Donna Reed’s Daughter Reveals the Side of Her Mom You Don’t Know — Plus, Donna Reed in Her Own Words

She was born Donna Belle Mullenger on January 27, 1921, in Dennison, Iowa and raised on a farm by her parents Jazel Jane Shives and William Richard Mullenger. She was the oldest of five children. Observes pop culture historian and The Lucy Book author Geoffrey Mark, “I think the story of Donna Reed is almost a cliché. It really is. Small town, Midwestern girl does good. Her early years don’t seem to have any of the heavy drama of many of her contemporaries. There does not seem to be this huge traumatic bad event that forced her to get out there and be a success because of …  fill in the blank. Of course, my go-to is always Lucille Ball. Donna is 10 years younger than Lucille, but their careers have very similar trajectories in that they were ambitious, they were beautiful, they started working very young, they had success in films, some of which were excellent and some of which have become iconic for both ladies. And at about the same age, around 40, they made this switch from feature films to television and found an even larger success. But their personal lives are very different.

“Donna’s corn-is-as-high-as-an-elephant’s-eye childhood from Dennison, Iowa, a little town, near a river as a farm girl,” he continues. “How many novels, how many stories, how many films, how many Broadway shows have been written about that situation? She was extraordinarily beautiful before the stage makeup and the Oscar-winning hairstylists and that was enough to propel her to leave the Midwest and go to Hollywood where she enrolls at Los Angeles City College and begins to perform. She does well enough to become the Campus Queen — a title she won — and well enough to specifically study in their drama department. Again, almost like out of a fan magazine of the 30s, an MGM talent scout saw her in a play at Los Angeles City College and she got signed to a small MGM contract.”

One of Donna’s four children is Mary Anne Owen, who muses in an exclusive interview, “I always feel that people don’t understand how intelligent she was and how she easily could have been a college professor if she hadn’t won that beauty contest at City College. It literally changed her life.”

Geoffrey expresses that he doesn’t know what would have happened to Donna Reed if she’d been at any other studio than MGM. “She just fit the MGM prototype,” he says, “of the not-too-tall, beautiful Midwestern Protestant girl next door. That’s what MGM looked for and they found that in spades in Donna Reed. Also, I believe that of all the major movie studios of the Golden Age, MGM really and truly trained their young people better. They were taught how to walk, how to wear fashions, how can you sit down gracefully like a model would, how to read lines, how to sing, how to dance. Everybody at MGM had to take lessons, elocution lessons, how to be in front of a camera, how to be photographed, so that when they were put in front of a motion picture camera they were ready. The director on the set didn’t have to waste time teaching them what to to do. They already knew and were ready to make a movie.”

So was Donna. She started off playing uncredited roles in films like Convicted Woman (1940), The Get-Away (1941), Babes on Broadway (1941) and Personalities (1942). Observes Geoffrey, “It took her literally about a year and a half before she begins to get speaking roles and the public began to realize, ‘This is someone I like watching,’ and they began growing the Donna Reed brand. Her parts got larger and she became a movie star. She was all over the fan magazines, she was getting enormous publicity from MGM.”

All of this, he emphasizes, was happening during World War II, which was important to note due to the fact that at the time films had to be almost female-centric since many of the male actors, unless they were too old or disabled, were away at war. “So there,” states Geoffrey, “we have it where there are very few men actually working during World War II, but all these females are getting themselves to the top. Nothing she did before 1946 is anything we look at to dangle, ‘Wow, what an incredible picture.’ We may enjoy her performances, but the movies, maybe with the exception of The Picture of Dorian Gray, weren’t iconic. They were good films in the moment, but nothing special. But then we could spend, I don’t know, eight or nine days talking about It’s a Wonderful Life.”

