Ellen Holly

Ellen Virginia Holly (January 16, 1931 – December 6, 2023) was an American actress born in New York City to William Garnet Holly and Grace Holly. She grew up in the Richmond Hills neighborhood of Queens and graduated from Hunter College. Holly was African American and claimed African, English, French, and Shinnecock Native heritage. Her family background included several historically significant figures: her father's grandmother was Susan Smith McKinney Steward, the third African American woman to earn a medical degree and the first in New York State; her great-grandaunt Sarah Smith Thompson Garnet was a pioneering African American female school principal in the New York City public school system and a suffragist; and her great-grandfather, the Reverend James Theodore Holly, served as the first African American bishop in the Protestant Episcopal Church, spending much of his career as missionary bishop of Haiti. A great-great-grandfather, Sylvanus Smith, was among the leaders who encouraged African Americans to purchase land in Kings County, New York, in what became known as the Weeksville settlement. Her maternal aunt, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, was a civil rights leader, politician, educator, and writer who served under President Harry Truman as executive director of the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission.

Holly began her acting career in the late 1950s and became a lifelong member of the Actors Studio. Her Broadway work spanned from 1956 to 1966 and included productions such as Burning Bright, Face of a Hero, Too Late the Phalarope, A Hand Is on the Gate, and Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright. She also played Desdemona in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of Othello. In 1960, Holly resolved a dispute with producer Lester Osterman when he cast her in a play. Prior to her television breakthrough, she made guest appearances on Sam Benedict and The Nurses.

Holly became most widely recognized for her role as Carla Gray–Hall on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live, which she joined in October 1968. Agnes Nixon, the show's creator, developed the role after reading a letter Holly had written to the editor of The New York Times about the experience of being a light-skinned African American. When Holly first appeared on the series, her character — initially named Carla Benari — was presented as a touring actress of apparently Italian American heritage. The storyline later revealed that Carla was an African American woman passing as white, a fact disclosed when the character Sadie Gray, played by Lillian Hayman, was identified as her mother. Holly became the first African American actress to star in a leading role on daytime television. She remained with One Life to Live until 1980, returned in 1983, and according to her autobiography was fired by executive producer Paul Rauch in 1985.

Beyond her soap opera work, Holly appeared in Spike Lee's 1988 film School Daze as Odrie McPherson, the wife of Mission College president Mr. McPherson. She took on a long-term recurring role as a judge on the daytime drama Guiding Light from 1989 to 1993. In 2002, she appeared as Selena Frey in the television film 10,000 Black Men Named George, alongside André Braugher and Mario Van Peebles. Holly was also publicly vocal on issues of race and casting, criticizing the casting of Anthony Quinn as Haitian general Henri Christophe in 1972 and commenting on Jonathan Pryce's casting in Miss Saigon in 1990. In 1996, she published her autobiography, One Life: The Autobiography of an African American Actress, which addressed her experiences as a light-skinned Black actress in Hollywood.

Holly retired from acting in 1993 and subsequently worked as a librarian in White Plains, New York. She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority and never married or had children. In her autobiography, she wrote about relationships with actors Harry Belafonte and Ron O'Neal, and she had a relationship with her One Life to Live co-star Roger Hill. Holly died on December 6, 2023, at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx at the age of 92.