Dorothy Dandridge
Dorothy Jean Dandridge (November 9, 1922 – September 8, 1965) was an American actress and singer. She was the first African-American film star to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, which was for her performance in Carmen Jones (1954).[1] Dandridge had also performed as a vocalist in venues such as the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater. During her early career, she performed as a part of The Wonder Children, later The Dandridge Sisters, and appeared in a succession of films, usually in uncredited roles.
Dorothy Dandridge
November 9, 1922
September 8, 1965 (aged 42)
- Actress
- singer
- dancer
1933–1965
-
Jack Denison(m. 1959; div. 1962)
1
Ruby Dandridge (mother)
- Vivian Dandridge (sister)
- Nayo Wallace (grandniece)
In 1959, Dandridge was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Porgy and Bess. She was the subject of the 1999 biographical film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, with Halle Berry portraying her. She had been recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[2]
Dandridge was married and divorced twice, first to dancer Harold Nicholas (the father of her daughter, Harolyn Suzanne) and then to hotel owner Jack Denison. Dandridge died in 1965 at the age of 42.[2]
Early life[edit]
Dorothy Jean Dandridge was born in 1922 in Cleveland, Ohio to entertainer Ruby (née Butler) and Cyril Dandridge.[3][4] Her father was a cabinetmaker and Baptist minister. Her parents separated before her birth.
Ruby created a song-and-dance act for her two young daughters, Vivian and Dorothy, under the name The Wonder Children. The act was managed by her lover, Geneva Williams.[5] Williams was said to have had a bad temper and to have cruelly disciplined the children.[6] The sisters toured the Southern United States almost nonstop for five years (rarely attending school), while Ruby worked and performed in Cleveland.[7]
During the Great Depression, work virtually dried up for the Dandridges, as it did for many Chitlin' Circuit performers. Ruby moved her family to Hollywood, California, where she found steady work on radio and film in small domestic-servant parts. After that relocation, in 1930, Dorothy attended McKinley Junior High School.[8]
The Wonder Children were renamed The Dandridge Sisters in 1934. Dandridge and her sister were teamed with dance schoolmate Etta Jones.[5]
Career[edit]
Beginnings[edit]
The Dandridge Sisters continued strong for several years, and they were booked in several high-profile New York nightclubs, including the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater.[9] Dandridge first appeared on screen at the age of 13 in a small part in an Our Gang comedy short, "Teacher's Beau" in 1935.[10] As a part of The Dandridge Sisters, she also appeared in The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1936) with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, A Day at the Races with the Marx Brothers, and It Can't Last Forever (both 1937) with the Jackson Brothers.[11] Although these appearances were relatively minor, Dandridge continued to earn recognition through continuing her nightclub performances nationwide.
Dandridge's first credited film role was in Four Shall Die (1940). The race film cast her as a murderer and did little for her film career. Because of her rejection of stereotypical black roles, she had limited options for film roles.[12] She had small roles in Lady from Louisiana with John Wayne and Sundown with Gene Tierney, both in 1941.
Also that year, Dandridge appeared as part of the specialty number "Chattanooga Choo Choo" in the hit 1941 musical Sun Valley Serenade for 20th Century Fox. The film marked the first time she performed with the Nicholas Brothers.[13] Aside from her film appearances, Dandridge appeared in a succession of soundies – film clips that were displayed on jukeboxes, including "Paper Doll" by the Mills Brothers, "Cow, Cow Boogie", "Jig in the Jungle", and "Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter's Rent Party" also called "Swing for my Supper", among others. These films were noted not only for showcasing Dandridge as singer and dancer and her acting abilities, but also for featuring a strong emphasis on her physical attributes.
She appeared occasionally in films and on the stage throughout the rest of the 1940s and performed as a band singer in films with Count Basie in Hit Parade of 1943 and Louis Armstrong, Atlantic City (1944) and Pillow to Post (1945). In 1944, Dandridge was featured as the star in "Sweet 'N Hot", a musical held at the Mayan theatre in Los Angeles and produced by Leon Hefflin Sr., which played nightly for 11 weeks.[14] In 1951, Dandridge appeared as Melmendi, Queen of the Ashuba in Tarzan's Peril, starring Lex Barker and Virginia Huston. When the Motion Picture Production Code objected to the film's "blunt sexuality", Dandridge received considerable attention for wearing what was considered "provocatively revealing" clothing. The continuing publicity buzz surrounding Dandridge's wardrobe got her featured on the April 1951 cover of Ebony. The same year, she had a supporting role in The Harlem Globetrotters (1951).