That 1946 film, of course, is the one that teamed Donna up with James Stewart under the direction of Frank Capra. Do we really need to go over the plot? You know, George and Mary Bailey, Clarence the guardian angel, George’s opportunity to see the true impact he’s had on the world and Clarence’s message to George, “No man is a failure who has friends.” Jeanine Basinger, film historian and professor and author of The It’s a Wonderful Life Book, previously told Closer, “In the end, when George is made to realize that his life meant something very important to a great many people, and that without him they would not have had the joy or the success or the security in life, it’s brought home to him. He is valuable to people, that his life has meant something. This is something that doesn’t go away. It might become unfashionable. It might get labeled sentimental, whatever, but it doesn’t actually go away, and this film has that, and because it comes wrapped in a lot of great humor, with some really great people playing in every single role, it connects.”

What’s ironic is that when it was originally released, it actually failed to connect with the audience — which seems unfathomable to people today, but it’s the fact. As was James Stewart actually blaming its failure on Donna Reed. “I don’t like to mention this,” says Mary Anne, “but Capra and Jimmy Stewart had this whole success together before the war with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and all of that. Everyone participated in the war effort, but especially those two and they were gone from Hollywood for four or five years. There was a lot of insecurity on the set, because Jimmy Stewart wasn’t sure if he wanted to act anymore. He thought it was too frivolous, but Lionel Barrymore and others talked him into it.

“So,” she adds, “there was this insecurity on the set and mom was really not that well known. I mean, she was only 25 and I think she signed her MGM contract at 21. But she still didn’t understand why there was so much insecurity and then Jimmy Stewart couldn’t understand why the movie didn’t do well, but that’s why they never did another movie together. He blamed her, because she wasn’t as well known. She was quite happy when it came out. I mean, she passed away in ’86, but by the early ‘80s it was on constantly, but we always watched at Christmas and she was so happy that it was so popular.”

Of the film’s ultimate impact on Donna Reed, Jeanine muses, “Donna Reed became a big TV star, and she became an Oscar-winning movie star. But at the American Film Institute life achievement for Frank Capra, a lot of my students were there and one, who, by the way, is a big writer in Hollywood now, came up to Donna Reed and said, ‘I can’t tell you how hard you’ve made it for every female that I ever meet in my life.’ She was so thrilled, she kissed him. But I think this movie makes an icon of her. People may or may not watch From Here to Eternity, but they are watching this movie. And she’s lovely. She was the perfect choice for this part. I think it made a huge impact in her career.”

Reflects Geoffrey, “Another film comes to mind with the same kind of history, which is The Wizard of Oz. It’s a Wonderful Life is a perfect film, beautifully written, perfectly cast, perfectly directed, incredible cinematography, but when it was released, it was a not a big hit. We would think it was considering that 70 years later we still watch it all the time. And Donna had a wonderful quality about her as an actor. She was able to play all kinds of parts, although, like June Allison, she often played the goody-goody girl next door, but no matter what she played, she was able to project a warmth that was very appealing. Whether or not Donna was that warm in her personal life, doesn’t matter. She was able to project it into the camera, which is a talent in and of itself. There’s an expression that people in show business use, the camera loves her. Well, the camera loved Donna Reed. It loved how she looked, but also loved what she radiated. And while James Stewart is a wonderful actor, as are all of the actors in It’s a Wonderful Life, it is my belief that Donna was the heart of the movie. I don’t mean she was the center. I mean she was the heart. We like all these other characters because she likes them. We believe in the kind of ridiculous happy ending, because she believes it.”

Flash forward to 1953 and the movie From Here to Eternity, in which Donna plays prostitute Alma “Lorene” Burke and for which she won the aforementioned Academy Award. “She took a chance,” says Geoffrey, “and she allowed herself to break the mold to get out of being typecast. It was a risk because, A, it was not the lead in the film and, B, although the word still could be used in 1953, she plays a prostitute and the kind of character that was already so old that it had gray hair and a beard: the prostitute with the golden heart. So different and she wins the Oscar, but the films that come after it are the same old, girl next door, supportive wife. Some of them even have the same first name; that’s how cookie-cutter they were.”

