Sheila Guyse

Sheila Guyse, born Etta Drucille Guyse on July 14, 1925, in Forest, Mississippi, was an American singer and actress whose career on stage and screen spanned the 1940s and 1950s. She relocated with her parents to Manhattan in 1945, settling in New York City, where she took a job at a dime store on 125th Street, directly across from the Apollo Theater. Her entry into show business came through amateur performances, a common path for African-American performers of the era, and she made her nightclub debut that same year at Club Zombie in Detroit.

Guyse's Broadway career ran from 1945 to 1949 and encompassed three productions. Her stage debut came in Memphis Bound!, which opened in 1945, where she was cast as the female lead opposite Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. The production closed after 36 performances. She subsequently appeared in Finian's Rainbow and Lost in the Stars, both of which enjoyed longer runs. Lost in the Stars received an Outer Circle Critics Award, and Guyse contributed to cast recordings for these productions. It was on the set of Finian's Rainbow that she met Kenneth Davis, who performed in the show as a dancer.

Concurrent with her Broadway work, Guyse appeared in three independent all-Black films during the late 1940s: Boy! What a Girl! (1947), Sepia Cinderella (1947), in which she co-starred with Billy Daniels, and Miracle in Harlem (1948). She also participated in the Harlem Follies of 1949 and appeared in a 1957 television adaptation of The Green Pastures. Her visibility during this period extended to print media, with her image appearing on the covers of publications including Jet, Ebony, Our World, and Hue.

Guyse was married three times. Her first marriage, to Shelby Irving Miller, ended in divorce and produced one daughter, Sheila Crystal Miller. Her second marriage, to Kenneth Davis, drew public attention and was featured in the February 1952 issue of Jet in an article titled "Negro Women with White Husbands." The couple married in Philadelphia and lived primarily in the Bronx before announcing the end of their marriage in 1954. In 1958, Guyse married Joseph Jackson, a New York sanitation worker, with whom she had two children, Deidre Jean Jackson and Michael Jackson. That marriage lasted until Jackson's death in 2012, and through it Guyse became a Jehovah's Witness.

Health difficulties shaped the later trajectory of her career. In 1953, one day after accepting a role in the Broadway production Mile High, she was diagnosed with stomach ulcers, a setback that contributed to periods away from the entertainment industry. She returned in 1958 to record her only studio album, This Is Sheila. Further attempts at a career comeback proved unsuccessful. Guyse died on December 28, 2013, from complications of Alzheimer's disease, at the age of 88.