Donna Reed

Donna Reed Headshot

Actress • Comedian

Birth Date: January 27, 1921

Death Date: January 14, 1986

Birth Place: Denison, Iowa

As the star of her own ABC sitcom between 1958 and 1966, Donna Reed epitomized selfless American motherhood, but her crowning achievement had been winning an Academy Award for playing a prostitute. Reed specialized in girl-next-door types after signing with MGM in 1941. Her role as a courageous Navy nurse in John Ford's "They Were Expendable" (1945) brought her to the attention of Frank Capra, who paired her with James Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946). Long before it was canonized as a holiday classic, Capra's paean to small-town American life was written off as a failure, prompting the producers of the baseball biopic "The Stratton Story" (1949) to drop Reed from the cast when Stewart signed on. Reed rebounded with a role in Fred Zinnemann's "From Here to Eternity" (1953) and took home an Oscar for playing a hooker entangled in a tortured relationship with army private Montgomery Clift. Disappearing from public life after the cancellation of "The Donna Reed Show," the actress returned in 1984 to replace Barbara Bel Geddes for a season on the prime time ABC soap opera "Dallas" (1978-1991). Reed succumbed to pancreatic cancer early in 1986. The reevaluation of "It's a Wonderful Life" boosted Reed's posthumous Hollywood stock, drawing new fans to her signature roles and to an appreciation of her unique blend of beauty, intelligence and unflappable poise.

Donna Reed was born Donna Belle Mullenger in the small Iowa town of Dennison on Jan. 27, 1924. The first-born of five children, she grew up on her father's farm and was raised with her siblings in the Methodist faith. Reed attended Denison High School, graduating at the top of her class and winning the title of Beauty Queen. She had hoped to attend college with an aim toward becoming a teacher, but the family lacked sufficient funds to send her. On the advice of an aunt, Reed headed for Los Angeles, where secretarial courses at Los Angeles City College cost five dollars a semester. While a student at LACC, Reed participated in campus dramatics and was crowned Campus Queen. Scouts from the Hollywood studios began making offers of a contract but Reed insisted on finishing her secretarial studies, interested more in the promise of steady work as a stenographer and its median salary of $15 per week.

Reed was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941. That same year, she made her feature film debut as Donna Adams in the crime drama "The Get-Away." A remake of "Public Hero No. 1" (1935), the film found Reed's Irish-American nice girl Mary Theresa O'Reilly torn between loyalty to her gangster-on-the-lam brother Dan Dailey and the stirrings of love for undercover fed Robert Sterling. Additional wholesome roles followed in "Shadow of the Thin Man" (1941), with the actress cast as the girlfriend of murder suspect Paul Clarke, and opposite Mickey Rooney in "The Courtship of Andy Hardy" (1942), for which MGM played up Reed's childhood past by announcing that they would film the feature's trailer on the Mullenger family farm. Reed reteamed with Rooney for "The Human Comedy" (1943), while also appearing with Lionel Barrymore in both "Calling Dr. Gillespie" (1942) and "Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case" (1943), spin-offs of MGM's popular cycle of hospital films sparked by "Young Dr. Kildare" (1938).

An atypical role for Reed was as the Spanish heroine of "Apache Trail" (1942), opposite Lloyd Nolan and William Lundigan as a pair of outlaw brothers. She enjoyed third billing in Albert Lewin's Academy Award-winning "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945), an adaptation of the novel by Oscar Wilde. Cast as the upright love interest of star Hurd Hatfield, Reed was overshadowed by Angela Landsbury's Golden Globe-winning turn as a dance hall singer who gets the worst of Dorian Gray. During World War II, her corn-fed Iowa beauty proved popular with U.S. troops stationed overseas and she played her part in the war effort by dancing with serviceman at the Hollywood Canteen. Between 1943 and 1945, Reed was married to makeup man William Tuttle. Obtaining a quickie divorce in Mexico, Reed married producer Tony Owen.

