HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JULIE HAYDON
(June 10, 1910 - December 24, 1994)

"Julie was never in any mental or spiritual state other than that of ecstasy."   Tennessee Williams, Memoirs (1975)

Born Donella Donaldson in Oak Park, Illinois, she began her acting career at the age of 19, touring with Minnie Maddern Fiske in
Mrs. Bumpstead Leigh.

In 1931 she began appearing in films, signed with RKO in 1932 and had a major role in The Conquerors, directed by William Wellman. Her most notable performance was opposite Noel Coward in
The Scoundrel.  Before she retired from films in 1937 she played in
A Family Affair starring Mickey Rooney in the Andy Hardy series.

Successful Broadway performances in Shadow and Substance by
Paul Vincent Carroll in which she played a saintly maid led to the role of Kitty Duval, the prostitute in William Saroyan's Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Time of Your Life. Her most famous role was as Laura Wingfield in the first production of The Glass Menagerie in 1945 with the amazing Laurette Taylor as her mother.  Lewis Nichols of The New York Times wrote "Tennessee Williams's simple play forms the framework for some of the finest acting to be seen in many a day. . . .Julie Haydon, very ethereal and slight, is good as the daughter."

Laurette Taylor as Amanda

Other Broadway roles created by Haydon were Cicely in Miracle in the Mountains, Libeth Arbarbane in Our Lan' both in 1947. She toured as Celia Coplestone with the national company of T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party. 

She had met and become infatuated with the much older George Jean Nathan, the Dean of American drama critics. After a twenty year friendship they were married in 1955. After he died in 1958, she worked as a drama coach and delivered lectures taken from the 45 books written by Nathan and wrote occasional magazine articles about the actors she had worked with in her career.

In 1967 she began a ten year association as actress-in-residence at The College of St. Teresa in Winona, Minnesota. Using this women's liberal arts college as her base she continued to make appearances at other colleges and theatres in plays and programs of readings.

She played Amanda in 15 revivals of The Glass Menagerie and in 1980, returned to New York to perform the role Off-Broadway.

The Nathan-Haydon papers were donated to the LaCrosse Public Library archives in Wisconsin.