Dandridge, Dorothy

By: Kathleen Thompson

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Dandridge, Dorothy

Sex:  Female

Born:  Cleveland, Ohio, United States
9 November 1922

Died:  West Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States
8 September 1965

Activity/Profession:  Stage / Screen Actor

(b. 9 November 1923; d. 8 September 1965),
actor.

Dorothy Dandridge was not the first black woman to star in Hollywood films. Nina Mae McKinney, Fredi Washington, and Ethel Waters had all preceded her with formidable dramatic performances. Lena Horne had been limited to small roles by her refusal to accept Hollywood stereotypes, but her beauty and talent made her a Hollywood celebrity of the first order. And yet, it is Dorothy Dandridge who is viewed as the first black female “movie star.” She was the first black woman to be nominated for an Oscar in the “Best Actress” category and the first to participate in the celebrity social life of Hollywood. She also acted out, in her own life, the role in which many black women had long been cast—the tragic mulatto.

Dorothy Dandridge in 1954, on her arrival in New York for activities connected with the world premiere of her film Carmen Jones.

Library of Congress, photograph by Paul Schumach

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Dorothy Dandridge was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Her father, Cyril Dandridge, was a cabinetmaker and minister. Her mother, Ruby, was an aspiring actress. Shortly before Dandridge was born, Ruby left her husband, impatient with his lack of ambition. She set up housekeeping with her children and, in time, her friend and lover, Geneva Williams. Ruby worked as a domestic and cultivated her career as an aspiring actress. She and Geneva also trained the children to perform.

Dandridge remembered a time when her father followed and found them. In a 1962 Ebony interview, she described her mother waking her and her sister in the night to hide them in the attic so that their father wouldn't find them. She remembered the incident with horror because she wanted so much to see her father.

Soon, Ruby and Geneva took the children to Nashville, Tennessee, to improve their chances in show business. Dorothy performed with her older sister, Vivian, in an act called the Wonder Kids. They toured not in vaudeville but in Baptist churches, singing, dancing, acting in skits written by their mother, and doing acrobatics. At the end of the act, the children would stand on stage and answer personal questions about their lives as performers. Dandridge blamed those question sessions for her aversion to interviews later in life, remembering them as painful and difficult.

In the early 1930s, Ruby and Geneva took the girls to Los Angeles. Ruby found work on radio and television, eventually appearing in such films as Tish, Cabin in the Sky, and My Wild Irish Rose. She also became a regular on the radio and television show Beulah and, later, Father of the Bride. Her daughters joined with a third girl, Etta Jones, and changed their stage name to the Dandridge Sisters. When Dorothy Dandridge was sixteen, Geneva took the three girls to New York, where they performed at the Cotton Club, often appearing on the same bill with Cab Calloway, W. C. Handy, and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. While there, Dandridge met her father for the first time. She also met and briefly dated Harold Nicholas, one of the famous dancing Nicholas Brothers.

The Dandridge Sisters debuted in Hollywood in a short turn near the end of the Marx Brothers film A Day at the Races. Soon after the film was made, the trio split up. In 1941 and 1942, Dandridge appeared several times in the 1940s version of the music video, the musical film short. Her appearances included the classic Mills Brothers Paper Doll, in which she appeared as the paper doll each Mills brother wanted to “call my own.” She also played bit parts in Lady from Louisiana, Sun Valley Serenade, Bahama Passage, Drums of the Congo, and Hit Parade of 1943.

In the meantime, the Nicholas Brothers came to Hollywood to appear in Down Argentine Way. Dandridge and Harold began dating again. In 1942, they married and had a child. For about six years after the child was born, Dandridge remained at home and supported her husband in his bid for a movie career. However, the child, Harolyn, was discovered to be severely brain-damaged and Harold, unable or unwilling to deal with this painful situation, left. The marriage ended in divorce. Harolyn was eventually institutionalized.

At this point, Dandridge single-mindedly set out to become an actor. Her first step was to begin supporting herself by singing. She appeared with the Desi Arnaz Band at the Mocambo in 1951 and, in 1952, at La Vie en Rose. That New York nightclub was just about to close when she opened there. She sold out for two weeks, stayed on for fourteen more, and saved the club from bankruptcy. Theatre Arts magazine referred to her act as “vocalized sex appeal.” When she returned a year later, she had toned down that aspect of her performance, hoping to be taken more seriously.