Laughs Mary Anne, ‘You know, they say there’s some kind of curse when you win the Supporting Actress Oscar, that it’s downhill from there. I’m not really sure what happened; I came along when the film career was over. You would, of course, imagine after a performance like that in a great film that holds up so well, it would make a difference. Instead, she just kept getting supporting roles in Westerns and that sort of thing. They just didn’t know what to do with her. So in response, she and my father formed their own production company and made a couple of movies before trying television. My father was the principal architect and she had her hand in it. When I watch The Donna Reed Show, I always see this kind of underlying subtext of her finally in control of her career and not having to worry about what bra she had to wear. Because, you know, that was always the big question.”

Although Donna would make a number of films throughout the rest of the 1950s, in 1954 she first appeared on television in the anthology Ford Television Theatre, followed in 1955 with Tales of Hans Christian Anderson and 1957 in General Electric Theater and Suspicion. But it was in 1958 that she made her TV series debut in The Donna Reed Show. “On the surface,” says Mary Anne, “The Donna Reed Show presents an Eisenhower-era housewife or whatever, but that’s only on the surface. I think maybe some people just don’t realize that there was such a great intelligence there. I mean, they hired Ida Lupino to direct a couple of episodes, and I think because mom grew up on a farm there was really no distinction between the work of boys and girls unless it was just impossible for a girl to do it. She just hired people based on merit and wasn’t threatened by strong women, because she was such a strong woman.  But it was a lot of pressure, because she took it seriously and didn’t want to just play for laughs. If there was a choice in a scene, she would choose the dramatic version versus the comedic. In reality she was speaking to American families and I think she took that role quite seriously.”

Points out Geoffrey, “Readers of this are going to be amazed, but back in the 1950s doctors were not wealthy, especially small town family doctors. They just got by and doctors worked 18 hours a day in hospitals, in their offices and making house calls, which gave the plots a million ways to go. So Donna plays Donna Stone, a trained nurse who married a doctor she meets. They rent a house that was already furnished in a small town and she has a young teenager daughter and prepubescent son. How does she manage to raise her children, be a doctor’s wife, be a credit to him in the community and do all the charity work a doctor’s wife was supposed to do? Well, they made sure that the character of Donna Stone was intelligent, educated, adored her husband and gladly suffered the eccentricities of her children.”

“While researching being a wife of a pediatrician,” Donna told the media, “I discovered that being a mother and married to a doctor has more complications than a case of the mumps. Doctors’ wives are in a complete world of their own. They must have great tolerance and be expected to do the unexpected as an everyday norm. A doctor can’t close the door the moment he leaves his office. He’s actually on call 24-hours a day, at least mentally. And this makes it really rough on the little woman who likes a little attention herself once in a while.”

In a 1960 interview with the Standard-Speaker of Hazelton, Pennsylvania, Donna suggested, “The series is more like my life might have been had I never left my hometown of Denison, Iowa. On the show we have our problems, laughs and, above all, our need for love and friendship.” The following year she added to The Ithaca Journal, “When we started, we were four individuals who had to appear as though we were living together as a family for about 14 years. It took time to develop an interplay between us that smacked of realness. It’s the rapport or the absence of it between actors that makes or breaks a program of this type. As we got to know each other better, we developed a smoothness that gives the viewer the feeling that this is a real family. That alone accounted for a great deal of improvement in the episodes.”

Says Mary Anne, “The show represented a good balance between her mind and her heart. And behind the scenes, she had to walk a line, because she was simultaneously Paul Petersen and Shelley Fabares’ boss and playing their mother while at the same time having another family she had to deal with at home. It wasn’t always easy.”

