1905 – 1935 Kitty Doner

Years active
1905 – 1935

Stage Name(s)
Kitty Donor

Category
Male Impersonator

Country of Origin
USA

Birth – Death
1895 – 1988

Bio

Kitty Doner was a vaudeville and Broadway performer who is most well known for her work as a male impersonator. Known for her dance routines and cheeky male persona, Doner had a career in show business that lasted 50 years. Doner started her career in vaudeville performing with her family, eventually becoming her own headliner, then an opener for Al Jolson, and finally a choreographer for the Rockettes (then called the “Roxyettes”) and CBS.

Doner was born on September 6, 1895 in Chicago, Illinois, the eldest of three siblings. Both of Doner’s parents were in show business, with her mother, Nellie Mordecai, even starting her career as a male impersonator in English “pantos”. Kitty Doner’s first professional stage appearance was in 1905, as a canary in the children’s ballet at the New York Hippodrome. Her father suggested she become a male impersonator, and she had her first solo vaudeville act at 16 in 1911.

Her first show was a 1912 musical called The Candy Shop for Bronco Billy’s musical stock company. In her performances, Doner would often play multiple parts, some cross-dressing some not, by 1935 she had given up male impersonating entirely as it fell out of fashion. She met Al Jolson in Dancing Around at the Panama Pacific International Exhibition, and joined his company. From 1914 to 1919 she toured and performed with Al Jolson around the country, even playing at the winter garden in New York. Her most well known performance with Jolson was when she played Prince Stubb Talmage in Sinbad, a popular 1918 musical.

After touring with Jolson, Doner performed at the Palace theater in New York, and toured the Keith and Orpheum vaudeville circuit with her siblings, Ted and Rose. In 1922 the Doner siblings went to perform in London, England at the Palace theater. In 1923, she starred in Dancing Girl at the Winter Garden in New York, where she played both male and female parts. Then in 1924 she headlined the vaudeville show Twenty Minutes in Paris, where the press claimed “The best dressed man on stage is a woman”. By 1925 she had rejoined her brother Ted on the West Coast to star in Lady Be Good, a show about a brother sister dance team that was popularized by Fred and Adele Astaire. .

While on the West Coast, she made a 6 minute “talkie” for Warner Brothers called A Bit of Scotch (1928). In 1931, she performed on one of the first broadcasts by CBS, beginning her work offstage. She then worked on the Roxy staff for seven years as a choreographer for the then called “Roxyettes”. She continued to work as a choreographer for various theater shows and then for TV with CBS, until 1947. In 1948, she began her quest to write an autobiography after being told by a 20th Century Fox producer to “go write a book”. Her mission to write a book about her life would continue for the rest of her life. She completed her final version (she wrote three) around 1976, twelve years before her death. 

Kitty Doner lived in El Monte, California until her death on Aug 26, 1988 at the age of 92.

(Submitted by: Kitty Roche, Los Angeles, CA)

• Kitty Doner’s cousin three times removed