Dorothy Dandridge
Dorothy Dandridge
Dorothy Jean Dandridge was born on November 9, 1922 in ClevelandOhio. She was an actress and popular singer who was the first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Dorothy Dandridge’s life has been described as tragic; full of career highs and lows, and fraught with personal and financial problems. Her first screen appearance was a bit part in 1935’s Teacher's Beau. In 1937, she appeared as one of the many singers in the Marx Brothers feature film, A Day at the Races. The following year Dorothy, her sister Vivian, and Etta Jones would make a brief appearance in Going Places. In 1940, Dandridge played a murderer in the race film, Four Shall Die. The following year Dorothy was cast opposite John Wayne in Lady From Louisiana, playing the small, but somewhat fair part of Felice. That same year she teamed with her future husband Harold Nicholas to film a brief role in Sun Valley Serenade. In 1942, Dorothy won another supporting role as Princess Malimi in Drums of the Congo. In her next few films Dorothy would play mainly in bit parts, but she managed to get a small role in Hit Parade of 1943. In the following year of 1945 she would play again a small role in the musical Pillow to Post. By 1946 Dorothy's luck for winning small roles in films had disappeared. She would only rarely appear in nightclubs and wouldn't make any films.
