Billie Allen

Billie Allen, born Wilhelmina Louise Allen on January 13, 1925, in Richmond, Virginia, was an American actress, theater director, dancer, and entertainer whose career spanned from 1947 to the early 2000s. Her father, William R. Allen, worked as an actuary, and her mother, the former Mamie Wimbush, was a teacher. Allen developed an early interest in ballet and opera, and as a teenager attended Marian Anderson's 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial, held there after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused Anderson access to DAR Constitution Hall. She pursued her education at the Hampton Institute, now Hampton University, before relocating to New York City in the mid-1940s to build a career in acting and dance.

Allen's Broadway career began in 1947, when she was cast as a dancer in the musical revue Caribbean Carnival. She continued performing on Broadway into the early 1950s, appearing in a 1952 revival of Four Saints in Three Acts and in My Darlin' Aida, an adaptation of Giuseppe Verdi's opera that also opened that year. During this period she also appeared off-Broadway alongside Ethel Waters, one of her mentors, in a revival of Mamba's Daughters. Allen was accepted into the Actors Studio, where she studied under Lee Strasberg, and made her film debut in the 1949 race film Souls of Sin.

Among her most significant Broadway engagements was her involvement in the 1959 premiere production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, in which she served as understudy for the role of Beneatha Younger before assuming the part full-time when Diana Sands departed. Through that production she formed a friendship with actress Ruby Dee that lasted more than 55 years. In 1960, Allen appeared in the Broadway debut of Ira Levin's Critic's Choice, playing Essie, the housekeeper of theater critic Parker Ballantine, a role originated by Henry Fonda, whose wife in the play was portrayed by Georgann Johnson. She appeared in James Baldwin's Blues for Mister Charlie in 1964, a dramatic play loosely based on the killing of Emmett Till. Her final Broadway acting credit was A Teaspoon Every Four Hours in 1969, a production that ran for a record 97 preview performances before closing the day after its official opening night.

Allen was among the first Black performers to gain a foothold in American television at a time when the medium was largely inaccessible to African Americans. During the run of the CBS army base comedy The Phil Silvers Show from 1955 to 1959, she held a recurring role as a WAC, making her one of the first Black entertainers with an ongoing presence on network television. In the mid-1950s she also portrayed the character Ada Chandler on the daytime soap opera The Edge of Night, placing her among the earliest African-American actors to appear in that format. She was additionally among the first African Americans to appear in American television commercials. Her other television work included Car 54, Where Are You? on NBC in the early 1960s and Law and Order in the 1990s. Her film credits included Black Like Me in 1964, The Wiz in 1978, and Losing Ground in 1982, as well as an appearance in the opening sketch of Eddie Murphy Raw in 1987.

In 1973, Allen joined actor and founder Garland Lee Thompson Jr., actor Morgan Freeman, and journalist Clayton Riley in establishing the Frank Silvera Writers Workshop in Harlem, created as a tribute to character actor, director, and acting teacher Frank Silvera. The workshop went on to count playwrights Charles Fuller, Ntozake Shange, and Samm-Art Williams among its notable students. By the early 1980s Allen had established herself as a director, helming productions that included Kathleen Collins's The Brothers in 1982, Anna Deavere Smith's Aye, Aye, Aye, I'm Integrated in 1984, and the musical Miss Ethel Waters. She later directed her longtime friend Ruby Dee in the 2001 off-Broadway production of Saint Lucy's Eyes, which premiered at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York and was subsequently staged at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre. In 2006, Allen received a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for directing Funnyhouse of a Negro, a one-act play by Adrienne Kennedy in which Allen had herself originated the lead role of Sarah during the play's 1964 debut. That same year she received the Rose McClendon Trailblazer Award from the Classical Theatre of Harlem.

Allen was married twice. Her first marriage, to aerospace engineer Duane H. Grant Sr., ended in divorce. Her second husband was pianist, composer, and arranger Luther Henderson, with whom she co-created the musical Little Ham, based on a play by Langston Hughes. Both Allen and Henderson were AUDELCO Award winners, and they remained married until Henderson's death in 2003. Allen is survived by a son and daughter, Duane H. Grant Jr. and Carolyn J. Grant, one granddaughter, several stepchildren, a brother, Dr. Edward B. Allen, and a niece, writer Candace Allen. Billie Allen died on December 29, 2015, at her home in Manhattan, at the age of 90.