About Dorothy Dandridge:
Dorothy was born November 9, 1922 in Cleveland, Ohio. She was the first black woman to receive an Academy Award nomination for best actress for her performance in Otto Preminger’s film Carmen Jones a musical based on the nineteenth-century French opera Carmen by Georges Bizet. She has often been compared to Marilyn Monroe, another actress whose sexuality and tragic personae have inspired the imaginations of many.
She struggled with drug and alcohol abuse, troubled relationships (she counted Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier among her suitors), and a miserable childhood. Her mother, Ruby, was also an actress. She pushed Dorothy and her sister into the performance industry (the song and dance routine) and was a complicated figure in Dorothy’s life. Ruby entered into a relationship with another woman after being estranged from Dorothy’s father, Cyril. Her mother’s lover took a part in the years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse her and her sister Vivian endured while living with and working for the couple.
In the late 1930’s, Dorothy and Vivian toured with a band to New York where they landed a regular spot at the famous Cotton Club in Harlem. Dorothy made her Hollywood debut in 1937 with a bit part in A Day at the Races, a Marx Brothers film. In 1941 and 1942 Dandridge was in several musical shorts and Hollywood feature films before she married Harold Nicholas of the Nicholas Brothers Dance Duo. He turned out to be quite the philanderer. She gave birth to a mentally disabled daughter named Lynn during her first marriage. Dorothy blamed herself for Lynn’s condition but gave the responsibility of caring for her over to others for Lynn’s entire life.
Dorothy continued to break down racial barriers with her beauty and talent despite personal problems. She was the first person of color to perform in the Empire Room of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in NYC and she broke attendance records at the Mocambo in Hollywood. Her film career started to go well, beyond bit parts to bigger roles up to the biggest in Carmen Jones which gave her sex symbol status and commercial viability. She also began a tumultuous affair with the director that ended like all her other affairs. Badly. Instead of getting the parts Marilyn would have, Dandridge became typecast as the “lusty” light skinned gal with a dubious morality after Carmen Jones. She turned down roles for three years. It seemed Hollywood was not ready for racial complexity. Studio bosses wanted attractive Black girls to be sluts or servants. There was no in between.
Finally in 1957, she got attention again, this time for her role as the ingénue in an interracial romance called Island in the Sun. Even though some theaters refused to show it, the film went on to be a box office hit and the first movie to depict such an interracial relationship. She went on to make other films that dealt with the same theme. Her final success was in the 1959 all-black production of Porgy and Bess. She received a Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of Bess opposite Sidney Poitier’s Porgy. The roles dried up. She resumed her singing career and married restaurateur Jack Denison. This one failed, too, of course. She found herself broke after losing most of her savings in Denison’s investments. He then took off, they divorced and she was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1963. An attempt to resuscitate her career went no where. Depressed, Dorothy started in on the pills and booze and the broken hearted insides started to show on the outside. In 1965 she tried rehab and started talking to studios about some leading roles.
On September 8, 1965, Dorothy Dandridge was found dead in her apartment in Hollywood. An anti-depressant medication overdose. Authorities could not determine if it was an accidental death or suicide. She was forty-two years old.