[5] Pierce's father was a corporate officer for the Briggs Manufacturing Company in Detroit, while the family lived in the northern suburb of Southfield, Michigan.
[10] The move to put her in a Milwaukee boarding school came as a surprise, she told interviewer Jerry Pam many years later, but "after a few weeks I really dug it".
[10] She later returned to Michigan to attend Brookside Academy, a progressive girls school, where she claimed to have "majored in oil painting, ceramics, dramatics, and soccer".
The show was based out of New York City at that time, and her status as model, local nurse, and Miss Rheingold finalist earned her a brief guest spot.
[18] Nothing came of it at first, for a May 1957 visa application for a magazine photo shoot in Rio de Janeiro showed her still living in New York City and listed her profession as "Nurse".
[20] She did another bit part in MGM's The Subterraneans, and played a New York cover girl in Bells Are Ringing with Judy Holliday and Dean Martin.
Pierce did an episode of MGM's television series, The Thin Man with Peter Lawford in early 1959, and appeared as the studio's representative on The Bob Hope Show that Fall, for the "Deb Stars of 1959".
A two-page photo-illustrated spread in Weekend Magazine, a supplemental insert for many newspapers, showed her interacting with strangers on the streets of a big city to build name recognition.
She was popular with other TV production companies, so although MGM didn't renew her long-term contract she continued to be occasionally cast in studio produced and/or distributed projects.
She had leading guest star roles on such popular shows as Adventures in Paradise, Bronco, Route 66, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Wagon Train, often with her photo used to advertise the upcoming episode in newspapers.
She also had a prominent and credited role in her sixth film, a collection of three Edgar Allan Poe stories called Tales of Terror.
[27] Her television success continued throughout 1963, while her old studio MGM called her back to play Robert Taylor's niece in Cattle King, released during Summer 1963.
[31] Sothern's voiceover lines were recorded separately, so there was no real dialog interaction between her and Van Dyke, who admitted he had only met her once, when the pilot was made.
[30] Some columnists reported producer concerns that Dick Van Dyke's relentless promotion of his younger brother's new show would backfire.
The younger Van Dyke may have been partly responsible for a major change in Pierce's appearance, after speaking to an interviewer in May 1965, five months before the premiere.
[36] Other comical fantasy shows often succeed thru whimsy or eccentric characters, but the Crabtree family was rendered blandly normal by the writers.
She gave an interview midway thru the season where she claimed not to care about the jibes aimed at the show by critics, because she was just using the series as a means to an end.
[39] She managed the Minskoff Theatre during the late seventies, drawing the ire of Liz Smith who insinuated she regularly overbooked the rehearsal space.
[42] The musical was performed at the Audrey Wood Theater in New York City during April 1984, starring Nathan Lane and Judy Kaye.
Her background stories as related in newspapers changed over the years, confusing the issues of where she went to school, how long she was a nurse or model, and how her show business break occurred.
[44] She loved sports, played soccer in high school, and as an adult was catcher on a weekend softball team made up of Hollywood women.
[fn 3][46] Some sources say they married after his divorce, in Las Vegas, Nevada during 1966, but the only marriage license in public records for the couple is from New York City for 1971.