Trivia: Reed was elected beauty queen of her high school and Campus Queen of her college. The latter honor resulted in her photo making the L.A. papers, and as a result she was invited to take a screen test with MGM, which signed her in 1941. She played supporting roles in a number of minor films (at first being billed as "Donna Adams"), then in the mid '40s she began getting leads; with rare exceptions, she portrayed sincere, wholesome types and loving wives and girlfriends. She went against type playing a prostitute in From Here to Eternity (1953), for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Rarely getting rewarding roles, she retired from the screen in 1958 to star in the TV series "The Donna Reed Show," which was a great success and remained on the air through 1966. After 1960 she appeared in only one more film. In the mid '80s she emerged from retirement to star in "Dallas;" Barbara Bel Geddes returned to the show in 1985, and Reed won a $1 million settlement for a breach of contract suit against the show's producers. She died of cancer several months later.

Trivia: The niece of musical comedy luminary Nanette Fabray, American actress Shelley Fabares was in show business almost as soon as she could walk. She was a model for children's fashions at age 3, a bit actress in the film The Bandit Queen at age 7, a peripheral character on the Annie Oakley TV series at 8, and Frank Sinatra's dance partner on a 1953 TV special. After doing the TV-anthology route from ages 10 through 13, Fabares was cast at age 14 as Donna Reed's daughter on The Donna Reed Show, a part she would virtually grow up in. Before the series' cancellation in 1966, Fabares had become a top recording artist, selling a million copies of "Johnny Angel" before quitting singing cold because she felt she had no talent in that endeavor. Except for co-starring stints in three Elvis Presley musicals, Fabares' employment outside Donna Reed was virtually nil, and from 1968 through 1970 she barely worked at all. She filmed six TV pilots before 1971, but none sold. Things began picking up in 1972 when she was signed for a Brian Keith series set in Hawaii, The Little People. This led to guest TV spots until the next sitcom hitch in 1977's The Practice, in which Fabares played Danny Thomas' daughter-in-law. Highcliffe Manor, a muddled TV satire of Gothic melodramas, followed in 1979, but lasted a scant four weeks. By this time, Fabares' characterizations were of the "snooty shrew" category, and in this capacity she was shown to good advantage as Bonnie Franklin's business partner on One Day at a Time in 1981. Off-camera, Fabares was very active in the prosocial and ecological activities of her new husband, former MASH star Mike Farrell--a far cry from her on-camera haughtiness and self-involvement. More recently, Shelley Fabares' acting career is alive and prospering via her continuing role as Craig T. Nelson's lady love, sportscaster Christine Armstrong, on the Emmy-winning sitcom Coach.

Trivia: American actor Paul Petersen was a child actor who appeared on television and in a couple of feature films during the '50s; he is best remembered for playing teenager Jeff Stone on The Donna Reed Show where he literally grew up. While there, Petersen had a brief side-career as a popular singer, making his recording debut in early 1962 with the novelty song "She Can't Find Her Keys," which originally aired as a dream sequence on the show. Other hits followed, including his Top Ten single "My Dad," which he also sang on the television show. Eventually Petersen left the show and began playing leads in a few '60s feature films. Since then, Petersen has become a writer of spy novels and has made only infrequent forays into film.

Trivia: American actor Frank Wilcox had intended to follow his father's footsteps in the medical profession, but financial and personal circumstances dictated a redirection of goals. He joined the Resident Theater in Kansas City in the late '20s, spending several seasons in leading man roles. In 1934, Wilcox visited his father in California, and there he became involved with further stage work, first with his own acting troupe and then with the Pasadena Playhouse. Shortly afterward, Wilcox was signed to a contract at Warner Bros., where he spent the next few years in a wide range of character parts, often cast as crooked bankers, shifty attorneys, and that old standy, the Fellow Who Doesn't Get the Girl. Historian Leslie Haliwell has suggested that Wilcox often played multiple roles in these Warners films, though existing records don't bear this out. Frank Wilcox was still working into the 1960s; his most popular latter-day role was as Mr. Brewster, the charming banker who woos and wins Cousin Pearl Bodine (Bea Benaderet) during the inaugural 1962-1963 season of TV's The Beverly Hillbillies.