In Search of Donna Reed

by Jay Fultz

Traces the life of the actress from her rural Iowa childhood to her stardom in film and television, to her later years

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

236 pages, Hardcover

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.