Dorothy Dandridge

Dorothy Jean Dandridge was born on November 9, 1922, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ruby (née Butler) and Cyril Dandridge. Her father worked as a cabinetmaker and Baptist minister, and her parents had separated before her birth. Ruby assembled a song-and-dance act for her daughters Dorothy and Vivian, billing them as the Wonder Children, with the act managed by Ruby's companion Geneva Williams. The sisters toured the American South for approximately five years, attending school only rarely, while Ruby remained in Cleveland to work and perform. During the Great Depression, performance opportunities on the Chitlin' Circuit diminished sharply, prompting Ruby to relocate the family to Hollywood, California, where she found work in small domestic-servant roles in radio and film. Following the move, Dorothy enrolled at McKinley Junior High School in Pasadena in 1930.

By 1934, the act had been renamed the Dandridge Sisters, with Dorothy and Vivian joined by dance schoolmate Etta Jones. The group secured bookings at prominent New York venues including the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater. Dandridge's screen appearances began early: at age 12 she doubled for one of the Cabin Kids in the Bing Crosby and W. C. Fields musical comedy Mississippi (1935), and that same year appeared in a small role in the Our Gang comedy short Teacher's Beau. As part of the Dandridge Sisters, she appeared in The Big Broadcast of 1936 alongside Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, A Day at the Races with the Marx Brothers, and It Can't Last Forever (both 1937) with the Jackson Brothers.

Dandridge made her Broadway debut in 1939, appearing in the musical Swingin' the Dream. Her first credited film role came the following year in Four Shall Die (1940), a race film in which she was cast as a murderer. Small roles in Lady from Louisiana with John Wayne and Sundown with Gene Tierney followed in 1941. That same year she appeared in the specialty number "Chattanooga Choo Choo" in the 20th Century Fox musical Sun Valley Serenade, which marked her first on-screen pairing with the Nicholas Brothers. Also in 1941, she was a featured performer in Duke Ellington's musical revue Jump for Joy. Between 1941 and 1942, Dandridge appeared in ten Soundies — three-minute musical films shown on coin-operated projector jukeboxes — performing as a dancer in the Mills Brothers' "Paper Doll" and as a singer in short films including "Swing for Your Supper," "A Zoot Suit (With a Reet Pleat)," "Cow-Cow Boogie," and "Yes, Indeed!" She and actress Gale Storm became the first stars of the Soundies format.

Throughout the remainder of the 1940s, Dandridge continued to work across film and stage. She appeared as a band singer opposite Count Basie in Hit Parade of 1943 and alongside Louis Armstrong in Atlantic City (1944) and Pillow to Post (1945). In 1944, she starred in Sweet 'N Hot, a musical produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. at the Mayan Theatre in Los Angeles that ran nightly for eleven weeks. In 1951, she played Melmendi, Queen of the Ashuba, in Tarzan's Peril, starring Lex Barker and Virginia Huston. The Motion Picture Production Code's objections to the film's content drew attention to Dandridge's costuming, and the resulting publicity earned her the cover of Ebony in April 1951. That same year she appeared in Columbia Pictures' The Harlem Globetrotters in an ingenue role.

In May 1951, following coaching from pianist Phil Moore, Dandridge gave what was described as a record-breaking opening performance at the Mocambo nightclub in West Hollywood. She subsequently appeared in New York and at Café de Paris in London. During a return engagement at the Mocambo in December 1952, a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio agent recommended her to production chief Dore Schary for a role in Remains to Be Seen. Schary later cast her as Jane Richards in Bright Road, her first starring film role, which also marked her first appearance opposite Harry Belafonte. During this period she made multiple appearances on early television variety programs, including Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town.

In 1953, 20th Century Fox undertook a talent search to cast Carmen Jones, an all-Black musical film adaptation of Oscar Hammerstein II's 1943 Broadway production, which had transposed Georges Bizet's opera Carmen to a World War II African American setting. Director Otto Preminger initially considered Dandridge unsuitable for the title role of the femme fatale, envisioning her instead for the smaller part of Cindy Lou. Dandridge worked with Max Factor makeup artists to transform her appearance for a meeting with Preminger, and a viewing of her performance in the 1941 Soundie "Easy Street" further persuaded him to cast her in the lead. The film's ensemble included Harry Belafonte, Pearl Bailey, Brock Peters, Diahann Carroll, Olga James, and Joe Adams. Because the studio required an operatic voice, Dandridge's singing was dubbed by mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne. Carmen Jones opened on October 28, 1954, earning $70,000 in its first week and $50,000 in its second. On November 1, 1954, Dandridge became the first African American woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1959, she received a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance in Porgy and Bess.

In her personal life, Dandridge was married twice: first to dancer Harold Nicholas, with whom she had a daughter, Harolyn Suzanne, and later to hotel owner Jack Denison. Both marriages ended in divorce. She has been recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Dandridge died on September 8, 1965, at the age of 42. In 1999, her life was the subject of the biographical film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, in which Halle Berry portrayed her.