Reed is probably better remembered for her roles when a wholesome homemaker "Donna Stone" on television's The Donna Reed Show and as "Mary Bailey" within Capra's ''It's a Wonderful Life''. She won the Better Supporting Actress Academy Award for playing the fancy woman around 1953's From Here to Eternity.

Within her down the road years she temporarily replaced an poorly Barbara Bel Geddes as "Miss Ellie" in the television series Dallas in the 1984–1985 season. While Bel Geddes was swell plenty to go to to the role, Reed was fired. She sued a indicate's production company & received an unrevealed seven-figure payout, however it was shortly prior to her have demise.

She died at age 64 around Beverly Hills, California from pancreatic cancer, and was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

A Donna Reed Foundation for the Performing Arts, depending inside Reed's hometown of Denison, was organized fallowing Reed's dying inside 1986. A non-not-for-profit grants scholarships for performing arts students, diarrhea an annual festival of performing arts workshops, & operates A Donna Reed Center for the Performing Arts. A performing arts center was erstwhile an opera built around 1914, and afterwards renovated into a Ritz Movie Theater inside which Donna Reed, as a lassie in Denison, foremost fell gaga by using picture.

Filmography
The Get-Away (1941) Shadow of the Thin Man (1941) Babes on Broadway (1941) Personalities (1942) (short subject) The Bugle Sounds (1942) The Courtship of Andy Hardy (1942) Mokey (1942) Calling Dr. Gillespie (1942) Apache Trail (1942) Eyes in the Night (1942) The Human Comedy (1943) ''Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case (1943) The Man from Down Under (1943) Thousands Cheer (1943) See Here, Private Hargrove (1944) Mrs. Parkington (1944) Gentle Annie (1944) The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) They Were Expendable (1945) Faithful in My Fashion (1946) It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Green Dolphin Street (1947) Beyond Glory (1948) Chicago Deadline (1949) Screen Actors (1950) (short subject) Saturday's Hero (1951) Scandal Sheet (1952) Hangman's Knot (1952) Trouble Along the Way (1953) USSR Today (1953) (documentary) Raiders of the Seven Seas (1953) From Here to Eternity (1953; Best Supporting Actress Oscar) The Caddy (1953) Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Laugh Parade (1953) (short subject) Gun Fury (1953) They Rode West (1954) Three Hours to Kill (1954) The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) The Far Horizons (1955) The Benny Goodman Story (1955) Ransom! (1956) Backlash (1956) Beyond Mombasa (1956) The Whole Truth (1958) Pepe (1960) (Cameo) Yellow-Headed Summer'' (1974)