I remember Shelly from Coach and the last three seasons of One Day At a Time. I had a teen crush on her in high school, and always enjoyed her work on Coach.
She appeared in Superman: The Animated Series as Martha Kent in the late 90’s.
Shelly was married to Mike Farrell (MASH).
RIP
And she is the niece of Nanette Fabray, who played the grandma Romano on One Day at a Time with her niece. Probably best remembered for The Band Wagon which brought us the song “That’s Entertainment”.
The pair of them were child actresses that both transitioned to acting without any major problems. Shelley started at age 10 or 11. became a bit of a star as the daughter on the Donna Reed Show as Mary Stone.
None of the Obits I read mentioned this connection, so I thought I would.
She was friends with Annette Funicello since they were young teens and remained friends throughout their lives.
Another teen crush gone.
I remember hoping Shelly would Sing in an episode of Coach. I don’t think she ever did in any of her later acting roles.
There were 199 episodes of coach. Craig, Jerry, Bill, and Shelly were credited in all of them. That’s a lot of hard work.
I seem to remember her saying at one point that she didn’t really think she was a good singer, and didn’t enjoy singing. She was essentially made to record “Johnny Angel” as part of her job on The Donna Reed Show, but found the process very intimidating. None of her follow-up records were ever as successful.
As mentioned, she voiced Martha Kent on Superman: The Animated Series. Her husband, Mike Farrell, voiced Jonathan Kent, which I always thought was kind of sweet.
I never watched “Coach,” but I did watch an earlier, less successful series “The Brian Keith Show” aka “The Little People” from the early 1970s.
She’s looking down at me as I type…from my poster for Ride the Wild Surf.