Dorothy Jean Dandridge was an American actress, singer and dancer. She is the first African-American film star to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, which was for her performance in Carmen Jones (1954). Dandridge performed as a vocalist in venues such as the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater. During her early career, she performed as a part of The Wonder Children, later The Dandridge Sisters, and appeared in a succession of films, usually in uncredited roles.
Soundies are three-minute American musical films, produced between 1940 and 1947, each displaying a song, dance, and/or band or orchestral number. Produced professionally on 35 mm black-and-white film, like theatrical motion pictures, they were printed on the more portable and economical 16 mm film.
The Nicholas Brothers were an entertainment act composed of biological brothers, Fayard (1914–2006) and Harold (1921–2000), who excelled in a variety of dance techniques, primarily between the 1930s and 1950s. Best known for their unique interpretation of a highly acrobatic technique known as "flash dancing", they were also considered by many to be the greatest tap dancers of their day, if not all time. Their virtuoso performance in the musical number "Jumpin' Jive" featured in the 1943 movie Stormy Weather has been praised as one of the greatest dance routines ever captured on film.
Harold Lloyd Nicholas was an American dancer specializing in tap. Nicholas was the younger half of the tap-dancing pair the Nicholas Brothers, known as two of the world's greatest dancers. His older brother was Fayard Nicholas. Nicholas was featured in such musicals as An All-Colored Vaudeville Show (1935), Stormy Weather (1943), The Pirate (1948), and The Five Heartbeats (1991).
Tamango is a 1958 French/Italian film directed by John Berry, a black-listed American director who exiled himself to Europe. Dorothy Dandridge and Curd Jürgens star in the film with co-stars Alex Cressan and Jean Servais. Based on the short story by Prosper Mérimée first published in 1829, the film is about a slave ship on its crossing from Africa to Cuba, the various people it carries and the slaves' rebellion while on board.
AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars is the American Film Institute's list ranking the top 25 male and 25 female greatest screen legends of American film history and is the second list of the AFI 100 Years... series.
Introducing Dorothy Dandridge is a 1999 American biographical drama television film directed by Martha Coolidge from a screenplay by Shonda Rhimes and Scott Abbott, based on the biography Dorothy Dandridge by Earl Mills. Filmed over a span of a few weeks in early 1998, the film stars Halle Berry as actress and singer Dorothy Dandridge and premiered on HBO on August 21, 1999. The teleplay is drawn exclusively from the biography of Dorothy Dandridge by Earl Mills. The original music score was composed by Elmer Bernstein, who had known Dandridge and Otto Preminger.
John Elmer Carson was a Canadian-born, American film actor. Carson often played the role of comedic friend in films of the 1940s and 1950s, including The Strawberry Blonde (1941) with James Cagney and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) with Cary Grant. He also acted in dramas such as Mildred Pierce (1945), A Star is Born (1954), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). He worked for RKO and MGM, but most of his notable work was for Warner Bros.
Sensations of 1945 is a 1944 American musical-comedy film directed by Andrew Stone and starring Eleanor Powell. Released by United Artists, the film was an attempt to recapture the ensemble style of films such as Broadway Melody of 1936 by showcasing a number of top musical and comedy acts of the day, in a film linked together by a loose storyline. Sensations of 1945 stars dancer Powell and Dennis O'Keefe as two rival publicists who fall in love, but the film's main purpose is to showcase a variety of different acts, ranging from tightrope walking to comedy to Powell's athletic tap dancing. The rollicking supporting cast features W.C. Fields in his final role the year before his death, C. Aubrey Smith, Eugene Pallette, dancer David Lichine, Lyle Talbot, Sophie Tucker, jazz pianist Dorothy Donegan, Cab Calloway, Woody Herman, jazz pianist/composer Gene Rodgers, and Les Paul.
Paris Blues is a 1961 American musical romantic drama film made on location in Paris, starring Sidney Poitier as expatriate jazz saxophonist Eddie Cook, and Paul Newman as trombone-playing Ram Bowen. The two men romance two vacationing American tourists, Connie Lampson and Lillian Corning. The film also deals with American racism of the time contrasted with Paris's open acceptance of black people. The film was based on the 1957 novel of the same name by Harold Flender.
Follow the Boys also known as Three Cheers for the Boys is a 1944 musical film made by Universal Pictures during World War II as an all-star cast morale booster to entertain the troops abroad and the civilians at home. The film was directed by A. Edward "Eddie" Sutherland and produced by Charles K. Feldman. The movie stars George Raft and Vera Zorina and features Grace McDonald, Charles Grapewin, Regis Toomey and George Macready. At one point in the film, Orson Welles saws Marlene Dietrich in half during a magic show. W.C. Fields, in his first movie since 1941, performs a classic pool playing presentation he first developed in vaudeville four decades earlier in 1903.
Carmen Jones is a 1954 American musical film featuring an all-black cast starring Dorothy Dandridge, Pearl Bailey and Harry Belafonte, produced and directed by Otto Preminger. The screenplay by Harry Kleiner is based on the lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, from the 1943 stage musical of the same name, set to the music of Georges Bizet's 1875 opera Carmen. The opera was an adaptation of the 1845 Prosper Mérimée novella Carmen by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy.
Vivian Alferetta Dandridge was an American singer, actress and dancer. Dandridge is best known as being the older sister of actress and singer Dorothy Dandridge and the daughter of actress Ruby Dandridge. Dandridge was a member of the Dandridge Sisters musical group, along with Etta Jones and Dorothy Dandridge from 1934 until the group disbanded in 1940. Dandridge went on to appear in minor roles on films and television from 1940 through the early 1960s. Never really achieving notable success as her younger sister, Dandridge disappeared from the public eye by 1970. Dandridge died after suffering a stroke on October 26, 1991 at age 70.
The Dandridge Sisters were an American all-girl singing trio, started in 1934 in Los Angeles, California, and ended in 1940, comprising the sisters Vivian and Dorothy Dandridge together with their friend Etta Jones. They had a short period of fame traveling around the United States performing for night clubs, theatres, radio shows, and eventually left the U.S. to tour in Europe. Dorothy Dandridge decided to become a solo artist, the band split, and each woman then pursued projects individually.
Raymond Benedict McCarey was an American film director, brother of director Leo McCarey.
This is a selection of films and television appearances by British-American comedian and actor Bob Hope (1903-2003). Hope, a former boxer, began his acting career in 1925 in various vaudeville acts and stage performances
John Berry was an American film director, who went into self-exile in France when his career was interrupted by the Hollywood blacklist.
Regal Theater was a night club, theater, and music venue, popular among African-Americans. Located in the Bronzeville neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. The theater was designed by Edward Eichenbaum. and opened in February 1928. Part of the Balaban and Katz chain, the lavishly decorated venue, with plush carpeting and velvet drapes, featured some of the most celebrated African-American entertainers in America. On what for a time was known as the Chitlin' Circuit, the Regal also featured motion pictures and live stage shows. Nat "King" Cole, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne, Dinah Washington, Miles Davis, Sammy Davis Jr., Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, and Duke Ellington performed frequently at the theater through the 1920s and 1940s.
Phil Moore was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and bandleader.
Ladies of Washington is a 1944 American drama film directed by Louis King and starring Trudy Marshall, Ronald Graham and Anthony Quinn. It concentrates on a group of young women employed by the federal government in wartime Washington D.C., one of whom becomes involved with an enemy agent.
