American actress best known for her early all-American teenager role on the 1950s TV sitcom, “The Donna Reed Show.”
Born into a showbiz family, she is the niece of actress Nanette Fabray. Her mother, Elsa, got Shelley into modeling at age three, leading to appearances on television. She became a teen star from her role as the daughter of Donna Reed and in 1962 had a pop hit single, “Johnny Angel.” Her father, James, a real estate broker, died in 1977.
During the mid-1960s she costarred with Elvis Presley in “Girl Happy,” “Spinout” and “Clambake.” In the 1970s, she returned to TV sitcoms appearing as Danny Thomas’s daughter-in-law in the “The Practice,” as a wheelchair-ridden tyrant in “Forever Fernwood” and as Bonnie Franklin’s bitchy business partner in “One Day at a Time.” She most recently starred in a long-running TV series, “Coach.” All who have worked with Fabares agree that she is a genuinely nice person.
Fabares had a first marriage to record mogul Lou Adler. In 1984 she married TV actor, Mike Farrell which has developed into one of Hollywood’s successful marriages as the two compliment each other. Farrell states that she has a light side that lifts him out dark moods and Fabares says that Farrell grounds her and provided the strength and “safe harbor” she needed when in 1986 she had to deal with troubled times. There was the untimely death of coworker and friend Donna Reed of pancreatic cancer, and the deterioration of her mother’s health with Alzheimer’s Disease.
In 1998 an autoimmune form of hepatitis began ravaging her liver, causing internal bleeding and putting her on the list for a liver transplant. Shortly before midnight on 10/22/2000, she and her husband, Mike, got word that a donor liver had been found and the next morning, she had a nine-hour surgery. An organic food devotee who avoids alcohol and exercises regularly, Fabares first learned that she had a liver abnormality in 1993. Her outlook has always been as gracious as her character.
Link to Wikipedia biography