Actress' old letters open a window onto lives of WWII soldiers

"It has been a long time since any of us boys have seen a woman, so we are writing to you in hopes that you'll help us out of our situation," Cpl. Frank Gizych lamented in a letter posted from the fog-shrouded Aleutian Islands. "Since we know that it's impossible to see a woman in the flesh, we would appreciate it very much if you could send us a photo of yourself."

It was July 1944, and America was at war. From bases and battlefields in Europe and on Pacific islands, troops were sending streams of letters to their favorite actresses in Hollywood, asking for pinup photos and commenting on life on the front lines.

Almost all of that mail, which studios usually answered with a glossy shot showing the star in a saucy pose, has been lost. But the actress Donna Reed, later famous for her roles as Mary Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life" and the middle-class housewife Donna Stone on "The Donna Reed Show," saved some of the correspondence she received. After nearly 65 years in a shoebox inside an old trunk long stored in the garage of her home in Beverly Hills, Calif., the letters have finally been read and made public by the actress's children. Reed died in 1986 at age 64.

"Mom never mentioned them," said Mary Owen, 52, the youngest of the four. She added, "I had no idea she was such an important symbol to these guys."

The U.S. military encouraged the pinup phenomenon as a way to maintain the morale of soldiers far from home. Most of the leading pinups were established stars known for their sex appeal, in particular Betty Grable, blond hair piled high, poured into a swimsuit and photographed from behind, her face turned toward the camera with a smile. There were others: Images of Rita Hayworth, Ann Sheridan, Hedy Lamarr and Dorothy Lamour also adorned lockers, barracks walls and the noses of military aircraft.

But "Donna Reed probably came closer than any other actress to being the archetypal sweetheart, wife and mother," said Jay Fultz, author of the 1998 biography "In Search of Donna Reed." Because she was also slightly younger, newly graduated from ingénue roles and closer in age to the average fighting man, they often wrote to her as if to a sister or the girl next door, confiding moments of homesickness, loneliness, doubt and anxiety.

All told, Reed held on to 341 letters, which taken as a whole offers a candid glimpse of a vanished era, a time when six hard-bitten Marine sergeants could write that "we think you're swell" and mean it.

"The boys in our outfit," Sgt. William Love wrote on Aug. 18, 1944, from the jungles of New Guinea, "think you are a typical American girl, someone who we would like to come home to!!!!!"

On March 28, 1944, Sgt. John Dale, of Tennessee, a tail gunner on a B-17, told Reed, then 23, that he wanted her "to be the girl back home that I am fighting for."

The letters have been cataloged by Owen, who found them in the shoebox. Some of them were accompanied by doodles, cartoons or photographs of the writers.

Reed, originally named Donnabelle Mullenger, was born and raised on a farm near Denison, Iowa. A disproportionate number of the letters she saved were written by servicemen from her home state, including one who knew her growing up.

"Sometimes I wish I was back there with the old gang," Gordon Clausen wrote from the USS Simpson on April 8, 1945. "Occasionally I will sit on the fantail and look at the moon, wondering how many of our old friends were doing the same."

Hindsight makes some of the letters exceptionally poignant. Writing from North Africa on "April 12, 1943, I think," Lt. Norman P. Klinker, a 24-year-old serving in the Army's 91st Field Artillery Battalion, tried to convey something about combat.

"It is "tough and bloody and dirty," he explained, "quite an interesting and a heartless life at one and the same time," but without "that grim and worried feeling so rampant in war pictures."

On Jan. 6, 1944, Klinker was killed in action in Italy, U.S. government records show, during his unit's assault on Mount Porchia, between Naples and Rome.

Even those letter writers who survived the war have, for the most part, died. But a small number of her correspondents are alive and can vividly remember their contacts with her.

At 84, Edward Skvarna is retired and living in Covina, Calif. But in 1943, he was fresh out of high school in a mill town near Pittsburgh, newly enlisted in the Army Air Forces and training in Kansas to be a right gunner on a B-29 when he met Reed at a USO canteen and asked her to dance.

"I had never danced with a celebrity before, so I felt delighted, privileged even, to meet her," Skvarna recalled this month. "But I really felt she was like a girl from back home. She was from a smaller community, and we were more or less the same age, so I felt she was the kind of person I could talk to."

Sent to Asia, Skvarna kept up a sporadic correspondence with her as he flew reconnaissance missions. On May 7, 1945, based in the Marianas, he wrote of receiving a letter of hers that made him "jump with joy" and of a visit he made to a rajah's palace in India; he also sent photographs of himself and asked for a snapshot of her in return.

Gauging the impact that the letters had on Reed is difficult.

"I knew she had feelings about her country and participating as a concerned citizen," Owen said. But, she added, her mother did not talk about the letters.

Later in life, Reed became an ardent antiwar campaigner, serving during the Vietnam era as co-chairwoman of a 285,000-member group called Another Mother for Peace and working for Sen. Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential race.