He was born in Newmarket, Ontario, where his grandfather Elihu James Davis (and his uncle, Aubrey Davis) owned the Davis Leather Company. He attended St. Andrew's College from 1941 to 1946, graduating with the Class of 1946, and studied theatre at the University of Toronto. He performed at the Woodstock Playhouse in New York in 1947. In 1948, with his brother, Murray Edward Davis, he founded a summer theatre company, the Straw Hat Players, at Muskoka, Ontario. Davis performed in Britain from 1950 to 1953. In 1953, with his brother and sister (Barbara Chilcott), he founded the Crest Theatre in Toronto, which operated until 1966. He performed at the Stratford Festival and on radio and television.

He was also a member of the acting company at the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut. In 1959, he began performing off-Broadway. He played Krapp in the North American premiere production of Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, for which he won an Obie Award.^[1] He performed in regional theatres in Canada and the United States. He appeared on television in "The Wild Wild West" S3 E18 "The Night of the Vipers" as the scheming Mayor Vance Beaumont. The episode aired on 1/10/1968.

Davis died of emphysema at Toronto in 1998 at age 69. St. Andrew's College opened the Donald Davis Theatre posthumously in his honour.

• San Diego, I Love You (1944)
• The Return of Rusty (1946)
• Joy in the Morning (1965)

• Entry from the Canadian Encyclopedia
• Donald Davis: Canadian Actor, Producer, Director
• "Donald Davis, 69, Actor in Challenging Roles", by Mel Gussow, January 28, 1998, in The New York Times.
• UK National Portrait Gallery
• Goodwin, Jill Tomasson. "A Career in Review: Donald Davis Canadian Actor, Producer, Director." Theatre Research in Canada 10.2 (1989): 132–151.
• Donald Davis at IMDb