Blanche Dunn, the exceedingly stylish Harlem Renaissance-era actress who was also a mainstay at Carl Van Vechten’s legendary parties which were, as Langston Hughes put it, “so Negro that they were reported as a matter of course in the colored society columns, just as though they occurred in Harlem instead of West 55th street. Carl Van Vechten, of course, is the photographer behind this photo (1941).
Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder on their wedding day, June 26, 1955, with theater legend Lucille Lortel, who hosted the wedding on her estate in Westport, Connecticut. Photo by Carl Van Vechten.
Opera legend Camilla Williams, photographed here by Carl Van Vechten in 1946, died on January 29, 2012 at her home in Bloomington, Indiana. Ms. Williams’ debut as Cio-Cio-San in Pucci’s Madama Butterfly” with the New York City Opera on May 15, 1946, was thought to make her the first African American woman to appear with a major U.S. opera company nine years before Marian Anderson’s historic debut at the more prestigious Metropolitan Opera. Ms. Williams sang at the March on Washington in 1963 and at Dr. King’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in 1964. A graduate of Virginia State College, Ms. Williams retired from opera in 1971 and taught college in New York before arriving at Indiana University where she remained until her retirement in 1997.
Margaret Tynes
Margaret Tynes by Carl Van Vechten, 1959)
Thanks @lascasartoris! —> Margaret Tynes, my lovely aunt, by Carl Van Vechten again, 1959.
(Source: beinecke.library.yale.edu)
Cab Calloway photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1933.
My aunt, opera singer Margaret Tynes, with a poster for her performance in Russia in September 1959. She was photographed by Carl Van Vechten who photographed her many times.
Zora Neale Hurston was born on this day in 1891. Here, she was photographed by Carl Van Vechten in Chicago on November 9, 1934.
Diana Sands as Adelaide Smith in “Tiger Tiger Burning Bright,” 1962. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten.
(Source: vintageblackglamour)
Actress Jane White in a 1941 photograph by Carl Van Vechten. A 1944 graduate of Smith College, White was the daughter of Civil Rights icon Walter White. Ms. White began her career on Broadway in 1945 when Paul Robeson helped her get her first role as the lead in Lillian Smith’s “Strange Fruit,” a story about a doomed interracial love affair. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt praised Ms. White’s work for its “restraint and beauty.”
Like Ellen Holly, she was frustrated with the limitations others placed on her as an actress due to her light complexion. In 1959, Ms. White originated the role of Queen Aggravain (to a young Carol Burnett’s princess) in “Once Upon a Mattress.” For this role, Ms. White was asked to lighten her complexion, lest she “confuse” the audience with her “Mediterranean” looks. She would go on to establish a solid reputation as an actress in Shakespearean and classical roles from the 1960’s through the 1990’s. In 1979, her autobiographical one-woman show, “Jane White, Who?…”, was well received. Ms. White was also a cabaret singer and did work in film and television, including a small part in the film, “Beloved.”
In 1992, Ms. White wrote “Life As An Actress: A Mystery Story,” an autobiographical essay for Revealing Women’s Life Stories: Papers from the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College. Ms.White died of cancer on July 24, 2011 in New York City at the age of 88.
Black British contralto Evelyn Dove photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1935. Via @lascasartoris
(via lascasartoris)
My aunt Margaret Tynes photographed by Carl Van Vechten on September 29, 1959. She had a phenomenal international career as a singer in opera, jazz and theater for over fifty years. A graduate of North Carolina A&T State University (BA 1939) and Columbia University (MA 1944), she starred as Harry Belafonte’s leading lady off-Broadway in a show he produced called Sing Man, Sing! She also recorded a jazz suite called A Drum is a Woman with Duke Ellington and made several appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. In 1961, she gained international acclaim as Salomé at the Spoleto Festival of the Two Worlds in Italy, where she lived for more than forty years.
