Why ‘Dallas’ Became Donna Reed’s Final Acting Role

Donna Reed on the Donna Reed Show and on Dallas — Everett Collection

What To Know

Donna Reed’s final acting appearance was as Miss Ellie Ewing Farlow on the TV series Dallas during the 1984-1985 season, stepping in for Barbara Bel Geddes.
She appeared in 24 episodes, bringing her own calm authority to the role before Bel Geddes returned and Reed’s tenure ended with the Season Eight finale, “Swan Song.”
Reed, best known for It’s a Wonderful Life and The Donna Reed Show, died of pancreatic cancer on January 14, 1986, at age 64.

Donna Reed, who was born January 27, 1921, achieved many things in her long career, but to so many of us, she is remembered as simply the ideal mom, a role she played to perfection in It’s a Wonderful Life and The Donna Reed Show. Reed also had range — she played a beauty whose love story with Montgomery Clift turns tragic in From Here to Eternity, a role that won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

However, with more than four decades on screen, Reed built a career that remained strong even amid Hollywood’s many changes, and went on long after her signature series went off the air. In fact, Reed, who died in 1986, was performing almost up until the end; her final on-screen role was Miss Ellie Ewing Farlow on Dallas, a part she played during the show’s 1984 to 1985 season. Miss Ellie was also a mom—but not quite one of the sugar-sweet matriarchs that Reed was famous for portraying.

How did Donna Reed end up on Dallas?

After stepping away from regular television in the late ’60s, Reed gradually returned in the late ’70s and early ’80s with several made-for-TV projects, including the drama The Best Place to Be in 1979 and the suspense film Deadly Lessons in 1983. She also made a guest appearance on The Love Boat in 1984, one of her other final roles on television before her death.

DALLAS, from left: Donna Reed, Howard Keel, 1978-91.

Everett Collection

Reed stepped into the role when the original Miss Ellie, Barbara Bel Geddes, temporarily left the series due to health issues. It was not an easy assignment. Miss Ellie was the emotional anchor of the Ewing family, and audiences had a deep attachment to Bel Geddes’ portrayal. Still, Reed approached the role with her trademark calm authority, bringing a slightly different energy to the matriarch while maintaining the character’s moral center.

Over the course of the season, she appeared in 24 episodes, long enough for viewers to settle into seeing her as the woman trying to hold together one of television’s most volatile families. Her final episode as Miss Ellie was the Season Eight finale, titled “Swan Song,” which aired in May 1985. Not long afterward, Bel Geddes returned to the role, and Reed’s brief but memorable chapter on the series came to a close. Reed died on January 14, 1986, at age 64, of pancreatic cancer.