Dandridge spent what she earned singing on developing an acting career. Her life was a round of auditions, lessons of all kinds, and singing performances. In 1953, she made her first important step forward when she was cast opposite Harry Belafonte in the film Bright Road, playing a southern schoolteacher. It was a good film, and Dandridge made her mark, but she almost missed out on her biggest screen opportunity because of the class and dignity she showed in it. Otto Preminger refused to let her read for the title role in his black musical Carmen Jones (1954) because he thought she was too “regal.” However, by appearing at an interview with him dressed for the part in skirt and low-cut blouse with tousled hair, she snared the role. Thus began her long and destructive relationship with Preminger.

Dandridge's performance in the film, an adaptation of Bizet's opera Carmen, was dazzling. Life magazine put her on its cover, and the critics applauded. Time said she “holds the eye—like a match burning steadily in a tornado.” Comparing her role with the one she played in Bright Road, Newsweek said, “The range between the two parts suggests that she is one of the outstanding dramatic actresses of the screen.” She won an Academy Award nomination, the first for an African American woman in the category of Best Actress, and was suddenly an international star. She would not make another film for three years.

When Dandridge finally appeared in front of the camera again, it was in the first of a series of films in which she played opposite white actors. Hollywood did not really know what to do with her. A 1966 article in Ebony summed up the situation. Dandridge was a leading lady, it pointed out, and that was the problem. While the two prominent male actors could play leads that did not involve romance, this was an impossibility for Dandridge, who must “set male hormones sizzling.”

So Dandridge was relegated to temptress roles in films such as The Decks Ran Red (1958), Tamango (1957), and Malaga (1962). Her love scenes were played with white men who were not allowed to kiss her for fear of alienating southern theater owners and audiences. The situation was reminiscent of the career of the Chinese actor Anna May Wong, who, in order to avoid an interracial happy ending, died in every single one of her films.

In 1959, Dandridge was cast as Bess in the film version of Porgy and Bess. The only real improvement on her past few films was that now she was tempting black men instead of white men. The cast was a virtual duplication of that in Carmen Jones—Dandridge, Pearl Bailey, Brock Peters, Roy Glenn, and Diahann Carroll. The major substitution was Sidney Poitier for Harry Belafonte, who had flatly refused to do the film on the grounds that it was an insult to black people. (Poitier tried to refuse but was coerced.) The major addition was Sammy Davis Jr. Again, Dandridge rose above her material. She won the Golden Globe Award for best actress in a musical.

Dandridge made two more films, but her film career was essentially over. When Rouben Mamoulian was selected to direct Cleopatra, he told Dandridge that he wanted her for the part. “You won't have the guts to go through with it,” she said. “They are going to talk you out of it.” Of course, they did. The role of the greatest black temptress in history went to violet-eyed Elizabeth Taylor.

Through the late 1950s, Dandridge had been linked romantically with Peter Lawford, Preminger, and many others. She was the first Hollywood celebrity to sue the magazine Confidential, when it printed an article accusing her of an affair in Reno with a musician. Then, in 1959, she satisfied all of the speculation about her personal life when she married white nightclub owner Jack Denison and revealed that they had been seeing each other secretly for four years. Unfortunately, he was a con artist and an abuser who exploited her financially as well as emotionally.

In 1962, Dandridge divorced Denison and, five months later, declared bankruptcy. In 1959, her income had been $250,000; in 1963, it was less than $40,000. She was no longer able to pay for the private institutionalization of her daughter, who was suddenly deposited, disoriented and violent, at her home. Harolyn was eventually transferred to a state institution.

Dandridge was on the rebound from her problems in late 1965. She had a huge success in a nightclub engagement in New Mexico and was contracted to open in New York at Basin Street East. She signed contracts for two films with the Mexican producer Raul Fernandez for $100,000. She had been hired to do an American western for $25,000. She was finishing up her autobiography, for which she had an eager publisher. Then she was found dead in her apartment from an overdose of an antidepressant. The drug, Tofranil, is not one that causes drowsiness or forgetfulness, making an accident unlikely.

Dorothy Dandridge was one of the most acclaimed actresses of her time, yet the inability or unwillingness of Hollywood producers to see past race meant she was often without acting roles. Her story lies in both the brilliance of her talent and Hollywood's willingness to squander such brilliance.

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