Dorothy Dandridge

Dorothy Jean Dandridge was born on the ninth of November 1922 at Cleveland, Ohio, the younger of two daughters of Cyril H. Dandridge — a cabinet-maker who left the household before her birth — and Ruby Jean Butler Dandridge, an entertainer and dramatic-elocution teacher. She and her sister Vivian were trained from her fourth year by her mother and the household's later partner Geneva Williams — a strict and abusive dramatic teacher — in song and stage. The two sisters performed together from 1930 as The Wonder Children through churches and theatres of the segregated TOBA circuit. The family moved from Cleveland to Nashville, then Atlanta, then in 1934 to Los Angeles.

She made her first film appearance — uncredited — at twelve in The Big Broadcast of 1936. She and her sister appeared together with the Nicholas Brothers in Going Places (1938) and in Marx Brothers films of the late 1930s. She married Harold Nicholas of the Nicholas Brothers in 1942; the marriage produced one severely disabled daughter and ended in divorce in 1951.

Her decisive role was as Carmen Jones in Otto Preminger's 1954 film adaptation of the Oscar Hammerstein II Broadway musical. She received for the role the 1955 Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role — the first African American actress to be nominated in the lead category in any of the major categories. (Lena Horne had previously been considered for the role but Preminger had insisted on Dandridge.)

She appeared subsequently in Island in the Sun (1957) — opposite the white actor John Justin in one of the first interracial-romantic Hollywood films — Porgy and Bess (1959) as Bess opposite Sidney Poitier (placed in this archive), and Tamango (1958). The 1959 Porgy and Bess won her the Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy.

Her career declined sharply through the early 1960s on grounds of Hollywood's continuing limitations on the romantic-lead casting of Black women and on her own personal-financial mismanagement. She filed for bankruptcy in 1962.

She was found dead in her West Hollywood apartment on the eighth of September 1965, at forty-two. The Los Angeles County coroner ruled the death the result of an embolism from an embolism from a fractured foot, with imipramine acute intoxication. The Hollywood Walk of Fame star at 6719 Hollywood Boulevard was dedicated to her in 1983.

She is honored here as the first Black actress nominated for the Best Actress Oscar.