Juanita Hall

Juanita Hall (born Juanita Long on November 6, 1901, in Keyport, New Jersey; died February 29, 1968) was an American actress and singer whose career spanned Broadway, film, radio, and recording. The daughter of an African-American father and an Irish-American mother, Hall was raised by her maternal grandparents alongside three siblings following her mother's death. She attended Bordentown Industrial School and Keyport High School before pursuing classical vocal training at the Juilliard School.

After completing high school, Hall taught music at the Lincoln settlement house in East Orange, New Jersey, working with children during the day and directing an adult chorus in the evenings. In the early 1930s she served as a special soloist and assistant director for the Hall Johnson Choir. She also assembled her own ensemble, the Juanita Hall Choir, and maintained an active schedule of concert performances, recordings, film appearances, and radio broadcasts. Among her radio work was a role in the soap opera The Story of Ruby Valentine on the National Negro Network, a serial carried by 35 stations with sponsorship from Philip Morris and Pet Milk. She also auditioned for Talent 48, a private revue organized by the Stage Manager's Club.

Hall's Broadway career extended from 1927 to 1960 and encompassed a range of productions. She married actor Clement Hall during her teens while both were performing in Lew Leslie's Blackbirds on Broadway; the marriage eventually ended in divorce and the couple had no children. Her most celebrated stage role came when Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II personally selected her to play Bloody Mary, a Tonkinese woman, in their musical South Pacific. The production opened at the Majestic Theatre on April 7, 1949, starring Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin, and Hall performed the role for 1,925 Broadway performances. In 1950, her portrayal earned her the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, making her the first African American to receive that honor. She also won a Donaldson Award for the same role. As a regular performer in Greenwich Village clubs, Hall was known for her renditions of songs including "Am I Blue?," "Lament Over Love," and Langston Hughes's "Cool Saturday Night."

Hall returned to Broadway in the 1954 musical House of Flowers, in which she performed Harold Arlen's "Slide Boy Slide." She also appeared in the comedy The Ponder Heart. Rodgers and Hammerstein again chose her personally for their 1958 musical Flower Drum Song, in which she played Madame Liang, a Chinese-American character. Hall subsequently toured in the road production of Flower Drum Song until illness required her to leave the tour in early 1962.

Her screen work included the 1958 film adaptation of South Pacific, in which she reprised the role of Bloody Mary. For that production, however, her singing was dubbed by Muriel Smith, who had played the role in the London stage production, after Rodgers determined that Hall's vibrato had deteriorated. Music director Alfred Newman and director Joshua Logan had considered the dubbing unnecessary. Hall's final film role came in the 1961 screen version of Flower Drum Song, in which she again played Madame Liang. In 1958 she recorded Juanita Hall Sings the Blues at Beltone Studios in New York City, accompanied by jazz musicians including Claude Hopkins, Coleman Hawkins, Buster Bailey, Doc Cheatham, and George Duvivier.

In her later years, Hall suffered from diabetes, which eventually led to blindness. With limited financial resources, she received support from the Actors Fund of America, which provided for her care at its Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey, and covered her hospital treatment when needed. Hall was Catholic. She died from complications of diabetes at Southside Hospital in Bay Shore, New York, and had been residing at the Percy William Actors' Home in East Islip, New York, at the time of her death.