The Donna Reed Show

1. Women behind the Screens

Chapter 1 Women behind the Screens 19 Donna Reed Backstage Although the character of Donna Stone is far removed from the life of film star Donna Reed, The Donna Reed Show deliberately conflates the two. Donna Stone’s maiden name is Mullenger, and she comes from Iowa. Similarly, Donna Reed was born Donna Mullenger in Denison, Iowa, on January 27, 1921. The oldest of five siblings, she grew up on a farm in Iowa during the Great Depression, and her midwestern good sense is often attributed to the character of Donna Stone. “It may have been good training for life, but we had few good times and very little money,” Donna Reed said of her upbringing (Tucker 2007, 109). After high school, she moved to Los Angeles to live with an aunt and enrolled in Los Angeles City College, where she sought a secretarial degree but took courses in theater and drama. While still in college, Reed won a beauty contest in 1940 and got her picture on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, which caught the attention of movie studios. MGM gave her a screen test and put her under contract, changing her name from Donna Mullenger to Donna Reed. She immediately got roles in several MGM B films of such ilk as The Getaway and Shadow of the Thin 01 Morreale text.indd 19 8/24/12 10:13 AM 20 Chapter 1 Man in 1941 and The Courtship of Andy Hardy in 1942. At this time she met makeup artist William Tuttle, whom she married in 1943 and divorced in 1945. Her biography, written by Fultz (1998), portrays her as ambitious and career-driven, always seeking a breakthrough role that would move her to the A list. Throughout her Hollywood career, Donna Reed was typecast as the good girl, a role she later reprised in The Donna Reed Show. She received two memorable film roles in 1945 while still under contract to MGM: she played the niece of the artist who painted The Picture of Dorian Gray and was the nurse in John Ford’s They Were Expendable. She wanted the racier part of the tavern singer in Dorian Gray but was relegated to the secondary role. This was also the year she married Tony Owen, who was her agent. She went on to star in It’s a Wonderful Life a year later, although its lukewarm box office reception at the time did little to help her career. Overall she was unhappy with her film roles, as she was primarily cast in supporting roles or B movies, and when her contract with MGM expired, she left to freelance and raise her children: a daughter adopted in 1946, a son adopted in 1947, and a natural son born in 1949. Tony Owen worked as assistant to Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn. Perhaps not coincidentally, Reed secured a contract there in 1950, and later the Columbia Pictures’ television arm, Screen Gems, became coproducer of The Donna Reed Show. When Owen decided to pursue a career as a film producer, Reed became the major financial support for the family. In 1953 she secured the role that won her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, playing a prostitute in the World War II drama From Here to Eternity. Yet even after she won the Oscar she continued to be typecast, and Columbia followed up with more roles in B movies. She left Columbia and signed with Universal but ended up suing for breach of contract when the company only offered her supporting roles instead of the starring roles that she had been promised. 01 Morreale text.indd 20 8/24/12 10:13 AM 21 Women behind the Screens In 1958 Donna Reed left films for television, citing lack of good film roles for women and financial security as her reasons . She was also thirty-seven years old, which meant that she was past her prime in Hollywood, and by that time she had four children, which made traveling for long film shoots difficult . (She gave birth to a daughter, Mary, in 1957.) According to Fultz (1998), Reed and Owen saw an opportunity in television; the television industry was in the midst of making the shift from New York to Hollywood, and by 1957 television was already in forty million homes. At the time, the two most popular television genres were sitcoms and westerns, and since...