But whatever the challenges, Donna took them in stride. “It was hard work on the farm and there were years that were so busy,” she detailed, “then chores were combined with the job of painting the house and barn, for instance, but I never thought anything could be more strenuous or time-consuming until I started working on TV. But I suppose my early life on the farm has been a great asset in this case. Early to bed and early to rise is routine when you’re doing a TV series as well as on the farm. I’m up each day at seven a.m. in order to have one-and-a-half hours for hairdressing and makeup. We start shooting at nine each morning. At first when the series was sold, I started working 12 hours a day for 39 straight weeks. I kept yearning for those good old lazy times in motion pictures. But now I love the work, love the pace and love the results.”

Opines David C. Tucker, author of The Women Who Made Television Funny: Ten Stars of 1950s Sitcoms, “The two things Donna is best known for is It’s a Wonderful Life and The Donna Reed Show. Unlike some of the other actresses that did family comedy shows, people kind of blurred her and the roles she plays. Even though she was a mother and there was a lot of that that was drawn from her own life, she was also quite different from that character in a lot of ways. I mean, you’re talking about somebody who later in life, after her children were mostly grown and out of the house, divorced, which you can’t quite imagine Donna Stone ever doing. And she was actually an antiwar activist in the late sixties, protesting the Vietnam War. Again, not something you could associate with that character. She was interesting to me, too, because she took control of her own destiny. She played what people thought was a very stereotypical character, but this was a woman who wasn’t quite happy with the way her career was going and decided to go into television and was ultimately able to find something more satisfying than some of the movie roles she played.”

It would all come to an end in 1966 after eight seasons and 275 episodes. And for Donna, the end was welcomed. In fact, she’d wanted to end things earlier out of sheer exhaustion, but was convinced to keep the show going. As she commented to The Evening Times of Sayre, Pennsylvania, “I just feel the same as I did when I graduated from college. The exams are over. We’ll have our usual end of the season party. We’ll try to avoid the tears and the speeches, but there may be some. I’m glad that it’s over. Sorry, too. I think we’ve plowed that little field for as long as we could and I’m delighted to be done with it. But still, I’ll miss my other family.”

As it turns out, Donna was also delighted, it seemed, to be done with acting itself, choosing instead to focus on her real family. On top of that, always politically active, she found herself drawn into the anti-war movement of the late 1960s regarding Vietnam, joining Another Mother for Peace. Explains Mary Anne, “Barbara Avedon, who kind of cut her teeth on the show as a writer and then directed some episodes, and then went on to create Cagney and Lacey, stayed close with mom after the show. My brothers, and Barbara had at least one son, were all of draft age. Barbara was having a party or social event and they just kind of looked at each other and said, ‘You know, we’ve got to do something.’ So they got involved with the organization; I think mom at some point might have been a co-chair. She just dove headfirst into that, because they rented a warehouse in Beverly Hills which was this huge place. These women were writing speeches and strategizing on how to reach across political lines,” she continues. “Who can’t relate to a mother and the fear of losing a kid to war? It was a great experience for her and a good transition from the show to using her Hollywood power and giving something back.”

In a 1971 interview with The Los Angeles Times, Donna related how, despite being a lifelong Republication, she had gotten turned off by President Johnson and the bombing of Vietnam. “As the war continued,” she said, “I sat and suffered silently, but felt absolutely paralyzed, except for voting. Finally, in 1968, I heard the siren call of McCarthy. My oldest son, Tony, was busy fighting the draft as a conscientious objector. In the beginning, we felt he should serve his country in a noncombatant role, but he wouldn’t even accept that, feeling the whole thing was immoral. He didn’t trust the government or the military. I’ve learned a lot from Tony.”

During this time, the marriage between Donna and Tony Owen was falling apart behind the scenes, ending with their divorce in 1971. Says Mary Anne, “She and my father kind of climbed this mountain together doing the show, and then she really blossomed doing the anti-war work and really became a liberal. She and my father had been together for 25 years and split up, which was just too bad. My father was a little bit older and so she’d worked pretty much nonstop when she signed with MGM at 21, and basically worked all of those years. The TV show was just incredibly rigorous and they couldn’t make it work anymore. She married Grover Asmus in 1974 and they traveled a lot, which was so exciting for her, because although she and my dad traveled some, it was mostly work-related doing PR for movies.”

