Paper Moon is a short-lived situation comedy

Situation comedy

A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...

 which aired on ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 during the fall of 1974, starring Christopher Connelly and Jodie Foster

Jodie Foster

Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....

 in the roles of Moses Pray and his presumed daughter, Addie. The series is based on the 1973 Peter Bogdanovich

Peter Bogdanovich

Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola...

 film of the same name

Paper Moon (film)

Paper Moon is a 1973 American comedy film directed by Peter Bogdanovich and released by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay was adapted from the novel Addie Pray by Joe David Brown, and the film was shot in black-and-white. The film is set during the Great Depression in the U.S. states of Kansas and...

 starring Ryan O'Neal

Ryan O'Neal

Charles Patrick Ryan O'Neal , better known as Ryan O'Neal, is an American actor best known for his appearances in the ABC nighttime soap opera Peyton Place and for his roles in such films as Paper Moon , Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon , A Bridge Too Far , and Love Story , for which he received...

 and real-life daughter Tatum O'Neal

Tatum O'Neal

Tatum Beatrice O'Neal is an American actress best known for her film work as a child actress in the 1970s. She is the youngest to win a competitive Academy Award, at the age of 10, which she won for her performance as Addie Loggins in Paper Moon opposite her father Ryan O'Neal...

.

The film and television version were based on a Joe David Brown

Joe David Brown

Joe David Brown was an American novelist and journalist from Birmingham, Alabama. He drew memorably from his own life to compose his fiction: his grandfather's role as a minister, his own knowledge of confidence games from his work as a reporter, his World War II experiences, and his residence on...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 entitled Addie Pray

Addie Pray

Addie Pray is a novel by Joe David Brown. It was the basis for the movie Paper Moon directed by Peter Bogdanovich. The novel was re-printed in 2002 as a paperback with the title Paper Moon: A Novel....

.

Synopsis

In the story line, the Prays, living in the American Midwest during the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

, are determined to get rich by any questionable means necessary. Among other activities, Moses (or Moze) sells Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

s for the fictitious Dixie Bible Company. Addie’s late mother was a friend of Moses’s, and because Addie believes that she resembles Moses, she is therefore convinced that he is her father.

Episodes

Produced by Paramount Television

Paramount Television

Paramount Television was an American television production/distribution company that was active from January 1, 1968 to August 27, 2006.Its successor is CBS Television Studios, formerly CBS Paramount Television...

, the series aired at 8:30 p.m. Eastern on Thursday following ABC's The Odd Couple

The Odd Couple (TV series)

The Odd Couple is a television situation comedy broadcast from September 24, 1970 to July 4, 1975 on ABC. It starred Tony Randall as Felix Unger and Jack Klugman as Oscar Madison. It was based upon the play of the same name, which was written by Neil Simon.Felix and Oscar are two divorced men....

and opposite the last half-hours of NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

's Sierra

Sierra (TV series)

Sierra was a short-lived 1974 television crime drama series focusing on the efforts of National Park Service rangers to enforce federal law and to effect wilderness rescues. The program aired on NBC and was packaged by Jack Webb's Mark VII Limited for Universal Television. John Denver wrote the...

, a Jack Webb

Jack Webb

John Randolph "Jack" Webb , also known by the pseudonym John Randolph, was an American actor, television producer, director and screenwriter, who is most famous for his role as Sergeant Joe Friday in the radio and television series Dragnet...

 adventure, and CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

's family drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

, The Waltons

The Waltons

The Waltons is an American television series created by Earl Hamner, Jr., based on his book Spencer's Mountain, and a 1963 film of the same name. The show centered on a family growing up in a rural Virginia community during the Great Depression and World War II. The series pilot was a television...

, then in its third season. The series did not attract a steady audience and was cancelled after thirteen episodes.

Episode #	Episode title	Original airdate
1-1	"Settling"	September 12, 1974
1-2	"Second Prize"	September 19, 1974
1-3	"Imposter"	September 26, 1974
1-4	"The Manly Art"	October 3, 1974
1-5	"Birthday"	October 10, 1974
1-6	"Long Division"	October 17, 1974
1-7	"Old Time Relatives"	October 24, 1974
1-8	"Harvest"	October 31, 1974
1-9	"Bonnie and Clyde"	November 7, 1974
1-10	"Visions of Las Vegas"	November 14, 1974
1-11	"Who Is M.P. Sellers?"	November 28, 1974
1-12	"Green Gods"	December 12, 1974
1-13	"Day Off"	December 19, 1974