Appreciation: Shelley Fabares' acting, from 'Donna Reed' to 'Coach,' was shaped by intention

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Set us as preferred 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 ...