Nell Carter

Nell Ruth Hardy was born on September 13, 1948, in Birmingham, Alabama, one of nine children of Edna Mae and Horace Hardy. Raised in a Catholic family, she later identified as Presbyterian, then Pentecostal, and eventually as Jewish. At age two, she witnessed her father's death by electrocution when he stepped on a live power line. As a child, she sang on a local gospel radio show and performed in her church choir. By age fifteen she was appearing at area coffee houses and had joined the Renaissance Ensemble, which performed at coffee houses and gay bars. On July 5, 1965, at age sixteen, Hardy was raped at gunpoint by an acquaintance and became pregnant as a result, giving birth to a daughter, Tracey, the following year. Unable to raise the child alone, she sent Tracey to live with her older sister Willie. Hardy publicly claimed for years that Tracey was the product of a brief marriage, but she disclosed the truth in a 1994 interview.

At nineteen, Hardy adopted the surname Carter and relocated from Birmingham to New York City with the Renaissance Ensemble, performing in coffee shops, nightclubs, and bathhouses before securing her first Broadway role in 1971. Her Broadway debut came in the rock opera Soon, which closed after three performances. She also appeared that year in the off-Broadway production The Wedding of Iphigenia. In 1972 she was part of the Broadway production Dude. Carter served as music director for the 1974 Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective production of What Time of Night It Is. That same year she appeared alongside Bette Davis in the stage musical Miss Moffat, based on Davis's earlier film The Corn Is Green, though the production closed before reaching Broadway.

Carter's Broadway career spanned from 1971 to 1997, and its defining moment came with the 1978 musical Ain't Misbehavin', for which she received the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical, and a Theatre World Award, all in 1978. In 1982 she reprised the role in a televised version and won a Primetime Emmy Award for that performance. Also in 1978, Carter was cast as Effie White in the developing Broadway musical Dreamgirls but left the production to take a television role on Ryan's Hope. When Dreamgirls opened in late 1981, Jennifer Holliday had assumed the lead. In the mid-1990s, Carter returned to Broadway in the twentieth-anniversary revival of Annie, playing Miss Hannigan. During that run she publicly objected to promotional commercials that featured white actress Marcia Lewis in the role, stating to the New York Post that the situation was insulting to her as a Black woman. She was subsequently replaced by Sally Struthers. Carter also appeared in the Broadway production Angela Lansbury — A Celebration.

Beyond the stage, Carter built a substantial television career. In 1981 she took a role on the NBC action comedy The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo before landing the lead role of Nell Harper on the NBC sitcom Gimme a Break!, which aired from 1981 to 1987 across six seasons and 137 episodes. In the series she played a housekeeper for a widowed police chief, portrayed by Dolph Sweet, and his three daughters. The role earned her two Emmy Award nominations and two Golden Globe Award nominations. Following the cancellation of Gimme a Break!, Carter embarked in August 1987 on a five-month national tour with comedian Joan Rivers. In 1979, prior to her television breakthrough, she had appeared in Miloš Forman's film adaptation of Hair, with her voice featured on the soundtrack.

Carter's subsequent television work included the 1990 CBS comedy You Take the Kids, in which she played a working-class mother and wife; the series ran only from December 1990 to January 1991. She co-starred in Hangin' with Mr. Cooper from 1993 to 1995 and appeared on game shows including Match Game '90 and To Tell the Truth during the early 1990s. In 1989 she performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" before Game 4 of the 1989 World Series in San Francisco. In 2001 she guest-starred on the pilot episode of Reba and made three appearances in the show's first season. The following year she made two appearances on Ally McBeal and a guest appearance on Blue's Clues. In 2002 she rehearsed for a production of Raisin, a stage musical based on A Raisin in the Sun, in Long Beach, California. She appeared in the 2003 film Swing, and her final onscreen appearance was in the comedy film Back by Midnight, released posthumously in 2005.

Carter's personal life included two marriages. She married mathematician and lumber executive George Krynicki in 1982, converting to Judaism at that time; she filed for divorce in 1989, and the divorce was finalized in 1992. She married Roger Larocque in June 1992 and divorced him the following year. She declared bankruptcy in 1995 and again in 2002. In 1992 she underwent surgery to repair two aneurysms. Carter had three children: daughter Tracey and sons Joshua and Daniel, both of whom she adopted as newborns over a four-month period. She attempted suicide in the early 1980s and entered a drug-detoxification facility around 1985 to address a cocaine addiction. Her brother Bernard died of complications from AIDS in 1989.

Nell Carter died on January 23, 2003, at her home in Beverly Hills at the age of fifty-four. Her son Joshua discovered her body. Per a provision in her will, no autopsy was performed; using blood tests and a physical examination, the Los Angeles County coroner's office determined the likely cause of death to be arteriosclerotic heart disease, with diabetes listed as a contributing condition. Carter is interred at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Her partner Ann Kaser inherited her property and custody of her two sons.