Theresa Harris

Theresa Mae Harris (December 31, 1906 – October 8, 1985) was an American actress, singer, and dancer whose career spanned film, television, radio, and Broadway. Born in Houston, Texas, she was one of five children of Ina and Anthony Harris. Her mother, Ina Harris, was a recognized elocutionist and was credited as the source of her daughter's dramatic ability. The family relocated to Southern California in the early 1920s, where Harris graduated from Jefferson High School and went on to study at both the USC Conservatory of Music and the Zoellner Conservatory of Music. She subsequently joined the Lafayette Players, an African American musical comedy theatre troupe, before pursuing a professional career in entertainment.

Harris made her film debut in 1929 in Thunderbolt, performing the song "Daddy Won't You Please Come Home." As her screen career developed in the early 1930s, she frequently appeared in uncredited supporting roles at Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, playing maids, blues singers, waitresses, and other minor characters opposite leading actresses including Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Myrna Loy, and Jean Harlow, among others. In 1933, she appeared in three notable productions: she played a friend of Jean Harlow's character in MGM's Hold Your Man, co-starring Clark Gable; she was cast as Chico in the Warner Bros. pre-Code film Baby Face, starring Barbara Stanwyck; and she took a substantial though uncredited role opposite Ginger Rogers in Professional Sweetheart, in which her character substituted for Rogers's character as a radio singer, a plot point central to the film's story. That same year, Harris made her Broadway debut in the play Louisiana, bringing her stage work to New York alongside her busy film schedule.

Throughout the 1930s, Harris continued to accumulate film credits, including uncredited appearances in Horse Feathers (1932), Gold Diggers of 1933, Mary Stevens, M.D., and Morning Glory. In 1938, she played Bette Davis's maid Zette in Jezebel. In 1937, she appeared in the race film Bargain with Bullets opposite Ralph Cooper for Million Dollar Productions. While promoting that film, Harris spoke publicly about the barriers facing African American performers in Hollywood, stating that she had never been given the opportunity to rise above the role of maid and that her race had limited her options regardless of her talent or ambition. She praised Cooper's production company for creating films that cast African American actors in leading roles. In 1939, she received an on-screen credit for playing Ruby, the wife of a murdered man, in Tell No Tales, a role that included an emotional scene with Melvyn Douglas.

Harris found a more varied range of roles through her association with RKO producer Val Lewton, who was known for casting African American actors outside of stereotypical parts. Lewton cast her as a sarcastic waitress in Cat People (1942), and she subsequently appeared in I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Phantom Lady (1944), and Strange Illusion (1945). She also appeared in the 1947 film noir Out of the Past, directed by Jacques Tourneur, in the role of Eunice Leonard, the former maid of Kathie Moffat. On radio, Harris performed on programs including Hollywood Hotel and was frequently paired with Eddie Rochester Anderson, who played her on-screen boyfriend. The two appeared together in Buck Benny Rides Again (1940) and What's Buzzin' Cousin (1943), with their Buck Benny Rides Again collaboration including a musical number in which they performed tap, classical, Spanish, and swing styles of song and dance.

During the 1950s, Harris transitioned to television, appearing on Lux Video Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Letter to Loretta. Her final film appearance came in an uncredited role in The Gift of Love in 1958, after which she retired from acting. She had married physician John Marshall Robinson in 1933, though the marriage was troubled from early on — Robinson was arrested shortly after the wedding on charges of receiving stolen goods, was convicted by 1934, and Harris filed for divorce in 1936 following reports of domestic abuse. She retired comfortably, having made careful financial investments throughout her career. Harris died on October 8, 1985, in Inglewood, California, and was buried at Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles. The title character of Lynn Nottage's 2011 play By the Way, Meet Vera Stark was based in part on Harris.