Model, actress, singer and writer Mauryne Brent. She appeared in the 1948 film Come On, Cowboy! with Mantan Moreland and was a cousin of jazz pianist and composer Billy Taylor. She is included in her half-sister Shirlee Taylor Haizlip’s critically-acclaimed memoir, The Sweeter the Juice: A Family Memoir in Black and White:

Mauryne was an honor student and the class poet, but she wanted a career in show business. Hollywood would not find a place for her, however. The studios told her she was too light and beautiful to be black, and too “exotic” to be white. Independent producers wanted to take her to Europe, but she resisted and turned her attention to the Negro films called “race movies” at that time.

Mauryne’s odyssey took her to New York as well, where she sang in jazz clubs on 52nd street and at the well-known Harlem club Wells, with her cousin Billy Taylor, who was in the early stages of his jazz career. While in New York, she wrote lyrics for Arnold records.