David Bloomberg

The Don...Story of an Actor is a fascinating, fast moving story of the rise and fall of an actor. The main protagonist, Arthur Mullan is Irish born but on a visit to London he is abandoned in England by his boxer father and is placed in a Catholic boarding school where his sexuality is exploited. Entering the theatrical profession he adopts the stage name of Patrick Novello Donovan and at the height of an illustrious career the press confer on him the soubriquet of ‘The Don’.  He rises to become a famous English actor but his bisexuality and dependence on alcohol and drugs accelerate periodic downfalls.

Woven into the story are interesting illusory encounters which The Don has with famous people of his time, such as Anton Dolin, Ivor Novello and Laurence Olivier together with the fictitious characters Gregory Packer, an aristocratic dilettante and the eccentric baroness Gwyneth Hesketh-Jones who had graduated from Brixton, to working at Harrods, to enjoying the good life on her late husband’s estate in the “mink and manure” playgrounds of the Cotswolds. The Don’s career while working in Stratford-upon-Avon leading the seduction of his pretty but frail Ophelia while he was strutting the boards as the Prince of Denmark, makes for a humorous encounter.

The Don...Story of an Actor provides the profile of an actor which those in the profession will recognize as authentic and which those less familiar with the stage will find informative and compelling.