Shelley Fabares’ acting, from ‘Donna Reed’ to ‘Coach,’ had intention

Hypothetically speaking, were you of an age when television — broadcast television — regularly reran “The Donna Reed Show” and mid-’60s Elvis Presley movies, Shelley Fabares, who starred in both and died Sunday at the age of 82, might well have made a lasting impression on your impressionable youth. As you went through life together, a little jolt of happiness would accompany every new encounter; across the years there were many opportunities for such meetings, in which one found her older, unavoidably, but never aged. Petite, with delicate features and a soft voice, she nevertheless held a screen with authority,

Of course, you might have gotten on the Fabares train with “Coach,” where she played the TV anchor girlfriend (then wife) of star Craig T. Nelson across nine seasons (with two Emmy nominations), or “One Day at a Time,” where she provided Bonnie Franklin a competitive foil and sometimes appeared with her aunt, the great Nanette Fabray, as Franklin’s mother. You might have absorbed her cumulative presence across decades of guest roles from “The Twilight Zone” to “The Rockford Files” to “Newhart.” There are a lot of doors into this house.

Fabares would say that she had worked since the age of 3, first as a child model. She acted from age 10; her early television appearances included episodes of “Fury” and “Captain Midnight,” the “Mickey Mouse Club” serial “Annette,” and as Paul Newman’s kid sister in a celebrated 1955 TV production of “Our Town,” along with Eva Marie Saint and Frank Sinatra. She was 14 in 1958 when she was cast in “The Donna Reed Show,” a comparatively unsentimental family comedy in which she provided teenage female energy of an unusually reflective sort as Mary Stone. She’s the serious child, with younger brother Paul Petersen the impulsive scamp.

There’s a gravity, even a melancholy to her Mary Stone, which drew on Fabares’ ability to project a genuine inner life into the least promising scenarios. She is a genius at looking and listening. In a show that inevitably can seem dated — Lorelai and Rory watch it, ironically, in an episode of “Gilmore Girls” — Fabares reads as unusually modern. She never does too much, but draws you in by doing just the right amount of little. (Indeed, there’s more than a touch of Mary Stone in Rory Gilmore.) Mary’s plotlines tend to revolve around her interest in boys, which may be considered both indicative of the times and of being, you know, adolescent, though one feels somehow that she’d actually be too much for any of the boys she’s interested in.

It’s impossible not to mention the song “Johnny Angel,” which Fabares had been elbowed into recording for the show and which, despite her claims of having no singing ability, became a No. 1 single in 1962; two albums, “Shelley!” and “The Things We Did Last Summer,” followed. But this is a mere blip on her career.

She was 20 when she left “Donna Reed” after its fifth season (returning for an occasional appearance). “It really was like the girl or the boy making the decision to move away from home to go to college,” she later told an interviewer. After a grown-up role in 1963’s Hawaii-set drama “Ride the Wild Surf” (a trailer describes her character as “old enough to fall in love, too young to know any better”), she entered her Presley period, playing opposite him in three pictures “Girl Happy” (1965), “Spinout” (1966) and “Clambake” (1967) — as many as Doris Day and Rock Hudson made together, around the same time — not the worst of the singer’s screen canon, and if you are in the mood, or the right age when you first encounter them, quite delightful. This is especially true if you overlook the sillier production numbers and hacky plots and focus on the stars’ scenes together. They are compatibly beautiful; her softness brings out his, and she grounds him in a way that, say, Ann-Margret, Presley’s more aggressive co-star in “Viva Las Vegas,” did not.

Fabares’ post-Elvis years were devoted almost exclusively to television, with “Coach,” where she generally played the adult in the room, in the final season, with an adopted baby, became a TV mom herself; and 23 episodes of “One Day at a Time,” in which she progressed from guest to recurring to regular; her well-remembered Francine Webster is ambitious and manipulative in a strangely innocent way, there is a sort of purity to her self-centeredness — an eccentric character played without mannerisms.