Speaking to The Morning Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania, Donna said of the breakup, “Getting divorced was terrible. But it was also terrible being married. You have to decide which is worse. Nothing new really happened. He didn’t change and neither did I. It was always a difficult marriage. We were so different in temperament … I know it’s terribly old-fashioned, but I stuck it out for the children. I just couldn’t bear the idea of small children having a stepfather. But the situation was really worsening. You get to a point where you say to yourself, ‘Is this how I’m going to spend the rest of my life?’”

Donna did step in front of the cameras one more time, assuming Barbara Bel Geddes’ role as Miss Ellie Ewing on Dallas, Bel Geddes leaving because of reported health (some say contractual) issues. “As an ex-Iowa farm girl who has helped keep a family together for seven generations, I can really appreciate her,” Donna related to the Poughkeepsie Journal. “She’s a wonderful modern-day heroine. She’s strong and steadfast; she’s the glue that holds the family together.”

Elaborates Mary Anne, “She was interested, again, because it was another family show and she thought that’s why it was so popular. Not because it was a good family, it was a family and the mother wielded a certain amount of power being the matriarch.”

Unfortunately, after the 1984 to 1985 season, Donna was prematurely let go from her contract as Barbara Gel Geddes returned (Donna reportedly did settle with the producers for about $1 million). “Mom had a great attitude about doing it,” says Mary Anne, “but in truth, she wasn’t old enough to be Larry Hagman’s mother and, besides that, the show was starting to go downhill, though not because of her. But they blamed her for it. She didn’t have my father to protect her and the business had become a different kind of business and they did not treat her with any kind of respect.”

Sadly, toward the end of 1985, Donna was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The disease would claim her life on January 14, 1986, 13 days before she would have turned 65. When asked about her mom’s legacy, Mary Anne grows quiet for a beat. “No one’s ever asked me that,” she says. “I feel like in the show and the movies, she’s got this kind of American heart that’s really a quality that goes through all her roles. I feel like she’s a part of our heritage. Especially because The Donna Reed Show is part of the Golden Age of television. She’s just got this consistent quality that is very kind of profound and nice. And real.”

Donna Reed’s legacy, beyond her filmography and, of course, The Donna Reed Show, includes the organization Another Mother for Peace, a California non-profit corporation with several purposes: to preserve the legacy of Another Mother for Peace, to educate the public to take active roles in eliminating war as a means of solving disputes among nations, people, and ideologies, and to be dedicated to the principle that war is obsolete — that civilized methods must be creatively sought and implemented to resolve international differences; to strengthen American democracy by promoting dialogue between the people and elected representatives in promoting peace; and to distribute educational material by mail, electronic mail, internet, and in-person, i.e. posters, bumper stickers, Peace Seals, Peace Notes, cards, medallions, etc. all of which include the trademark logo — the Sunflower with the statement: “War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things.” Another Mother for Peace does not take positions on issues other than Peace. The organization is non-partisan — it supports no political party, but urges members to support peace candidates of their own choice.

The Donna Reed Foundation for the Performing Arts: Created to honor her accomplishments and keep her dream alive by recognizing, encouraging, and supporting talented individuals pursuing an education and career in the performing arts. The Foundation was formed in 1987 by members of Donna Reed’s hometown community of Denison, her husband, Grover Asmus, actresses Shelley Fabares and Norma Connolly, and numerous friends, associates, and family members. Based in Denison, Iowa, the Donna Reed Foundation operates to recognize, encourage, and support talent through national, state, and local scholarships, conduct workshops taught by outstanding industry professionals from across the country, and promote stage plays, concerts, and other cultural activities throughout the year. It also works toward supporting a performing arts center, full film archive, a museum, and professional studio facilities dedicated to developing new artists.