Last winter a story broke in the Hollywood trade papers to the effect that Donna Reed was very tired and did not wish to continue with her film series for a fifth season.

On the surface, it seemed like a plausible enough story. To William Dozier, West Coast production chief for Screen Gems, which has a 25 percent interest in The Donna Reed Show, it was recognizable as merely the first quite predictable move in a Hollywood game called “How to Negotiate in Public Without Really Meaning It.”

Dozier, a former CBS vice president and an old hand at “The Game,” picked up his phone the morning the story appeared and called Tony Owen, Miss Reed’s husband and producer of the series. “I read your ad,” he chuckled.

The Game was on.

The Game, friends, is sort of Machiavellian maneuvering that could be likened to chess, only it’s a good deal rougher. Most of it is played in print, but some—the Machiavellian part—is played behind the scenes. Any number can play, but the action usually centers around a star whose series has been eminently successful, and who thus is in a position to demand more money or other emolument. Vince Edwards of Ben Casey is a case in point.

One day a story appeared in Daily Variety, a show-business sheet, saying Edwards would not continue in the Casey role unless he received a raise from $1750 a week to $7500 a week, 25 percent ownership of the show and $100,000 with which to start his own production company. Immediately, there was a counterplay. Basil Grillo, executive of Bing Crosby Productions, which owns and produces Ben Casey, was quoted in a gossip column to the effect that another actor, Ben Gazzara, was being considered for the Casey role next season. Back from the Edwards camp the ball bounced, A gossip column quoted a demand for $300,000 to start the Edwards production company. Retorted Grillo & Co., via producer Matthew Rapf: “We believe the show is strong enough to carry on without Edwards.” Finally, their bag of hints, threats and announcements exhausted and the column-reading public sated, the interested parties sat down and thrashed out a compromise settlement. The Game was over.

An inverted version of The Game, started by the producers rather than the star, involved young Jay North of Dennis the Menace. Screen Gems, also the producer of this show, let it be known via the columns that young North was getting too big and too old for the title role. The youngster’s agent countered with a column item saying his client had been offered not one but two new series. Everyone, including Gems, knew there was no chance of getting a series started that late for 1962-63. However, Screen Gems capitulated, deciding to continue North in the part and let him grow up naturally on the show. Quipped Dozier, “Maybe we’ll change the title to Mr. Dennis the Menace.”

The happy game player
Happily for all concerned, especially the reading public, the participants in the Donna Reed vs. Screen Gems Game took themselves a little less than seriously. A couple of nights after the Reed Game started—as a Hollywood party was breaking up—producer Dozier approached his old friend Donna—who had been tired, oh, so tired—and said solicitously, “May I carry you out to your car? I know how terribly tired you are.” Donna broke up.

A few weeks later the Owens and the Doziers took a vacation trip to Hawaii. On the last day of the Hawaiian trip, a bellhop carefully coached by Dozier, approached Donna as she was getting out of a hotel elevator and said, “Congratulations, Miss Reed, on your sixth TV season.” Miss Reed broke up again.

As the Reed Game neared its climax, it did grow a little more serious. Who was winning? What was really happening? Because of her friendship with Dozier, and the possibility, of course, that any future deals might be jeopardized, Donna kept any indications of victory well hidden. But a reporter suspected The Game was going her way one day during an interview. “What has TV give you?” he asked. Donna replied brightly: “Money.” A little later Dozier was heard to comment, “We were happy to keep her happy,” and the jig was up. Dozier said further, “Donna got ‘tired’ after the third season and didn’t want to do a fourth. She got ‘tired’ again in the middle of the fourth and didn’t want to do a fifth. It’s what you might call a seriofacetious situation. Game-playing time.” He paused. “But she had a contract and we knew she’d stick.”

To keep Donna happy, Dozier revealed that Screen Gems cut the show’s production schedule from 39 episodes to 34, at the same time raising her salary to a point where she will earn more from 34 than she has in the past from 39. Shooting schedules will be arranged so that she will be in neither the first nor the last scene of the day. A hike in the price of the series will increase the capital gains to Todon Productions (Tony Owen and Donna Reed), which owns all the show’s negatives and pays out 25 percent each to Screen Gems and ABC. Finally, there is a bonus. No one will discuss the amount, but it can possibly be equated with the cost of a first-class trip to Europe which Donna was offered and turned down.

Dozier bets on sixth season
Adds Dozier: “I will bet you even money right now that Donna will do a sixth season. She’s a pro with pride. Besides that, if she has been able to organize her life so well for the last four years, complete with a husband, home and four kids, what is she going to do with no TV show and all that time on her hands?”

The man to ask that question of is Tony Owen. Donna’s husband-producer, who is probably the happiest and most accomplished Game Player of them all. In the Reed Game, he was coach, manager and ball carrier all in one. A Tough, gravelly-voiced veteran of the wheeler-dealer wars, Owen once had been part owner of the Detroit Lions professional football club. In Hollywood he learned the agency business, handled such big-time female stars as Ava Gardner and Liz Taylor. Despite his many executive chores since he married Donna 17 years ago and took over management of her affairs, he still loves dealing. In the midst of the Reed-Game dealing, a reporter heard him say on the phone: “Baby, there is another guy hot to buy this show and he’s pressing me. I’d much rather you had it. Can you give me a fast decision?” There may or may not have been another guy; what Tony wanted was the decision, but quick.

But Owen denies it
Asked about Dozier’s prediction that Donna will do a sixth season. Owen already began laying the groundwork for another Game a year hence. “I would like,” he said, “to have a piece of that even-money bet on a sixth season. I told Donna just the other day, ‘Suppose we could do a sixth season on the basis of your doing only 26 episodes out of 39, with the show to concentrate on the kids and with your filming to be done in just 10 weeks time?’ You know what she told me? She said that would be cheating, that people who liked The Donna Reed Show would feel cheated.

“Donna is a perfectionist, and it’s no fun to be a perfectionist. You know what tires her most? That two-hour preparation every morning, the hair and the makeup. She has the hardest hair in the world to work with, and it has to be perfect.

“She doesn’t enjoy her success in the way most people do, doesn’t enjoy the adulation and the flattery. Like me, I get a kick out of being known as the producer of the show, I enjoy it when people come up to me and say they like it.”

Was Donna really tired and did she really want to call it quits? Her husband says she was. “Sure she has a contract. But you can’t make any creative person do something she really doesn’t want to do, contract or no contract. She was tired. I knew she was tired. I told the Screen gems people in New York that I wouldn’t even try to talk to Donna unless there was a substantial amount of money involved. Then I took her to Hawaii for a rest and now she isn’t tired any more.”

Donna laughingly admits to “playing games,” pointing out that “everything worked out pretty much the way both sides knew it would.” But the giveaway look in her eye disappears when she talks about next season being her last.

“That’s firm,” she says firmly. “No games. Five years is right in every respect. It works out right financially and it works out right…well, artistically isn’t quite the word. But after five years, both you and audience, I think, have about had it with each other.”

*article from TV GUIDE, July 21-27, 1962