In and around them, to fill out the century, were various guest spots (“Ironside,” “McCloud,” “Mannix,” et al., and multiple episodes of “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island”), and a few more or less successful series (more less than more). These included 1972‘s “The Brian Keith Show,” a single-camera, location-rich sitcom with Keith and Fabares as father and daughter pediatricians in Hawaii; “The Practice,” a 1976 Danny Thomas sitcom, with Fabares as his daughter-in-law; the gothic comedy “Highcliffe Manor,” which aired four of six episodes in 1979; and the 1977 “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” sequel “Forever Fernwood.” There were TV movies, including the 1971 biopic “Brian’s Song” (seen by 55 million people and later released in theaters) with Fabares as the wife of dying halfback Brian Piccolo, and a 1993 thriller, “Deadly Relations,” also starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert Urich and Matthew Perry. In this century, she has been essentially retired, for whatever combination of reasons actors can’t, or don’t care to, work. Still, one would call it a decision.

I recommend watching Fabares anywhere you can; it’s always rewarding, whatever the context. It’s worth looking at her the way she looks at Elvis, or Donna Reed, or Craig Nelson or any scene partner, with attention and intention. Happily, you can find her without much trouble in the deep streaming library, where she springs, for the foreseeable digital future, eternal.

Hypothetically speaking, were you of an age when television — broadcast television — regularly reran “The Donna Reed Show” and mid-’60s Elvis Presley movies, Shelley Fabares, who starred in both and died Sunday at the age of 82, might well have made a lasting impression on your impressionable youth. As you went through life together, a little jolt of happiness would accompany every new encounter; across the years there were many opportunities for such meetings, in which one found her older, unavoidably, but never aged. Petite, with delicate features and a soft voice, she nevertheless held a screen with authority,

Of course, you might have gotten on the Fabares train with “Coach,” where she played the TV anchor girlfriend (then wife) of star Craig T. Nelson across nine seasons (with two Emmy nominations), or “One Day at a Time,” where she provided Bonnie Franklin a competitive foil and sometimes appeared with her aunt, the great Nanette Fabray, as Franklin’s mother. You might have absorbed her cumulative presence across decades of guest roles from “The Twilight Zone” to “The Rockford Files” to “Newhart.” There are a lot of doors into this house.

Fabares would say that she had worked since the age of 3, first as a child model. She acted from age 10; her early television appearances included episodes of “Fury” and “Captain Midnight,” the “Mickey Mouse Club” serial “Annette,” and as Paul Newman’s kid sister in a celebrated 1955 TV production of “Our Town,” along with Eva Marie Saint and Frank Sinatra. She was 14 in 1958 when she was cast in “The Donna Reed Show,” a comparatively unsentimental family comedy in which she provided teenage female energy of an unusually reflective sort as Mary Stone. She’s the serious child, with younger brother Paul Petersen the impulsive scamp.

There’s a gravity, even a melancholy to her Mary Stone, which drew on Fabares’ ability to project a genuine inner life into the least promising scenarios. She is a genius at looking and listening. In a show that inevitably can seem dated — Lorelai and Rory watch it, ironically, in an episode of “Gilmore Girls” — Fabares reads as unusually modern. She never does too much, but draws you in by doing just the right amount of little. (Indeed, there’s more than a touch of Mary Stone in Rory Gilmore.) Mary’s plotlines tend to revolve around her interest in boys, which may be considered both indicative of the times and of being, you know, adolescent, though one feels somehow that she’d actually be too much for any of the boys she’s interested in.

It’s impossible not to mention the song “Johnny Angel,” which Fabares had been elbowed into recording for the show and which, despite her claims of having no singing ability, became a No. 1 single in 1962; two albums, “Shelley!” and “The Things We Did Last Summer,” followed. But this is a mere blip on her career.

She was 20 when she left “Donna Reed” after its fifth season (returning for an occasional appearance). “It really was like the girl or the boy making the decision to move away from home to go to college,” she later told an interviewer. After a grown-up role in 1963’s Hawaii-set drama “Ride the Wild Surf” (a trailer describes her character as “old enough to fall in love, too young to know any better”), she entered her Presley period, playing opposite him in three pictures “Girl Happy” (1965), “Spinout” (1966) and “Clambake” (1967) — as many as Doris Day and Rock Hudson made together, around the same time — not the worst of the singer’s screen canon, and if you are in the mood, or the right age when you first encounter them, quite delightful. This is especially true if you overlook the sillier production numbers and hacky plots and focus on the stars’ scenes together. They are compatibly beautiful; her softness brings out his, and she grounds him in a way that, say, Ann-Margret, Presley’s more aggressive co-star in “Viva Las Vegas,” did not.

