 Most notably of the genre, Donaldson portrayed Gloria Roberts in 1972's "Across 110th Street" and Honey in 1974's "Willie Dynamite".In 1975, Donaldson began her acting career on Broadway and was most famous for portraying the loveless chorine Miss Adelaide, opposite Robert Guillaume, in an all–black revival of Frank Loesser's "Guys and Dolls" which premiered in 1976.Donaldson co–starred alongside Guillaume again in "Purlie" and "No Place to be Somebody".