Video: 'Donna Reed Bio'

(Tuesday, January 14, 1986, 9:15 a.m. PST) — Donna Reed (born Donna Belle Mullenger on January 27, 1921, in Denison, Iowa), the Academy Award-winning actress who starred in more than 40 movies and portrayed the quintessential mother and wife of middle America on television’s Donna Reed Show, died of pancreatic cancer today, at age 64, at her home in Beverly Hills, California.

Video: 'Donna Reed: From Childhood To Hollywood Icon'

She is best known for playing Mary Hatch Bailey in Frank Capra’s holiday classic It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), and for her Academy Award–winning performance as Lorene in Fred Zinnemann’s war drama From Here to Eternity (1953).

Reed is also known for her work in television, notably as Donna Stone, a middle-class American mother and housewife in the sitcom The Donna Reed Show (1958–1966) whose character was more assertive and complex than most other television mothers of the era.