Hilda Simms and Lena Horne in the late 1940s. It drives me crazy that I have not been able to find a legitimate source/photographer behind this photo. It’s one thing to find it on a random website (like I did last year) but it’s another thing to share it and properly credit it for a wider audience. Sigh…
Muriel Smith, photographed in 1944 by Carl Van Vechten as “Carmen,” the role she originated on Broadway. In 1956, she turned down an offer from Samuel Goldwyn to star in the film version of ”Porgy and Bess,” stating, ”It doesn’t do the right thing for my people.” After a successful career overseas, particularly Great Britain, the New York-born Ms. Smith taught voice at Virginia Union University before her death in 1985.
Actress Theresa Harris as she appeared in the 1948 film, “The Velvet Touch,” which starred Rosalind Russell. Ms. Harris was the inspiration behind Lynn Nottage’s play, “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark” which starred Sanaa Lathan.
From Donald Bogle’s Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood: “Harris - who was both outspoken and highly intelligent - didn’t mince words about the plight of colored actresses. She told Fay M. Jackson, of the California Eagle in August 1937: “I never felt the chance to rise above the role of maid in Hollywood movies. My color was against me. The fact that I was not ‘hot’ stamped me as either an uppity ‘Negress’ or relegated me to the eternal role of stooge or servant. I can sing but so can hundreds of other girls. My ambitions are to be an actress. Hollywood had no parts for me.” Photo via A Certain Cinema.
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.” 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.
One of my favorite actresses - and writers - Ellen Holly, sometime in the 1970s. I found this photo on her website, blackstarimploding.com. Ms. Holly is best known for breaking the color barrier in soap operas in 1968 as Carla Gray, a black woman who passed for white, on “One Life to Live.” During that period in the late 1960s and 1970s, Ms. Holly wrote several articles in the New York Times about the challenges facing Black actors. Her memoir, One Life: The Autobiography of an African American Actress is simply phenomenal. A must-read for Black actresses and writers of today. I can not recommend it highly enough.
The one and only Dorothy Jean Dandridge was born on this day 90 years ago in Cleveland, Ohio. She is pictured at home in 1954 in a photo by Allan Grant. Photo: Time & Life Pictures/Getty.
Singer and actress Ruby Hill in 1946 as she appeared in the program for the Broadway production of “St. Louis Woman,” written by Arna Bontemps and Countee Cullen with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Johnny Mercer.
Saidie Sellyna, an actress, singer and dancer in a publicity photo, circa 1911 by an Unidentified photographer. Photo: The Sullivan Family papers, Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Savina Martin, Dominga Martin and Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper. UPDATE: Dominga Martin, a member of the Sullivan family who donated this photo to the Smithsonian, tells me that Saidie Sellyna was her cousin and a singer and actress in Russia in the 1920s!
Actress Fredi Washington holding a cigarette, photographed by Robert Scurlock of the venerable Scurlock Studio of Washington, DC, circa 1940s. Photo via The Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History.
Happy 78th Birthday Cicely Tyson! Photo by Douglas Kirkland, January 1973.
Jane White as Queen Aggravain in the 1959 Broadway production of “Once Upon a Mattress.” The first African-American actress to portray a white character on Broadway, Ms. White originated this role in the Tony-nominated musical comedy and starred opposite Carol Burnett, who was making her Broadway debut in the role of Princess Winnifred.
Photo via The New York Times and Photofest.
