Dorothy dandridge parents
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Dorothy Dandridge
American actress and singer (1922–1965)
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 for 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.
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
Dorothy Jean
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Dorothy Dandridge
(1922-1965)
Who Was Dorothy Dandridge?
Actress and singer Dorothy Dandridge found early success in show business by performing with her sister, leading to her first appearances in film. Following her star turn in the 1954 musical Carmen Jones, she became the first African American to be nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Dandridge found it difficult to replicate that success, and her final years were marred by personal and professional problems, until her death at age 42 in 1965.
Early Life and Show Business
Dorothy Jean Dandridge was born on November 9, 1922, in Cleveland, Ohio. Her mother, actress Ruby Dandridge, left her husband while she was pregnant, and as such Dorothy never knew her father. She later suffered at the hands of her mother's girlfriend, Geneva Williams, a disciplinarian with a cruel side.
Pushed into show business at a young age by her mother, Dandridge performed with her sister, Vivian, as a song-and-dance team called the Wonder Children. The girls performed throughout the South, playing Black churches and other places.
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Dorothy Dandridge accomplished many things in her short life; she was the first Black woman nominated for the best-actress Oscar and the first Black woman on the cover of Life magazine. But she was also plagued by ghosts. In her perceptive, often humorous autobiography, Everything and Nothing: The Dorothy Dandridge Tragedy, published in 1970—five years after her death—Dandridge and cowriter Earl Conrad lay out her search for love in candid, often luscious prose. “If it is possible for a human being to be like a haunted house,” she writes, “maybe that would be me.”
The primary ghost in Dandridge’s life was her only child, Harolyn Suzanne “Lynn” Nicholas, born in 1943 during her first marriage to dancing legend Harold Nicholas. Lynn was severely intellectually disabled, a condition Dandridge blamed on her delayed birth (Nicholas had gone golfing and left her without a car). “She’d hug me tight, crushing into my breasts,” Dandridge writes. “I have known quite a few men, since then, but I tell you, you cannot get that feeling from anything else in the world. Except this: I knew
Dorothy Dandridge accomplished many things in her short life; she was the first Black woman nominated for the best-actress Oscar and the first Black woman on the cover of Life magazine. But she was also plagued by ghosts. In her perceptive, often humorous autobiography, Everything and Nothing: The Dorothy Dandridge Tragedy, published in 1970—five years after her death—Dandridge and cowriter Earl Conrad lay out her search for love in candid, often luscious prose. “If it is possible for a human being to be like a haunted house,” she writes, “maybe that would be me.”
The primary ghost in Dandridge’s life was her only child, Harolyn Suzanne “Lynn” Nicholas, born in 1943 during her first marriage to dancing legend Harold Nicholas. Lynn was severely intellectually disabled, a condition Dandridge blamed on her delayed birth (Nicholas had gone golfing and left her without a car). “She’d hug me tight, crushing into my breasts,” Dandridge writes. “I have known quite a few men, since then, but I tell you, you cannot get that feeling from anything else in the world. Except this: I knew
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