretty amazing. But it wasn't all of a sudden. I didn't have that brutal separation anxiety that Danny Bonaducci went through from The Partridge Family. He came back from a family vacation and drove to the studio thinking he was going back to work and they wouldn't let him on the lot ... He didn't know the show had been cancelled. The same thing happened to Loren Chapin who was on Father Knows Best.

After the Donna Reed Show it took four years to kind of slide into the toilet, and I fought it every step of the way. You don't ... willingly allow these things to happen to you. But happen they did.

Following the suicide of three of his contemporaries Paul formed an organisation called "A Minor Consideration" and in 1990 began working to rescue former child stars who were down on their luck. Today, there are 500 such people in the group and Paul is actively involved in changing legislation to protect children against exploitation by adults.

PAUL: People who know me as Jeff Stone, and see me speak out on these issues as Paul Petersen today – for them it's the same. It's a moment in their memory banks. But for me it was a 20-year-long journey to get here ... I mean, they kind of think that Jeff Stone went off and was a teacher in college, and raised a family, and now in his fifties is out there protecting children's rights. That's how easy it is ... for people to accept this.

MAI-LY: Is it the kind of thing people would expect from Jeff?

PAUL: I think so. I think what I'm doing is exactly what Jeff Stone would be doing, too. It's the perfect setup.