Yolande Donlan | WatchedThis
Yolande Donlan
Acting
Biography
Yolande Donlan (born June 2, 1920 in Jersey City, New Jersey) is an American actress who has worked extensively in the United Kingdom. She is the daughter of James Donlan, who was a hard working character actor in Hollywood films of the 1930s. It is thought that she had some uncredited roles in films including Pennies From Heaven and Love Finds Andy Hardy immediately following her father's death in 1938, but these have not been confirmed. Her early credited roles include Frenchy the maid in the horror film The Devil Bat in 1940 and she followed this up with several small roles, generally as similar French-accented maid characters. A notable stage success as Billie Dawn in a Boston production of Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin was the start of bigger things for Donlan. The production transferred to London's West End for a long run. Donlan was initially denied a work permit to star in the lead in Peter Pan due to complaints from Actors Equity who felt that a British star should have the lead. After it ended, Donlan remained in the United Kingdom and began accepting film work. After Traveller's Joy in 1949, Donlan worked for the director Val Guest in several films including Mister Drake's Duck, Penny Princess (in the title role) and The Body Said No. Donlan married Guest in 1954 and afterwards her film work included many of her husband's films such as Expresso Bongo and 80,000 Suspects, as well as a small number of films for other directors. In 1955 she penned the autobiographical travelogue, Sand in my Mink an amusing tale of adventures taken with her husband, across Europe, which makes a light hearted read of how travel used to be. A further stage success came in 1959 in Jack Popplewell's And Suddenly It's Spring opposite Margaret Lockwood. Her most recent film credit is Seven Nights in Japan from 1976. The same year saw publication of her autobiography, Shake the Stars Down, which concentrates on her childhood years growing up in the Hollywood of the 1930s. Guest retired from directing in 1985 and the couple moved back to the United States of America in the late 1980s, where they resided in Palm Springs until his death in 2006. Donlan now lives in Belgravia, London.
Filmography Movies
Acting
The Devil Bat
Dr. Paul Carruthers is frustrated because he thinks his employers, Mary Heath and Henry Morton, have cheated him out of the company's profits. He decides to get revenge by altering bats to grow twice their normal size and training them to attack when they smell a perfume of his own making. He mixes the perfume into a lotion, which he offers as a gift to Mary and Henry. When they turn up dead, a newspaper reporter decides to investigate.
Penny Princess
A tiny European country which for years has survived financially only through evading its bills and smuggling is finally facing bankruptcy, when a rich American agrees to save the place by buying it. But before, the deal is closed, he dies. His nearest relative and heir turns out to be a young woman with high ethical and democratic standards, but no experience with money, or affairs of state, or Europe. A charming young English visitor helps her to muddle through. Comedy and romance follow.
Tarzan and the Lost Safari
Tarzan leads five passengers from a downed airplane out of the jungle. En route white hunter Hawkins tries to sell them to the Oparian chief.
Jigsaw
A woman is found murdered in a seaside house along the coast from Brighton in the county of East Sussex, England. Local D.I. Fred Fellows and D.S. Jim Wilks lead an investigation methodically following up leads and clues mostly in Brighton and Hove but also further afield. _-= Based on the novel "Sleep Long My Love" by Hillary Waugh and Inspired by the Brighton Trunk Murders of the late 1930's =-_
They Can't Hang Me
A murderer hopes to escape his death sentence by identifying the leaders of a spy ring.
Expresso Bongo
A seedy London promoter turns a naive, working-class teenager into a pop singing sensation.
Mr. Drake's Duck
Mr. Drake and his wife live a nice, quiet life on their Sussex farm, until one of their ducks lays a radioactive egg made of uranium! When the government finds out about this, the Armed Forces storm onto the farm in a frantic search for the duck responsible.
Traveller's Joy
A divorced couple, living hand-to-mouth in Stockholm, must first pay their hotel bill before returning to England. To raise the necessary funds, they must pretend that they're still married.
80,000 Suspects
A doctor's already-shaky marriage is tested to an even greater extent when he has to contend with a smallpox epidemic.
Seven Nights in Japan
Handsome Prince George arrives on board his ship in Japan. Youthful, immaculate in naval uniform and smiling broadly, he goes through the complicated formalities of being greeted by a host nation. But housed with the Ambassador and his family, the Prince finds the atmosphere stuffy and dull; he longs for freedom and, for once, rebels against his upbringing with all its constraints and responsibilities, escaping for a week of romance, and unexpected drama…
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