It was Reed's performance as a Navy nurse in John Ford's "They Were Expendable" (1945) that earned her consideration for the female lead in "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946). Capra had initially approached Jean Arthur and Ginger Rogers for the role of Mary Hatch, dutiful wife of James Stewart's beleaguered small-town hero. When both actresses turned him down, feeling the part was not dynamically proportionate to their star status, Capra requested that Reed be loaned from MGM to RKO Radio Pictures. Not an immediate success, "It's a Wonderful Life" attained cult status with the lapse of its copyright and repeat TV broadcasts. Next up, Reed was Lana Turner's sister in "Green Dolphin Street" (1947), a melodrama set against New Zealand's 1845 Maori uprising. She had been cast opposite Van Johnson in "The Stratton Story" (1949) but when Johnson was replaced by James Stewart, the film's producers dropped Reed in favor of June Allyson, fearful of reteaming the stars of the then-failed "It's a Wonderful Life."
At Paramount Pictures for Lewis Allen's flashback-driven "Chicago Deadline" (1949), Reed played comely murder victim Rosita D'Ur, whose sad tale comes to light through the pains of reporter Alan Ladd. Signed with Columbia Pictures, she appeared in Phil Karlson's "Scandal Sheet" (1952), as a resourceful newspaper reporter who helps colleague John Derek unmask Manhattan's Lonelyhearts Killer as their own editor-in-chief, Broderick Crawford. Reed seemed miscast as the aristocratic lover of pirate John Payne in the swashbuckler "Raiders of the Seven Seas" (1953) but her next assignment was a career changer. Tapped to appear with actor Aldo Ray in a screen test for Fred Zinnemann's "From Here to Eternity" (1953), Reed walked away with the role of Alma, a prostitute involved in a tortured love affair with a nonconformist army bugler - a role that went to Montgomery Clift. Among the film's many Academy Awards was one for Reed, as Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

Despite her Oscar win in a gritty role that was at impressive odds with her onscreen reputation for wholesomeness, Reed had difficulty capitalizing on her success. She enjoyed work in a few hit films, among them the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis vehicle "The Caddy" (1953) and "The Last Time I Saw Paris" (1954), which featured Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson as leads. As the Shoshoni guide Sacajawea, she nursed explorer Charlton Heston to health and interracial romance in "The Far Horizons" (1955), but she was reduced to tears and hand-wringing as the anguished mother of a kidnapped child in "Ransom!" (1956) with Glenn Ford. Cutting her losses on the big screen, Reed turned to the medium of television to make her next big career move."
The Donna Reed Show" (ABC, 1958-1966) cast the 34-year-old actress as the quintessential TV mom, a loving wife and mother with an indispensable cache of tender words and good advice. Developed and produced by Reed with husband Tony Owen, the sitcom was not an instant hit with viewing audiences but ratings improved when it was shifted from Wednesdays to Thursday nights. By 1963, the series was among television's Top 25 shows, its popularity aided by hit songs recorded by Reed's juvenile co-stars Shelley Fabares and Paul Peterson. Between 1959 and 1962, Reed received four Emmy award nominations, and in 1963, she took home a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series.

Retreating to private life after the 1966 cancellation of her show, Reed stayed out of the limelight for more than a decade. An outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, she co-chaired the political advocacy group Another Mother for Peace. In 1971, Reed and Owen were divorced. In 1979, she returned to acting with a starring role in the NBC telefilm "The Best Place to Be," playing a lonely widow who takes her first uncertain steps toward a new beginning. In ABC's "Deadly Lessons" (1983), she was the autocratic and somewhat suspect headmistress of an exclusive finishing school plagued by a serial killer. In February 1984, Reed appeared in a two-hour special episode of "The Love Boat" (ABC, 1977-1986).

That same year, the producers of "Dallas" (ABC, 1978-1991) brought Reed in as a replacement for Barbara Bel Geddes, who had quit the primetime soap opera over unmet salary demands. Reed slipped easily into the role of oil matriarch Eleanor "Miss Ellie" Ewing, varying the characterization enough to make the part her own. The series' ratings remained consistently high during Reed's single season and at the end of her first year, her year contract was expanded to encompass two more. Yet when Bel Geddes approached the series' producers about returning to "Dallas," Reed was unceremoniously fired. Suing for breach of contract, Reed collected $1.25 million in damages. In December 1985, Reed was rushed to L.A.'s Cedars Sinai Hospital for treatment of a bleeding ulcer. A diagnosis was made of advanced pancreatic cancer. Given only a limited life expectancy, she was released from the hospital on Christmas Eve to be with her family. On Jan. 14, 1986, Reed succumbed to the disease, dying two weeks short of what would have been her 65th birthday.

