In Search of Donna Reed

by Jay Fultz

But who was Donna Reed? Perhaps no celebrity of her symbolic importance is so little known. Moving from the backroads of Iowa to the mansions of Bel Air, Jay Fultz goes in search of the woman behind the image. In Search of Donna Reed reveals a woman whose intelligence and force of character often put her at odds with the roles she portrayed both on and off screen. Reed, always angered by the treatment of women in Hollywood, turned political activist in middle age, confronting for the first time the arrogance of power. She was, said writer Barbara Avedon, a feminist before there was a feminist vocabulary. But she eludes any label. This first biography of Donna Reed also contains the first extended discussion of her television show. The personal richness that Reed brought to her television role has been filtered out in the caricature perpetuated by pop critics. In the media "Donna Reed" is Donna Stone distorted as a female-manqué who wears pearls and high heels around the house. But Donna Reed's long hold on viewers depends on irreducible qualities that have nothing to do with this fixed image, as Fultz suggests. He follows her development from Iowa farm girl to apprentice in Hollywood to mature juggler of the demands of family and career to antiwar activist. Drawing on Reed's letters and on interviews, Fultz looks for what was real in a very private person without discarding what is romantic in any pursuit of a public one. He shows why the rich and principled life of Donna Reed matters in this more cynical time.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

264 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1998

Reviews

[Thomas DeWolf]

Anyone who loved watching Donna Reed in It's A Wonderful Life (which we did for the umpteenth-dozen time just before Christmas), From Here to Eternity (for which Ms. Reed won an Oscar), and The Donna Reed Show will get a lot out of this book. She was born a few years before, and not too many miles away in Iowa from, my father. Living through the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights era, and the Vietnam War, Donna Reed personified a certain Midwestern stability, and an old-fashioned set of moral values, that many people long for today. This book goes deeper--and, to be honest, not as deep as I would have liked--into what made Ms. Reed tick. She often played the dutiful wife on large screen and small, yet chafed at the sexist treatment she was subjected to by Hollywood. America changed a lot between 1921 and 1986. Donna Reed did as well. I enjoyed this book a lot more than I expected to.

[Connie]

Just skimmed a bit. Didn't really read enough to get interested, or perhaps I read enough to be disinterested. At any rate, I gave it up.

[Pat]

Not very insightful but still a decent, well researched biography. Glad I read it.

[Cary O'Dell]

An important book about this actress and icon--what we think we know about her and what is the truth are two very different things.