After her Hollywood career ended in 1937, she turned to the theatre, originating the roles of Kitty Duval in The Time of Your Life (1939) and Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie (1945).

Born in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, to Orin Donaldson, a newspaper publisher, and Ella Horton,[2] Haydon began her acting career when she was 19, studying with Neely Dickson at the Hollywood Community Theater.

Her first film, in which she was billed under her birth name, was The Great Meadow, a Johnny Mack Brown Western drama made by MGM.

In 1932, she signed with RKO,[4] and her first major role came that year in The Conquerors, directed by William Wellman[citation needed] Her most notable performance[4] came in 1935's The Scoundrel playing opposite Noël Coward,[citation needed] but, despite a new contract with MGM,[5] only a few more films were to come in her short career, including A Family Affair (1937), the initial movie in the Andy Hardy series.

[9] Her next Broadway production, Shadow and Substance by Paul Vincent Carroll, in which she played a saintly maid, was more successful, running for nine months in 1938.

[citation needed] After his death, she delivered lectures taken from books written by her husband, George Jean Nathan, two collections of which Haydon edited.