Shelley Fabares

Michele Ann Marie "Shelley" Fabares (/ˌfæbəˈreɪ/; born January 19, 1944) is a retired American actress and singer.

Her film roles include playing the leading lady to Elvis Presley in Girl Happy, Spinout and Clambake.

At the age of 10, she made her first appearance on television in an episode of Letter to Loretta, "The Clara Schuman Story" (1954).

[5][6] Early TV appearances included the Producers' Showcase adaptation of Our Town starring Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman.

Fabares had small parts in The Girl Rush (1955), Never Say Goodbye (1956), The Bad Seed (1956), Rock, Pretty Baby!

[9] She guest starred on Mr. Novak, The Eleventh Hour, Arrest and Trial, and The Twilight Zone ("Black Leather Jackets").

[10][11] In 1958, Fabares landed the role of Mary Stone in the long-running family sitcom The Donna Reed Show.

[17][18][19] Fabares left The Donna Reed Show in 1963 (she would return periodically until its end in 1966) to pursue other acting opportunities.

"[20] MGM made a pilot for a TV series based on Meet Me in St. Louis with Fabares in the lead but no network was receptive to it.

[11] Film roles dried up in the late 1960s and Fabares went back to guest starring on shows like The Ghost & Mrs. Muir,[21] Daniel Boone, Medical Center, Lancer, Bracken's World, and The Interns.

"[23] After Mannix, she was in Longstreet, Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law, Love, American Style, Rockford Files, McCloud and Cade's County.

[24] Fabares had a regular role on The Brian Keith Show (1972–1974), known as The Little People during its first season, which lasted for 47 episodes.

In 1978, Fabares played Francine Webster on the CBS sitcom One Day at a Time, a role she reprised for the last three years of the show.

Fabares was in the television film Pleasure Cove (1979), Donovan's Kid (1979), Friendships, Secrets and Lies (1979) and The Great American Traffic Jam (1980).

"Here was an intelligent, funny, well-written series," Fabares said "And the people putting it on wanted me to play a very successful, ambitious woman in it.

[28] During the series' run Fabares appeared on Love or Money (1990), Deadly Relations (1993), The Great Mom Swap (1995), and A Nightmare Come True (1997).

John Saxon , Shelley Fabares, John Wilder and Jill St. John in Summer Love (1958)
The Donna Reed Show : (clockwise from bottom left) Paul Petersen , Donna Reed , Carl Betz , and Shelley Fabares, 1958
With James Darren in 1959
Publicity photo of Fabares, c. 1966