1950's The Arts | Everything and Nothing: The Dorothy Dandridge Tragedy

Memoir

By: Dorothy Dandridge

Date: 1970

Source: Dandridge, Dorothy, and Earl Conrad. Everything and Nothing: The Dorothy Dandridge Tragedy. New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1970. Reprint. New York: Harper Collins, 2000, 179–183, 202–204.

About the Artist: Dorothy Jean Dandridge (1922–1965), singer and actress, was the first African American to receive a nomination for best actress. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of Cyril Dandridge, a laborer, and Ruby Butler. She was black-African and white-English on her father's side and Jamaican and Mexican on her mother's side. As a child, she and her older sister Vivian toured the United States as a song-and-dance act called The Wonder Kids, performing for Baptist churches. As a young woman in Los Angeles, Dandridge got her start as a popular cabaret singer before rising to fame for her screen performances in Carmen...