Indestructible Donna

Warning: It is inadvisable to get too close to Donna Reed, the film actress and television-series star, for two reasons.

First, there is that dazzling beauty of hers. The cameras do not do justice to any part of it--not the superb figure, not the warm yellow hair, not the large hazel eyes. As Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee used to sing; she's enough to make a dumb man talk.

Second, there is an air about her which is impossible to dfine but which is nonetheless tangible. The same suspenseful humming must permeate Cape Canaveral when a missile is two seconds from launching. Donna gives the impression that she is about to explode, or take off, or do something highly unconventional at any second.

She does not communicate this intentionally. The Donna Reed of The Donna Reed Show, now in its fourth year on the ABC network and the last survivor of the numerous one-woman shows of the past few years, appears unexplosively contented. "Doing this show was worse than getting used to the Army, I'm sure," she said recently. "The first year was a nightmare. The second year was a nightmare. The third year I began to live again. This year is a cinch."

The Donna Reed who is now living again is not superficially different from the Donna Reed who performs on the air. Both Donnas are possessed of serene, even sunny dispositions, senses of humor, and the ability to meet nearly every situation with poise and grace. Both appear to be normal, average, well-adjusted women. It is as though all that corn, consumed in Donna's Iowa girlhood, distributed itself into complacent cells of un-neurotic well-being throughout her lovely body.

Yet there is that air about her--an extra quality that arrests the imagination. She is far from being Hollywood's answer to Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

Her marriage is an example. One might expect her to be married to a pleasant, sensible, steadily plugging young exective, the Don Murray type, perhaps. Instead, she is the wife of a rough-talking, hard-dealing, hustling ex-Chicago newspaperman, one-time part owner of the Detroit Lions, now making his vigorous presence felt as a producer in Hollywood. His name is Tony Owen. He is the producer of The Donna Reed Show and has other projects working. He is amiable and hard-working, as indefatigable as he is profane.

Owen met Donna when he was working for Charles K. Feldman, the agent. He took one look at her and remarked, to no one in particular, "One of these days I'm going to marry that girl." About a year later, in 1945, he did. They have four children" Penny Jane, 15; Tony Jr., 14; Timothy, 12, and Mary, four. It is a most happy marriage, marred only by Tony's odd habit of forgetting his wife's name. On one production this season, Donna's co-star was Miyoshi Umeki.

"Do you realize we have two Oscar winners in this production?" Owen said excitedly to a friend. "Miyoshi Umeki--and--uh--what's her name...?"

Donna's winning of the Oscar was another example of her ability to explode from time to time. Born in Denison, Iowa, she spent her girlhood on a farm, sometimes--to the delight of publicity men later hired to exploit her--milking cows and doing chores. She also sometimes drove a tractor. Mainly, however, that charged feeling of restlessness drove her: although she was ostensibly preparing for a teaching career, she really wanted to be an actress. She was a high school queen, appeared in several school plays, and presently moved west to enroll in Los Angeles City College.

Another Queen contest came along. She won that one as easily as she had the first. MGM screen-tested her amd signed her to a contract. There followed a long series of nice-girl parts in both the Andy Hardy and Dr. Gillespie series, as well as appearances in such best-forgotten items as Shadow of the Thin Man, Beyond Mambasa, etc.

Donna was ready to explode again. Her opportunity came when she heard about the bad girl part in From Here to Eternity. Executives at Columbia laughed when she asked to test for it. She insisted. They apparently felt that she would detonate if they did not test her, and finally gave in. The film proved that she could act.

Still, having broken her pattern, she went right back into it. There were more nice girls to play, and presently she found that her film career was at a standstill once again. So she decided on TV.

Studio executives were horrified when they heard of her plan. Barbara Stanwyck, June Allyson, Loretta Young, Ann Sothern and all the other mistresses of dramatic shows were playing the medium, for the most part, as a showcase for glamour. When Donna announced that she planned to play the mother of two, a small-city housewife, the producers were convinced that she had lost her reason.

Donna nevertheless went on in the role she felt was right for her. The critical reception at the beginning was something less than satisfactory. But the show caught on with audiences, and it still is going strong. Most network observers give it at least another year after this one, and possibly two.

In many ways the show has changed her life radically. She works five days a week, reporting at 7 a.m. and occasionally checking out as late as 8 p.m. In addition to her acting chores she takes an active interest in script preparation. She keeps up a family life as full as that of the character she plays on the air. In the mornings she takes the smallest child to nursery school; in the evenings she helps the older ones with their homework. She shops once a week for groceries, and on Saturday nights she cooks for 10 or 12 friends who come in.

Donna seems to thrive on this rigorous schedule. People are constantly telling her how well she looks--and, indeed, she is one of those rare women whose appearances improve as they get older. She has only one worry.

"Those nice, healthy women I was always playing were relatively unimportant to the whole picture and the plot," she says. "In this show, I have to cause things to happen. I have to be active. But I can't strain the audience's credulity because even though we get pretty wild sometimes, we're not doing farce. Also, sometimes we have to guard against too much sentimentality. Occasionally, we've thrown away some laughs just because they didn't fit in with our concept of the show."

She says these remarks calmly, as though everything is well in hand. For that matter, everything is well in hand. Both show and family are running smoothly. But from time to time the interviewer becomes aware of that feeling of the unexpected about to happen. Donna now says that when the series is over she has a documentary she wants to produce with her husband. She may do that, or she may do something altogether different, sudden, and surprising.

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INDESTRUCTIBLE DONNA