Yolande Donlan

Yolande Donlan was born on June 2, 1920, in Jersey City, New Jersey, the daughter of James Donlan, a character actor, and Teresa Donlan, née Mollot, a singer. She died in London on December 30, 2014, at the age of 94. An American-born actress who built the majority of her career in the United Kingdom, Donlan worked across film, stage, and television over several decades.

Her earliest screen appearances came in 1940, when she took on a series of small roles frequently featuring French-accented maid characters. Among these was the role of Frenchy in the horror film The Devil Bat, opposite Bela Lugosi, and a maid role in Turnabout, serving Carole Landis. In 1942 she appeared in DuBarry Was a Lady as one of Red Skelton's concubines. Her Broadway activity ran from 1940 to 1944. She appeared in the revue Earl Carroll's Vanities and played Julie in the play School for Brides at the Royale Theatre in New York in 1944. A year earlier, in 1942, she had played Dodie in Goodnight Ladies at the Blackstone Theatre in Chicago.

A touring production of Garson Kanin's Born Yesterday proved a turning point in Donlan's career. Her performance as Billie Dawn drew strong notices from American reviewers, prompting Laurence Olivier to travel to Boston to assess her work firsthand. Olivier subsequently cast her in his West End staging of the play, which opened at the Garrick Theatre in London in January 1947 to considerable acclaim. She remained in the United Kingdom following that production, taking the lead in Peter Pan, though her casting initially drew objections from Equity, the actors' union, over the use of an American performer in the role.

Donlan's stage work in Britain continued alongside her growing film career. She appeared in Noel Langley's Cage Me a Peacock at the Strand Theatre in 1948, playing Lucrece, and in Roger MacDougall's To Dorothy, a Son at the Savoy Theatre in 1950, the latter featuring Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim. In 1959 she appeared opposite Margaret Lockwood in Jack Popplewell's And Suddenly It's Spring at the Duke of York's Theatre in London.

Her film work in Britain brought her into a sustained professional relationship with director Val Guest. Beginning with Miss Pilgrim's Progress in 1949, in which she starred alongside Michael Rennie, Donlan went on to appear in The Body Said No! in 1950, also with Rennie, Mister Drake's Duck in 1951 with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Penny Princess in 1952, in the title role opposite Dirk Bogarde. In 1950, British exhibitors voted her the most promising female newcomer. She married Guest in 1954, following the dissolution of both their previous marriages, and ultimately appeared in eight films under his direction. The later collaborations included They Can't Hang Me in 1955, Expresso Bongo in 1959 with Laurence Harvey and Cliff Richard, Jigsaw in 1962 with Jack Warner, and 80,000 Suspects in 1963 with Richard Johnson.

Beyond her work with Guest, Donlan appeared in Tarzan and the Lost Safari in 1957 with Gordon Scott, notable as the first Tarzan film made in color, and Seven Nights in Japan in 1976, which was her final film role.

Donlan also pursued a writing career. Her autobiographical travelogue Sand in My Mink, published in 1955, recounts holiday travels across Europe with her husband. Her autobiography, published in 1976 under the title Shake the Stars Down in the United Kingdom and Third Time Lucky in the United States, covers her childhood in the Hollywood household of her father James Donlan during the 1930s, as well as her early work as a dancer and actress. In 2004, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated jointly to Donlan and Guest.