In May 1951, Dandridge had a spectacular opening at the Mocambo nightclub in West Hollywood, the biggest in its history. after assiduous coaching and decisions on style with pianist Phil Moore. This success seemed a new turn to her career, and she appeared in New York and at Café de Paris in London with equal success.[15] In a return engagement at the Mocambo in December 1952, a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio agent saw Dandridge and recommended to production chief Dore Schary that she might make an appearance as a club singer, in her own name, in Remains to Be Seen, a film already in production. Her acquaintance with Dore Schary resulted in his casting Dandridge as Jane Richards in Bright Road—her first starring role, in which she expressed herself as a "wonderful, emotional actress"—which the trailer promoted. The film, which centered on a teacher's struggles to reach a troubled student, marked the first time Dandridge appeared in a film opposite Harry Belafonte. She continued her performances in nightclubs and appeared on multiple early television variety shows, including Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town.[16]
Carmen Jones and 20th Century-Fox[edit]
In 1953, a talent search was conducted as 20th Century Fox began the process of casting an all-black musical film adaptation of Oscar Hammerstein II's 1943 Broadway musical Carmen Jones. This production had updated Georges Bizet's opera Carmen to a World War II-era, African-American setting. In Dandridge's leading role from the previous year, a school teacher in Bright Road, director and writer Otto Preminger could see no gift to portray the classic femme fatale in Carmen Jones (1954) but his consideration was that she would be suited for the smaller role, Cindy Lou. Dandridge, who had dressed down for the screen test of Bright Road to suit the demure teacher at its center, worked with Max Factor make-up artists to convey the look and character of the earthy Carmen, which she wore to a meeting with Preminger in his office. The effect, combined with some viewing suggested to him of her freer, looser appearances in the soundies material,[17] assured her earning the production's title role.
The remainder of the cast was completed with Harry Belafonte, Pearl Bailey, Brock Peters, Diahann Carroll, Madame Sul-Te-Wan (uncredited), Olga James, and Joe Adams.[18]
Despite Dandridge's recognition as a singer, the studio wanted an operatic voice, so Dandridge's voice was dubbed by white mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne. Carmen Jones opened to favorable reviews and strong box-office returns on October 28, 1954, earning $70,000 during its first week and $50,000 during its second. Dandridge's performance as the seductive Carmen made her one of Hollywood's first African-American sex symbols and earned her positive reviews. On November 1, 1954, Dorothy Dandridge became the first black woman featured on the cover of Life. Walter Winchell described her performance as "bewitching", and Variety wrote that it "maintains the right hedonistic note throughout".[19]
Carmen Jones became a worldwide success, eventually earning over $10 million at the box office and becoming one of the year's highest-earning films. Dandridge was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first African American nominated for a leading role. At the 27th Academy Awards held on March 30, 1955, Dandridge was a nominee along with Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland, and Jane Wyman. Although Kelly won the award for her performance in The Country Girl, Dandridge became an overnight sensation. At the 1955 Oscar ceremony, Dandridge presented the Academy Award for Film Editing to On the Waterfront editor Gene Milford.