Fabares’ post-Elvis years were devoted almost exclusively to television, with “Coach,” where she generally played the adult in the room, in the final season, with an adopted baby, became a TV mom herself; and 23 episodes of “One Day at a Time,” in which she progressed from guest to recurring to regular; her well-remembered Francine Webster is ambitious and manipulative in a strangely innocent way, there is a sort of purity to her self-centeredness — an eccentric character played without mannerisms.

In and around them, to fill out the century, were various guest spots (“Ironside,” “McCloud,” “Mannix,” et al., and multiple episodes of “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island”), and a few more or less successful series (more less than more). These included 1972‘s “The Brian Keith Show,” a single-camera, location-rich sitcom with Keith and Fabares as father and daughter pediatricians in Hawaii; “The Practice,” a 1976 Danny Thomas sitcom, with Fabares as his daughter-in-law; the gothic comedy “Highcliffe Manor,” which aired four of six episodes in 1979; and the 1977 “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” sequel “Forever Fernwood.” There were TV movies, including the 1971 biopic “Brian’s Song” (seen by 55 million people and later released in theaters) with Fabares as the wife of dying halfback Brian Piccolo, and a 1993 thriller, “Deadly Relations,” also starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert Urich and Matthew Perry. In this century, she has been essentially retired, for whatever combination of reasons actors can’t, or don’t care to, work. Still, one would call it a decision.

I recommend watching Fabares anywhere you can; it’s always rewarding, whatever the context. It’s worth looking at her the way she looks at Elvis, or Donna Reed, or Craig Nelson or any scene partner, with attention and intention. Happily, you can find her without much trouble in the deep streaming library, where she springs, for the foreseeable digital future, eternal.

Hypothetically speaking, were you of an age when television — broadcast television — regularly reran “The Donna Reed Show” and mid-’60s Elvis Presley movies, Shelley Fabares, who starred in both and died Sunday at the age of 82, might well have made a lasting impression on your impressionable youth. As you went through life together, a little jolt of happiness would accompany every new encounter; across the years there were many opportunities for such meetings, in which one found her older, unavoidably, but never aged. Petite, with delicate features and a soft voice, she nevertheless held a screen with authority,

Of course, you might have gotten on the Fabares train with “Coach,” where she played the TV anchor girlfriend (then wife) of star Craig T. Nelson across nine seasons (with two Emmy nominations), or “One Day at a Time,” where she provided Bonnie Franklin a competitive foil and sometimes appeared with her aunt, the great Nanette Fabray, as Franklin’s mother. You might have absorbed her cumulative presence across decades of guest roles from “The Twilight Zone” to “The Rockford Files” to “Newhart.” There are a lot of doors into this house.

Fabares would say that she had worked since the age of 3, first as a child model. She acted from age 10; her early television appearances included episodes of “Fury” and “Captain Midnight,” the “Mickey Mouse Club” serial “Annette,” and as Paul Newman’s kid sister in a celebrated 1955 TV production of “Our Town,” along with Eva Marie Saint and Frank Sinatra. She was 14 in 1958 when she was cast in “The Donna Reed Show,” a comparatively unsentimental family comedy in which she provided teenage female energy of an unusually reflective sort as Mary Stone. She’s the serious child, with younger brother Paul Petersen the impulsive scamp.

There’s a gravity, even a melancholy to her Mary Stone, which drew on Fabares’ ability to project a genuine inner life into the least promising scenarios. She is a genius at looking and listening. In a show that inevitably can seem dated — Lorelai and Rory watch it, ironically, in an episode of “Gilmore Girls” — Fabares reads as unusually modern. She never does too much, but draws you in by doing just the right amount of little. (Indeed, there’s more than a touch of Mary Stone in Rory Gilmore.) Mary’s plotlines tend to revolve around her interest in boys, which may be considered both indicative of the times and of being, you know, adolescent, though one feels somehow that she’d actually be too much for any of the boys she’s interested in.

