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: Marian Ross dreamed of stardom from childhood, going so far as to change the spelling of her first name to Marion because she thought it would look nicer on a marquee. When her family moved from Minnesota to California, the 16-year-old aspiring actress plunged into the busy world of amateur theatricals in the San Diego area. She was voted Outstanding Actress at San Diego State University in 1950, then went on to work at the prestigious La Jolla Playhouse. Mel Ferrer, La Jolla's resident director, recommended that Ross try her luck in Hollywood. She worked steadily in TV and films from 1953 onward, but stardom was still outside her reach. Ross played a succession of maids, nuns, nurses, and that nebulous classification, the Heroine's Best Friend. She showed up in small roles in such films as Forever Female (1953), Lust for Life (1955), and Operation Petticoat (1959), earning the respect of her fellow workers but very little in the way of public recognition. "I've always had a way of not attracting attention," she would note with resignation later in life. On television, Marion played unstressed recurring roles on such series as Life with Father, Mrs. G Goes to College and Mr. Novak. She finally achieved stardom as Marion Cunningham, mother of 1950s high-schooler Richie Cunningham, on the weekly sitcom Happy Days. What started out as a shaky midseason replacement in January of 1974 ended up ABC's number-one hit; Ross hitched her wagon to the ever-rising Happy Days star until its final episode in 1983. During this period, she reactivated her stage career, with considerably more success than she'd enjoyed in the 1950s. Ross' post-Happy Days TV gigs included a 1986 guest shot as the new bride of Captain Stubing (Gavin MacLeod) on The Love Boat and the brief 1989 series Living Dolls. In 1991, Marion Ross earned an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of archetypal Jewish mother Sophie Berger on the TV "dramedy" Brooklyn Bridge. In the decades to come, Ross would find ongoing success with recurring roles on TV series like The Drew Carey Show and Gilmore Girls, as well as providing voice acting for animated series such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Handy Manny.