Maureen donaldson biography

Maureen Donaldson would tell such outrageous stories you’d swear she was making it all up. Who packs all this into one life: a May-September affair with Cary Grant? A parrot that once belonged to Muhammad Ali?

A first job with The Beatles?

Word came via a Facebook posting this week from mutual friend Ray Bennett that Maureen, who we both first knew back when she was a LA-based celebrity photographer, had passed away in The UK.

She was 77, dead, apparently, from a lung disease.

I was a twenty-something photo editor at TV Guide Canada when I first encountered Maureen’s chipper English accent on the phone from Los Angeles.

Maureen donaldson biography

Maureen was charming, incredibly charismatic and had a wicked sense of humour. Those qualities helped her book photo shoots with Hollywood soap stars and other television personalities. It was her personal friendships with several A-listers in the film and music business, however, that opened even bigger doors.

Not that Donaldson and fame were ever strangers.