By Richard Harland Smith

Credits

Cine Clásico

Actor
Show
2013

Deadly Lessons

Actor
Miss Wade
Movie
1983

The Best Place to Be

Actor
Sheila Callahan
Movie
1979

The Donna Reed ShowStream

Actor
Donna Stone
Series
1958

The Whole Truth

Actor
Carol Poulton
Movie
1958

Beyond Mombasa

Actor
Ann Wilson
Movie
1957

Ransom

Actor
Edith Stannard
Movie
1956

Backlash

Actor
Karyl Orton
Movie
1956

The Benny Goodman Story

Actor
Alice Hammond
Movie
1955

The Far Horizons

Actor
Sacajawea
Movie
1955

Coup de Fouet en Retour

Actor
Karyl Orton
Movie
1955

The Last Time I Saw ParisStream

Actor
Marion Ellswirth
Movie
1954
70%

They Rode West

Actor
Laurie MacKaye
Movie
1954

Three Hours to Kill

Actor
Laurie Mastin
Movie
1954

Trois heures pour tuer

Actor
Movie
1954

The Caddy

Actor
Kathy Taylor
Movie
1953

Gun FuryStream

Actor
Jennifer Ballard
Movie
1953

Trouble Along the Way

Actor
Alice Singleton
Movie
1953

Raiders of the Seven Seas

Actor
Alida
Movie
1953

From Here to EternityStream

Actor
Alma Burke (Lorene)
Movie
1953
88%

The Best of This Is Your Life

Guest
Show
1952

La Página Sensacional

Actor
Movie
1952

Los Forasteros

Actor
Movie
1952

Hangman's Knot

Actor
Molly Hull
Movie
1952

Scandal Sheet

Actor
Julie Allison
Movie
1952

Saturday's Hero

Actor
Melissa
Movie
1951

Chicago Deadline

Actor
Rosita Jean d'Ur
Movie
1949

Beyond Glory

Actor
Ann Daniels
Movie
1948

Green Dolphin Street

Actor
Marguerite Patourel
Movie
1947

Şahane Hayat

Actor
Movie
1946

It's a Wonderful LifeStream

Actor
Mary Hatch Bailey
Movie
1946
94%

Faithful in My Fashion

Actor
Jean "Chunky" Kendrick
Movie
1946

The Picture of Dorian GrayStream

Actor
Gladys Hallward
Movie
1945
93%

They Were Expendable

Actor
2nd Lt. Sandy Davys
Movie
1945

See Here, Private Hargrove

Actor
Carol Holliday
Movie
1944

Gentle Annie

Actor
Mary Lingen
Movie
1944

The Man From Down Under

Actor
Mary Wilson
Movie
1943

Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case

Actor
Marcia Bradburn
Movie
1943

The Human ComedyStream

Actor
Bess Macauley
Movie
1943
83%

El Cortejo de Andy Hardy

Actor
Movie
1942

El Idilio de Andy Hardy

Actor
Movie
1942

Mokey

Actor
Anthea Delano
Movie
1942

The Bugle Sounds

Actor
Sally Hanson
Movie
1942

Calling Dr. Gillespie

Actor
Marcia Bradburn
Movie
1942

The Courtship of Andy Hardy

Actor
Melodie Eunice Nesbit
Movie
1942

Eyes in the Night

Actor
Barbara Lawry
Movie
1942

Apache Trail

Actor
Rosalia Martinez
Movie
1942

The Get-Away

Actor
Maria Theresa "Terry" O'Reilly
Movie
1941

Shadow of the Thin ManStream

Actor
Molly Ford
Movie
1941
89%

Babes on Broadway

Actor
Jonesy's Secretary
Movie
1941

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