Career
Born Donella Donaldson in Oak Park, Illinois, Haydon began her acting career when she was 19, touring with Minnie Maddern Fiske in Mistress Bumstead Leigh. Within two years, she played Ophelia in a production of Hamlet at the Hollywood Playhouse. Shortly after, she began appearing in films, in 1931.
Her first film, in which she was billed under her birth name, was The Great Meadow, a Johnny Mack Brown Western drama made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1932, she signed with Radio-Keith-Orpheum, and her first major role came that year in The Conquerors, directed by William Wellman Her most notable performance came in 1935"s The Scoundrel playing opposite Noël Coward, but, despite a new contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, only a few more films were to come in her short career, including, the initial movie in the Andy Hardy series.
Haydon retired from films in 1937. In 1955, Haydon married the much older drama critic George Jean Nathan (1882-1958).
They had no children and she never remarried. Following his death, Haydon worked as a drama coach, and appeared onstage in community theater and college productions.
She delivered lectures taken from books written by Nathan, two collections of which Haydon edited.
She also wrote occasional magazine articles about the actors she had worked with in her career. Haydon recorded two albums for Folkways Records in the early 1960s, George Jean Nathan"s The New American Credo (1962) and Colette"s Music Hall (L"Envers du Music-Hall): By Colette (1963). In 1962, the actress left New York and returned to the Midwest.
Foreign a decade, she was actress in residence at the College of Saint Teresa in Winona, Minnesota.
She played the role of the mother in revivals of The Glass Menagerie, and in 1980, returned to New York to perform the role off-off-Broadway. Julie Haydon died in Louisiana Crosse, Wisconsin of cancer, aged 84.
She was buried next to her husband in the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New New York The Nathan-Haydon papers were donated to the Louisiana Crosse Public Library archives.
The Conquerors.