It’s impossible not to mention the song “Johnny Angel,” which Fabares had been elbowed into recording for the show and which, despite her claims of having no singing ability, became a No. 1 single in 1962; two albums, “Shelley!” and “The Things We Did Last Summer,” followed. But this is a mere blip on her career.

She was 20 when she left “Donna Reed” after its fifth season (returning for an occasional appearance). “It really was like the girl or the boy making the decision to move away from home to go to college,” she later told an interviewer. After a grown-up role in 1963’s Hawaii-set drama “Ride the Wild Surf” (a trailer describes her character as “old enough to fall in love, too young to know any better”), she entered her Presley period, playing opposite him in three pictures “Girl Happy” (1965), “Spinout” (1966) and “Clambake” (1967) — as many as Doris Day and Rock Hudson made together, around the same time — not the worst of the singer’s screen canon, and if you are in the mood, or the right age when you first encounter them, quite delightful. This is especially true if you overlook the sillier production numbers and hacky plots and focus on the stars’ scenes together. They are compatibly beautiful; her softness brings out his, and she grounds him in a way that, say, Ann-Margret, Presley’s more aggressive co-star in “Viva Las Vegas,” did not.

Fabares’ post-Elvis years were devoted almost exclusively to television, with “Coach,” where she generally played the adult in the room, in the final season, with an adopted baby, became a TV mom herself; and 23 episodes of “One Day at a Time,” in which she progressed from guest to recurring to regular; her well-remembered Francine Webster is ambitious and manipulative in a strangely innocent way, there is a sort of purity to her self-centeredness — an eccentric character played without mannerisms.

In and around them, to fill out the century, were various guest spots (“Ironside,” “McCloud,” “Mannix,” et al., and multiple episodes of “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island”), and a few more or less successful series (more less than more). These included 1972‘s “The Brian Keith Show,” a single-camera, location-rich sitcom with Keith and Fabares as father and daughter pediatricians in Hawaii; “The Practice,” a 1976 Danny Thomas sitcom, with Fabares as his daughter-in-law; the gothic comedy “Highcliffe Manor,” which aired four of six episodes in 1979; and the 1977 “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” sequel “Forever Fernwood.” There were TV movies, including the 1971 biopic “Brian’s Song” (seen by 55 million people and later released in theaters) with Fabares as the wife of dying halfback Brian Piccolo, and a 1993 thriller, “Deadly Relations,” also starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert Urich and Matthew Perry. In this century, she has been essentially retired, for whatever combination of reasons actors can’t, or don’t care to, work. Still, one would call it a decision.

I recommend watching Fabares anywhere you can; it’s always rewarding, whatever the context. It’s worth looking at her the way she looks at Elvis, or Donna Reed, or Craig Nelson or any scene partner, with attention and intention. Happily, you can find her without much trouble in the deep streaming library, where she springs, for the foreseeable digital future, eternal.

Hypothetically speaking, were you of an age when television — broadcast television — regularly reran “The Donna Reed Show” and mid-’60s Elvis Presley movies, Shelley Fabares, who starred in both and died Sunday at the age of 82, might well have made a lasting impression on your impressionable youth. As you went through life together, a little jolt of happiness would accompany every new encounter; across the years there were many opportunities for such meetings, in which one found her older, unavoidably, but never aged. Petite, with delicate features and a soft voice, she nevertheless held a screen with authority,

Of course, you might have gotten on the Fabares train with “Coach,” where she played the TV anchor girlfriend (then wife) of star Craig T. Nelson across nine seasons (with two Emmy nominations), or “One Day at a Time,” where she provided Bonnie Franklin a competitive foil and sometimes appeared with her aunt, the great Nanette Fabray, as Franklin’s mother. You might have absorbed her cumulative presence across decades of guest roles from “The Twilight Zone” to “The Rockford Files” to “Newhart.” There are a lot of doors into this house.

