|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Diana
Sands (1934-1973): Throughout her career
actress Diana Sands successfully challenged racial
barriers in the theater world by pursuing and
winning parts that were traditionally played by
white actresses. At a time when black actors were
offered minor or marginal roles Sands battled
for more interracial casting saying "Look
at me. Never mind my color. Please just look at
me!". A native New Yorker who graduated from
the High School of the Performing Arts, Sands
made her professional debut off-Broadway playing
Juliet in An Evening with Will Shakespeare in
1953 and a year later she appeared in a revival
of Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara. She had a few
minor successes before making her Broadway debut
in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. |
|
Sands
was awarded the Outer Critics Circle Award and
a Variety Critics Poll Award for her performance.
She revisited the part in the 1961 film version
of the play. 1964 was a excellent year for her,
she won an Obie for Living Premise and a Tony
nomination for her role in James Baldwin's Blues
for Mr. Charlie. Shortly after, Sands appeared
with Alan Alda (amid controversy) in a Broadway
romantic comedy, The Owl and the Pussycat by Bill
Manhoff. The two-person play was written for white
actors, and race wasn't an element of the story-in
fact it was never even mentioned. Interracial
casting like this was rare and is thought by many
to be a major step toward dismantling the status
quo regarding race in the theater community.
She was nominated for a Tony for her performance.
Sands continued in this vein when, in the late
1960s as a member of the Repertory Theater at
Lincoln Center, she became the first African-American
woman to play Joan of Arc in a professional production
when she appeared in Shaw's Saint Joan. After
being nominated for two Emmy awards Sands was
set to play Claudine in the 1974 film of the same
name, but a long-time chain smoker, Sands was
diagnosed with cancer and was to sick to take
the role. She died in September of that year.
"I refuse to be stereotyped." -
|
|
|
|
|
Anne Sexton (1928-1974):was
a writer of Confessional poetry -- poetry of the
personal or "I". Sexton emerged in the
late 1950's with contemporaries such as Sylvia
Plath, who shocked the nation with a very intimate
view of the experience of being a woman. She brought
topics such as menstruation, abortion, drug addiction,
postpartum depression and mental breakdowns out
of June Cleaver's kitchen and onto the dinner
table of American literature. Not to say that
she didn't have the facade of a perfect suburban
housewife herself--living a privileged life of
prep schools and servants in Boston suburbia,
married to a sailor with two daughters of her
own.
|
|
Sexton
began writing in 1956 as a psychiatric treatment,
an outlet and a grasp at sanity, and in less than
a decade, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature
for my third book of poetry, "Live or Die",
a question that plagued her every day of her life.
In October of 1974, she answered that question,
ending her life by carbon monoxide poisoning.
Sexton's words live on. ("I" will be
remembered as a woman poet who embodied and analyzed
the position of mid twentieth-century women as
artists, as people in trouble, and as people taking
charge.)
"I was tired of being a woman,tired of the
spoons and the pots, tired of my mouth and my
breasts,
tired of the cosmetics and the silks.There were
still men who sat at my table, circled around
the bowl I offered up...But I was tired of the
gender of things." -
|
|
|
|
|
Sophie Treadwell (1885-1970): Treadwell's
foray into the theatre began as an actress in
vaudeville and included early mentoring by the
famed Polish actress Helena Modjeska. Author of
forty plays, Treadwell was one of only a few women
dramatists who also directed and produced many
of her own works. Her best-known play, the 1928
expressionist drama "Machinal", was
produced with a young Clark Gable in the cast.
Based loosely on a sensational murder trial in
New York, "Machinal" has received numerous
revivals in the past decade, most notably by the
New York Shakespeare Festival, the Royal National
Theatre in London and the American Conservatory
Theatre in San Francisco. |
|
She began
her career as a journalist while attending the
University of California at Berkeley. During World
War I, the State Department recognized Treadwell
as one of America's first accredited female foreign
war correspondents. In the 1920s, she became the
only American journalist granted an interview
with Pancho Villa at his remote ranch following
the Mexican Revolution
"Love! What does that mean? Will it clothe
you?. . .feed you?. . .pay the bills?" -
Machinal
by |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lupe
Velez (1908 - 1944): Born in a suburb of
Mexico City, the daughter of a prostitute, Lupe
was sent to Texas at the age of 13 to live in
a convent. In 1924, Lupe moved to Hollywood where
she was discovered by Hal Roach who cast her in
a comedy with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. She
married Johnny Weissmuller but that marriage only
lasted five years and was filled with battles.
In 1944, tired of yet another failed romance with
Harold Raymond and pregnant with his child, Lupe
committed suicide. She was 36 years old.
"The first time you buy a house you see how
pretty the paint is and buy it. The second time
you look to see if the basement has termites.
It's the same with men." - |
|
|
|
|
Ethel Waters (1896 - 1977): was born in
1896, in Chester, Pennsylvania, a child of violence
and poverty. Ethel came of age in what today might
be called, "The Hood". Despite a difficult
beginning, she turned out pretty well. At the
age of 17, Ethel decided that her original dream
of becoming a maid for a wealthy white woman just
wasn't going to cut it, so she began a career
in show business. (And she thought it was tough
back in "The Hood"!) She made countless
jazz, pop and gospel recordings throughout her
70 year career, working with Duke Ellington and
even taught Fletcher Henderson what "real
jazz" should sound like. |
|
She
was the first Black female entertainer to receive
equal billing on a Broadway marquee with her white
counterparts, and the second black actress to
receive an Academy Award Nomination. (Thanks,
Miss Mc Daniel.) She refused the role of the housekeeper
in Carson McCullers' Member of the Wedding until
it was re-written to her specifications. What
did Carson McCuller's know about being a maid?
"We are all gifted. That is our inheritance."
-
|
|
|
|
|
Anna May Wong (1905-1961): beautiful, tall
(5'7"), slender, and Chinese-American. The
last fact kept her from attaining the highest
echelon among Hollywood's pantheon of stars, but
it did not affect her popularity, nor keep her
from becoming a household name. Born on Flower
Street in Los Angeles' Chinatown above her father's
laundry she became fascinated with the movies
at a young age. By 1927 Anna May had run the gamut
of studios, from Tiffany to M-G-M, as she added
to her list of credits. But heavily made-up Caucasian
actors had always been cast as in leading parts
and when Anna May landed yet another supporting
role she made the move to more tolerant Europe. |
|
In
England, Anna May made her first stage appearance
opposite a young up-and-coming thespian named
Laurence Olivier. Anna May Wong's contribution
to show business is a unique one; she was the
first Asian female to become a star, achieving
that stardom at a time when bias against her race
was crushing.
"I'm Anna May Wong. I come from old Hong
Kong. But now I'm a Hollywood star." - from
a song in ’s
cabaret act |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
