Donna Reed

There's a lot on the back of this print, so let's get started with the photo credit stamp.  "KINDLY CREDIT M-G-M, Photo By CLARENCE S. BULL"  I don't often find photos by famous photographers.  Clarence Sinclair Bull was an American portrait photographer.  He was born in 1896 and in 1924 was hired by Samuel Goldwyn as the head photographer for the MGM Studios publicity department.  He worked for MGM for forty years, getting his first real recognition for a series of photographs he did of Greta Garbo.  He was know for having a sure hand with lighting and printing his own photos.  At least the first  photo, which gave the printing staff at MGM guidance for how he wanted his photos to look.  I don't know the answer to this question, but over time the photography studio at MGM had other photographers on staff.  Did Bull take every picture credited to him?  Bull died in 1979.

And the caption, "GLITTER FOR DIM OUT DINNERS.  Donna Reed favors the popular short dinner dress for cafe dinning and dancing.  Here she is seen wearing a gown of black crepe with sequins sprinkled over the softly flared skirt and peplum.  Fushia velvet belt.  Miss Reed's halo hat is black felt highlighted with a sequined ornament.  The Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer actress will be seen next with  Mickey Rooney in "The Human Comedy."

We can date this photo.  The Human Comedy was released in 1943.  Rooney plays a young man who stays home and takes care of his invalid mother while his older brother is in Europe fighting the Nazis.  I suppose, in this day and age, Donna Reed is best known for It's A Wonderful Life, released in 1946, though my favorite Reed Movie is John Ford's war movie, They Were Expendable.  In 1953, she won a best supporting actress Oscar for playing a prostitute in From Here To Eternity directed by Fred Zinnemann with, in addition to Reed, Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift, Ernest Borgnine, and Frank Sinatra. She spent most of the 1950's on The Donna Reed Show, playing a suburban  housewife.  Despite the wholesome image, in real life Donna Reed was quite political.  She was an anti nuclear weapons activist and an early opponent of the Vietnam war.

Donna Reed was born in 1921 as Donnabelle Mullenger and died of pancreatic cancer in 1986.