Get to Know TV Mom & MGM Player Donna Reed

DONNA REED SHOW, Donna Reed, (1964), 1958-1966.
Ivan Nagy/TV Guide/courtesy Everett Collection

It’s the stuff of Hollywood legend: Teen girl leaves Iowa for secretarial school in Los Angeles, gets her picture on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, signs on with a prestigious agency, performs a screen test and then lands a contract with a major studio.

But what might remain a starry-eyed fantasy for most really did happen to one Donna Belle Mullenger — a.k.a. Donna Reed — who was born Jan. 27, 1921, in the small midwestern town of Denison, Iowa. After graduating in the top of her class and being crowned a beauty queen, she headed to Los Angeles on the advice of her aunt so she could raise money to go to college. It was then, while doing various college stage productions, that MGM scouted her, but she insisted on completing her education before signing on with MGM.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, Donna Reed, 1953

Everett Collection

Signing with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941, Reed’s show business career began auspiciously, with supporting roles alongside William Powell and Myrna Loy in Shadow of the Thin Man and the musical Babes on Broadway with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, followed by more substantial parts in Calling Dr. Gillespie; See Here, Private Hargrove; and The Picture of Dorian Gray. After several years with MGM, the studio lent her to Frank Capra’s Liberty Films for a turn as Mary Hatch Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life (the now holiday favorite made barely a box office ripple at the time) and continued in G-rated roles until she earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for From Here to Eternity, playing greatly against type as dance hall prostitute Alma “Lorene” Burke. Yet things largely stagnated over the next several years, leading Reed and her second husband Tony Owens to start their own production company and, in 1958, launch The Donna Reed Show, a TV series that ran for eight seasons and garnered the actress four Emmy nominations; it was described by her as revolving “around the most important thing in America — a loving family.”

DONNA REED SHOW, Shelley Fabares, Paul Petersen, Donna Reed, Carl Betz, 1958-1966.

Gene Trindl/TV Guide/courtesy Everett Collection

Life After The Donna Reed Show

After its cancellation, the mother of four and ardent anti-war and anti-nuclear-weapon activist (“If nuclear power plants are safe, let the commercial insurance industry insure them”) took a break from acting, remarking on her dissatisfaction with “the junk I was offered” before returning to TV and movie guest spots in the ’70s. Originally slated for the role of Miss Ellie on the hit series Dallas, she was fired after a single season, but successfully sued Lorimar Productions for breach of contract.

DALLAS, Donna Reed, 1978-91.

Everett Collection

Sadly, Reed succumbed to pancreatic cancer on Jan. 14, 1986, at age 64. Her third husband, Grover Asmus, was at her side. Later that year he, family and friends created The Donna Reed Foundation for the Performing Arts, which awards scholarships to young people studying the arts.

 

TVs Top Moms
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TVs Top Moms

May 2022

Celebrate top TV moms from the ’50 to the ’90s including 8 things you didn’t know about Donna Reed plus weird and wacky TV moms.

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