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: Heavy-set character actor Myron McCormick attended Princeton University, where he was active in college theatricals. Together with fellow Princetonite Joshua Logan, McCormick was one of the founders of the University Players, a Cape Cod summer stock group that boasted such developing talents as James Stewart, Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan. He made his screen bow in Winterset (1936), then played a rare romantic lead in the 1939 Harold Clurman-produced "agit prop" social drama One Third of a Nation. In 1949, McCormick created the character of wheeler-dealer Luther Billis in the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical South Pacific. Though the role of Billis went to Ray Walston in the 1958 film version, McCormick was permitted to re-create his Broadway characterization of a neurotic, peace-loving air-force sergeant in the cinemazation of No Time for Sergeants (1958). Though a lifelong professional, Myron McCormick never completely conquered his early bouts with stage fright; an actor who worked with McCormick in his last years remembered how the veteran player would sit backstage trembling like a leaf before making his entrance.

Trivia: One of the last of the serial queens, Canadian-born Aline Towne (born Bouchard) played the female lead in no less than five chapter plays between 1950 and 1953, all for Republic Pictures. By the 1950s, however, the once so thriving genre was threatened by television, which basically offered the same kind of juvenile excitement for free; in addition, Towne was less memorable than such earlier Republic cliffhanger stars as Jungle Girl's Frances Gifford and The Leopard Woman's Linda Stirling. To compound matters, Towne's leading men were far from top caliber: Richard Webb (Invisible Monster, 1950), Ken Curtis (Don Daredevil Rides Again, 1951), George Wallace (Radar Men From the Moon, 1952), Judd Holdren (Zombies From the Stratosphere, 1952), and Harry Lauter (Trader Tom of the China Seas, 1953). In 1952, she filmed Republic's 12-episode television sci-fi Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe, also starring Judd Holdren and created by serial veterans Fred C. Brannon and Franklin Afreon. A series rather than a cliffhanging serial, the project proved a distinct failure and was dumped on the unsuspecting viewing audience as a mid-summer replacement. Undeterred, Towne continued to appear in supporting roles on television and the occasional A-movie until 1970.