Fabares would say that she had worked since the age of 3, first as a child model. She acted from age 10; her early television appearances included episodes of “Fury” and “Captain Midnight,” the “Mickey Mouse Club” serial “Annette,” and as Paul Newman’s kid sister in a celebrated 1955 TV production of “Our Town,” along with Eva Marie Saint and Frank Sinatra. She was 14 in 1958 when she was cast in “The Donna Reed Show,” a comparatively unsentimental family comedy in which she provided teenage female energy of an unusually reflective sort as Mary Stone. She’s the serious child, with younger brother Paul Petersen the impulsive scamp.

There’s a gravity, even a melancholy to her Mary Stone, which drew on Fabares’ ability to project a genuine inner life into the least promising scenarios. She is a genius at looking and listening. In a show that inevitably can seem dated — Lorelai and Rory watch it, ironically, in an episode of “Gilmore Girls” — Fabares reads as unusually modern. She never does too much, but draws you in by doing just the right amount of little. (Indeed, there’s more than a touch of Mary Stone in Rory Gilmore.) Mary’s plotlines tend to revolve around her interest in boys, which may be considered both indicative of the times and of being, you know, adolescent, though one feels somehow that she’d actually be too much for any of the boys she’s interested in.

It’s impossible not to mention the song “Johnny Angel,” which Fabares had been elbowed into recording for the show and which, despite her claims of having no singing ability, became a No. 1 single in 1962; two albums, “Shelley!” and “The Things We Did Last Summer,” followed. But this is a mere blip on her career.

She was 20 when she left “Donna Reed” after its fifth season (returning for an occasional appearance). “It really was like the girl or the boy making the decision to move away from home to go to college,” she later told an interviewer. After a grown-up role in 1963’s Hawaii-set drama “Ride the Wild Surf” (a trailer describes her character as “old enough to fall in love, too young to know any better”), she entered her Presley period, playing opposite him in three pictures “Girl Happy” (1965), “Spinout” (1966) and “Clambake” (1967) — as many as Doris Day and Rock Hudson made together, around the same time — not the worst of the singer’s screen canon, and if you are in the mood, or the right age when you first encounter them, quite delightful. This is especially true if you overlook the sillier production numbers and hacky plots and focus on the stars’ scenes together. They are compatibly beautiful; her softness brings out his, and she grounds him in a way that, say, Ann-Margret, Presley’s more aggressive co-star in “Viva Las Vegas,” did not.

Fabares’ post-Elvis years were devoted almost exclusively to television, with “Coach,” where she generally played the adult in the room, in the final season, with an adopted baby, became a TV mom herself; and 23 episodes of “One Day at a Time,” in which she progressed from guest to recurring to regular; her well-remembered Francine Webster is ambitious and manipulative in a strangely innocent way, there is a sort of purity to her self-centeredness — an eccentric character played without mannerisms.

In and around them, to fill out the century, were various guest spots (“Ironside,” “McCloud,” “Mannix,” et al., and multiple episodes of “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island”), and a few more or less successful series (more less than more). These included 1972‘s “The Brian Keith Show,” a single-camera, location-rich sitcom with Keith and Fabares as father and daughter pediatricians in Hawaii; “The Practice,” a 1976 Danny Thomas sitcom, with Fabares as his daughter-in-law; the gothic comedy “Highcliffe Manor,” which aired four of six episodes in 1979; and the 1977 “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” sequel “Forever Fernwood.” There were TV movies, including the 1971 biopic “Brian’s Song” (seen by 55 million people and later released in theaters) with Fabares as the wife of dying halfback Brian Piccolo, and a 1993 thriller, “Deadly Relations,” also starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert Urich and Matthew Perry. In this century, she has been essentially retired, for whatever combination of reasons actors can’t, or don’t care to, work. Still, one would call it a decision.

I recommend watching Fabares anywhere you can; it’s always rewarding, whatever the context. It’s worth looking at her the way she looks at Elvis, or Donna Reed, or Craig Nelson or any scene partner, with attention and intention. Happily, you can find her without much trouble in the deep streaming library, where she springs, for the foreseeable digital future, eternal.