On February 15, 1955, Dandridge signed a three-movie deal with 20th Century Fox starting at $75,000 a film. Darryl F. Zanuck, the studio head, had suggested the studio sign Dandridge to a contract. Zanuck had big plans for her, hoping she would become the first African-American screen icon. He purchased the film rights to The Blue Angel and intended to cast her as saloon singer Lola-Lola in an all-black remake of the original 1930 film. She was scheduled to star as Cigarette in a remake of Under Two Flags. Meanwhile, Dandridge agreed to play the role of Tuptim in a film version of The King and I and a sultry upstairs neighbor in The Lieutenant Wore Skirts. However, her former director and now-lover Otto Preminger suggested she accept only leading roles. As an international star, Dorothy Dandridge rejected the two lesser roles, and Rita Moreno was cast in both roles.[13]
On April 11, 1955, Dandridge became the first black performer to open at the Empire Room at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel.[20] Her success as a headliner led to the hotel booking other black performers, such as the Count Basie Orchestra with vocalist Joe Williams, Pearl Bailey, and Lena Horne.[21]
Hollywood Research, Inc. trial[edit]
In 1957, Dandridge sued Confidential for libel over its article that described a scandalous incident that it claimed occurred in 1950. In May 1957, she accepted an out-of-court settlement of $10,000.[22]
Dandridge was one of two Hollywood stars who testified at the 1957 criminal libel trial of Hollywood Research, Inc., the company that published Confidential and other tabloid magazines from that era.[23] Four months after her out-of-court settlement for $10,000, she and actress Maureen O'Hara, the only other star who testified at the criminal trial, were photographed shaking hands outside the downtown-Los Angeles courtroom where the highly publicized trial was held.[23]
Testimony from O'Hara, as well as from a disgruntled former magazine editor named Howard Rushmore, revealed that the magazines published false information provided by hotel maids, clerks, and movie-theater ushers who were paid for their tips. The stories with questionable veracity most often centered around alleged incidents of casual sex. When the jury and press visited Grauman's Chinese Theatre to determine whether O'Hara could have performed various sexual acts while seated in the balcony, as reported by a magazine published by Hollywood Research, Inc., this was discovered to have been impossible.[23]
Dandridge had not testified during her civil lawsuit earlier in 1957, but in September she gave testimony in the criminal trial that further strengthened the prosecution's case. Alleged by Confidential to have fornicated with a white bandleader in the woods of Lake Tahoe, Nevada in 1950, she testified that racial segregation had confined her to her hotel during her nightclub engagement in Lake Tahoe.[23][24] When she was not in the hotel lounge rehearsing or performing her singing, according to her testimony, she was required to stay inside her room where she slept alone.[23]
The trial ended in a mistrial.[24] The judge ordered Hollywood Research to stop publishing questionable stories based on paid tips. This curtailed invasive tabloid journalism until 1971, when Generoso Pope, Jr. moved the National Enquirer, which he owned, from New York to Lantana, Florida, where there were fewer restrictions.[25][26]
Legacy[edit]
In the 1980s, after the passing of the blaxploitation era, such stars as Cicely Tyson, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tempestt Bledsoe, Halle Berry, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, Kimberly Elise, Loretta Devine, Tasha Smith, and Angela Bassett began to acknowledge Dandridge's contribution to the image of African Americans in American motion pictures.[59]
In the movie To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), Wesley Snipes played Noxeema Jackson, a drag queen whose dream is to play Dorothy Dandridge in a movie about her life and work.[60]
In 1999, Halle Berry produced and starred in the movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award.[61] When Berry won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Monster's Ball, she dedicated the "moment [to] Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll."[62] Both Dandridge and Berry were from Cleveland, Ohio, and they were born in the same hospital.[50]
Dandridge was posthumously awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in January 1984.[63] She is featured as the most prominent figure in a mural on an exterior wall of Hollywood High School.[64] A statue of Dandridge, designed by Catherine Hardwicke, honors multi-ethnic leading ladies of the cinema, including Mae West, Dolores del Río, and Anna May Wong.[65]
Recording artist Janelle Monáe performs a song titled "Dorothy Dandridge Eyes" on her 2013 album The Electric Lady, with Esperanza Spalding.[66] In the 1969 movie The Lost Man, Dorothy Starr (played by Beverly Todd) says that she named herself after Dandridge.[67]
In a February 2016 episode of Black-ish, "Sink or Swim," Beyoncé is referred to as the Dorothy Dandridge of her time, citing the star power that Dandridge wielded in her day.[68]
In 2020, Laura Harrier portrayed Camille Washington in the miniseries Hollywood. She is an up-and-coming actress during the Hollywood Golden Age in the post-World War II era, a character largely inspired by and based on Dandridge.[69][70]
Citations
Works cited