Photoplay – Sept 1952
An American in London – Yolande Donlan
by MAX LANGLEY
IF beauty is energy, as some wise man said, then Yolande Donlan has it all with plenty to spare. And it’s all stream-lined to the purpose of her art.
She came to London five years ago to play in a West End comedy, Born Yesterday. Since then she has starred in three other plays, formed her own film company, played the lead with Dirk Bogarde in her own picture, Penny Princess, and, in her spare time, created a charming home in a distinguished West End square, and become very enthusiastically one of us.
Yolande has original ideas on most things in life.
When I saw her at home recently, and asked her what she liked best about England, she replied laconically :
“Junk shops!”
And she pointed to various pieces of furniture in the drawing-room to prove her statement.
“Look at that,” she said, drawing my attention to a beautiful antique mirror. “I picked that up in Peckham for a song. And those chairs,” she added, pointing to a couple of thoroughbred specimens of the Victorian furniture-maker’s art, “I got them the same way – after a little haggling.”
Above the marble mantelpiece in the drawing-room is a painting of Yolande by Russell Flint, R.A., which was exhibited at the Royal Academy. It is a lovely thing, but it hardly conveys the energetic beauty which, in my view, makes Yolande one of the most remarkable stars on the screen and stage.
Off the set, Yolande is a lovely woman – slim and graceful, with hazel eyes and champagne-coloured hair, and with her abounding energy under such perfect control, you could never imagine the dizzy blonde lurking beneath. Yet a joke, or a remembered funny incident, can set her off cracking like a firework.
I asked her about her career.
“I could never see myself in pictures,” she said. “Honestly, I couldn’t. I felt that my talents ran entirely to the stage. I had been more or less born in the business. My father was Jimmy Donlan, the Broadway comedian though he worked in pictures later – and my mother was also on the stage. So I suppose I always thought of myself in connection with the theatre.
“But pictures – no!
“To begin with I was nervous. I just couldn’t get straight with myself. The time came, of course, when I did, but I had a very hard struggle to make myself really at home in films.”
I put the question to her bluntly:
“What do you prefer – stage or screen?”
“Well, you know,” Yolande replied. “The stage was my first love – and you know what they say about first loves! But let me put it this way – I love pictures, but I have a passion for the stage.”
From the drawing-room we moved to Yolande’s study. (Incidentally, she told me that she makes a point of studying the entire script of a play or film, and not merely her own part.) This room is a reflection of Yolande’s original personality. A cabinet swings open to reveal a piano. There is a small cocktail bar and, on the wall behind, a liqueur bar in a white picture frame, glass shelves taking the place of the picture.
Over a drink, Yolande resumed her story.
“In America I made my first hit on the stage. The fairy tale really came true for me. I was understudying the leading lady in Born Yesterday on Broadway, when she fell ill. I played the part – well, and here I am!”
The last modest touch is typical of Yolande. But what actually happened later was this : when Sir Laurence Olivier decided to stage Born Yesterday in London, he asked the author of the play, Garson Kanin, to suggest a star. Kanin cabled back just two words – Yolande Donlan.
So Yolande came here – and Hollywood lost a star. For she fell in love with England, and is still in love.
“Yes,” she told me, “yes, in spite of the rations and the climate, I love this country. The only thing I really miss is open-air swimming, followed by sunbathing. I find it much too cold here. I play tennis, and I get plenty of it in England. And I like walking, and England is a wonderful country for walking.”
At eighteen, Yolande won first prize for the shapeliest figure at Hollywood’s Artists’ and Models’ Ball, and this led Earl Carroll, the famous American impresario of “Lovelies” shows, to give her an engagement in his Theatre Restaurant.
“I’d already done some acting,” Yolande said, “and I’d worked very hard at dancing. But I’d always wanted to be an actress in the full sense of the title. Now you know at least one of the reasons why I love England. It gave me a chance to realise myself as an actress.”
The brief summary of Yolande’s activities given above is by no means exhaustive. She starred in the Gainsborough film Traveller’s Joy, and then began a series of successful pictures with Val Guest – Miss Pilgrim’s Progress, The Body Said No, and Mr. Drake’s Duck, in which she appeared with Douglas Fairbanks, Jnr.
Yolande says that one of the happiest times of her life was the five weeks she and the Penny Princess company spent on location in the small Spanish village of Montseney, about fifty miles north of Barcelona.
“It was a wonderful time,” said Yolande. “All the villagers took part, and they wept when we left.
“Dirk Bogarde is a fine actor and a great person – a star in every respect.
“Penny Princess was my first Technicolor picture. Now I’m already thinking of another. I can give you the title, but not the cast. It’s called The Weather Man, and it will be made at Pinewood by my own company, Conquest Films, under the direction of Val Guest.”
Yolande saw me to the door.
“Now I’m going to do some cooking. I eat at home – to the limit of the rations. And I’ve learnt a lot of tricks to eke them out.”
So I said goodbye to this remarkable personality – actress, business woman, and housewife; lovely to look at and packed with atomic energy.
Her secret? Well, she said she hadn’t one. But I suspect that, if she really has a secret, it is her capacity for never letting up on any job she undertakes.
