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.
Modeling pioneer Ophelia DeVore (right) with clients and friends (l-r) Joan Murry, Trudy Haynes, the Philadelphia news legend, actress and writer Ellen Holly and the great model Helen Williams. Photo via opheliadevore.com.
Actress and writer Ellen Holly modeling in a December 1951 issue ofJet. 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.” Her memoir, One Life: The Autobiography of an African American Actress is simply phenomenal. A must-read for Black actresses and writers of today.
Actress Janet MacLachlan in the 1960s. Born in Harlem in 1933 to Jamaican immigrants, Ms. MacLachlan graduated from Hunter College in 1955 with a degree in psychology. There, she studied drama in a private class taught by Sidney Poitier. She began her theater career as an understudy for Cicely Tyson in two productions, including Jean Genet’s “The Blacks: A Clown Show.” She also starred in “Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright” on Broadway along with Diana Sands, Ellen Holly and other fine actors. Her television and film work included “The Mod Squad,” “I Spy,” and “Sounder,” where she played Camille Johnson, a compassionate schoolteacher who encourages a sharecropper’s son with his education. Ms. MachLachlan died in Los Angeles on October 11, 2010.
Actress and writer Ellen Holly modeling in a December 1951 issue of Jet. 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.” Her memoir, One Life: The Autobiography of an African American Actress is simply phenomenal. A must-read for Black actresses and writers of today.
What a miracle to escape into a role and begin to breathe, to inhabit the skin of characters who raged against the world. Dear God, it was dazzling! A place to be all the unpretty things I was and, conversely, all the pretty things they said I could not, must not, be because I am black: elegant, complex, fragile.
~ Ellen Holly
