Evelyn Ellis

Evelyn Ellis (February 2, 1894 – June 5, 1958) was an American actress and director born in Boston, Massachusetts, whose stage career spanned from 1919 to 1955. Though she took on a small number of film roles, including appearances in The Lady from Shanghai and The Joe Louis Story, Ellis devoted the majority of her professional life to the theatre.

Ellis began her theatrical work at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, where she appeared in a production of Othello in 1919. Her Broadway debut followed in Roseanne by Nan Bagby Stephens. By 1927 she had taken on one of her most significant roles, originating the character of Bess in Porgy alongside Rose McClendon and Frank H. Wilson. That same year she appeared in Ernest Howard Culbertson's Goat Alley, playing Lucy Bell Dorsey, a character at the center of a story about Black life in the slums of Washington, D.C. The New York Times Theatre Review noted her performance for what it called "her telling portrayal."

Ellis went on to create a substantial body of Broadway work across several decades. She appeared in the production of Touchstone and in A Royal Family, which she performed in 1952. In 1945 she took the role of Bella Charles, the mother of a returning African-American war veteran, in Arnaud d'Usseau and James Gow's Deep Are the Roots. That same year she appeared in Blue Holiday. She also performed in Orson Welles's Broadway production of Native Son, playing Hannah Thomas, the mother of Bigger Thomas, a role she reprised in a subsequent revival. The Baltimore Afro American described her performance as "so realistic that she had already earned the praise of Broadway critics." Her Broadway career extended to 1953, with later credits including Supper for the Dead in 1954.

Ellis also worked as a director during the later portion of her career. In 1937 she directed Horse Play, and in 1938 she staged Little Woman with the junior department of the Negro Little Theatre. Her most prominent directorial effort was the all-black Broadway production of Tobacco Road in 1950, in which she also performed the role of a starving mother. The New York Times singled out her performance for what it described as "truthful elements that left a lasting impression." Beyond her stage work, Ellis founded a drama school in Long Island for young people and worked with the Dunbar Players of Philadelphia, reflecting an active commitment to developing younger participants in the art of drama.

Her final film appearance came in 1955 with Interrupted Melody, marking the close of her acting career. Beginning in December 1957, Ellis was hospitalized at the Will Rogers Memorial Hospital in Saranac Lake, New York, where she died of a heart ailment on June 5, 1958, at the age of 64.