Oscar Profile #70: Donna Reed

Born January 27, 1921 in Denison, Iowa as Donna Belle Mullenger, the future Donna Reed was discovered by a Hollywood talent scout while attending Los Angeles City College.

Signed by MGM, she was in three films in 1941, her first year in films, including a major supporting turn in Shadow of the Thin Man with William Powell and Myrna Loy. In 1942 she would appear in major roles in two other films from long-running MGM series in The Courtship of Andy Hardy with Mickey Rooney and Calling Dr. Gillepsie with Lionel Barrymore. She made a strong impression that same year as Edward Arnold’s daughter in Eyes in the Night. Important roles in major MGM films soon followed, including 1943’s The Human Comedy and 1945’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and They Were Expendable.

While returning from Mexico in 1945 where she went to obtain a quickie divorce from makeup artist William Tuttle, her husband of two years, she was bumped from her flight by an American serviceman. All on board the flight were killed. She then married producer Tony Owen with whom she had four children.

On loan to RKO, she starred opposite James Stewart in Frank Capra’s now classic 1947 film, It’s a Wonderful Life. From there it was back to MGM for one of that studio’s best films of 1947, Green Dolphin Street based on an enormously successful best-seller.

In fairly routine films until 1953, she was in two standout films that year, the domestic drama Trouble Along the Way in which she played her customary nice girl opposite John Wayne and From Here to Eternity in which she played against type as a hard-bitten prostitute, for which she won an Oscar.

Her last notable big screen role was as Elizabeth Taylor’s sister in 1954’s The Last Time I Saw Paris, after which most of her work was for television.

From 1958 to 1966 she starred in the extremely successful TV series, The Donna Reed Show, receiving four Emmy nominations during the course of the show in which she played a middle-class wife and mother.

An anti-war activist during the Vietnam War, she was divorced from Tony Owen in 1971. In 1974, she married her third husband, businessman Grover Asmus.

After a long absence she returned to acting in a well-received 1979 made-for-TV movie, The Best Place to Be. After a couple more TV appearances in the early 1980s she was cast as Barbara Bel Geddes’ replacement in the long-running prime time soap opera, Dallas in 1984. Although she was warmly greeted by the public, the show’s star and co-producer Larry Hagman didn’t feel she was right for the part and convinced Bel Geddes to return the following season. Reed sued for breach of contract and won a $1 million settlement.

By this time the actress was suffering from pancreatic cancer which took her life on January 14, 1986, two weeks before what would have been her 65th birthday.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), directed by Frank Capra

Reed’s contribution to Capra’s Christmas classic is often over-looked. James Stewart, Henry Travers, Lionel Barrymore and Thomas Mitchell are all perfectly fine, but so is Reed as Stewart’s high school sweetheart and later understanding wife. Reed, who was a baseball player in high school, does her own stunts including a very memorable throw of a baseball into a window in a key scene.

GREEN DOLPHIN STREET (1947), directed by Victor Saville

An old-fashioned epic in the best sense, this one has it all and a Special Effects Oscar to prove it.

The story concerns the family of Gladys Cooper who married the wrong man (Edmund Gwenn) under family pressures. An encounter with her true love (Frank Morgan) leads to his son (Richard Hart) falling in love with her daughter (Reed) but in a drunken stupor proposing to her sister (Lana Turner) instead. The rejected Reed becomes a nun. There is an earthquake, a tidal wave and a Maori invasion to contend with, but the actors, particularly Reed, Van Heflin as Hart’s friend and Cooper, hold their own against the impressive effects.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953), directed by Fred Zinnemann

Ever the forthright nice girl in her films, audiences of the day were bowled over by Reed’s portrayal of the tough party girl, a 1950s Hollywood substitute for the prostitute of the novel. Her scenes with Montgomery Clift are real and poignant and that final scene with Deborah Kerr on the departing ship is still a stunner. She won the Oscar for her performance but the win did not result in prolonging her screen career. It would be as the star of TV’s The Donna Reed Show for which she would be better remembered.

THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS (1954), directed by Richard Brooks

In her last good role before turning to TV, Reed is the older sister of Elizabeth Taylor who loses her beau (Van Johnson) to Taylor, but is continuously drawn into their problematic marriage. Walter Pidgeon also registers strongly as Reed and Taylor’s father.

THE BEST PLACE TO BE (1979), directed by David Miller

Reed’s comeback performance in this TV movie was one of her best. She plays a widow who gets a second chance with a younger man until long lost boyfriend Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. shows up. Mildred Dunnock also registers strongly as her mother and Timothy Hutton had one of his earliest assignments as her teenage son. Betty White plays her friend.