[2][1] Donnell was signed to a contract by Columbia Pictures while she was active with the Farragut Playhouse in New Hampshire, and she made her film debut in My Sister Eileen (1942).

Columbia did give Donnell the glamour treatment later (in the 1946 Boston Blackie mystery The Phantom Thief, in which she played a troubled heiress), but she never shook the sidekick image.

[13][14] Donnell's fourth and final marriage, to Radcliffe (aka Rod)[15] Bealey, lasted all of three months, comprising roughly the spring of 1970.

Commencing in March of that year with a guest list confined to family and close friends,[16] the marriage was officially dissolved in June.

[7] As for her then still recurring role on General Hospital, a contemporaneous report by syndicated soaps pundit Lynda Hirsch states that Donnell was being replaced by another actress in that season's remaining few episodes, and would then be written out of the show altogether, the onscreen rationale consisting of a note left with her character's employers, explaining that she had to leave to care for an ailing relative.