This is a weekly feature on BroadwayLiving.com. It’s just like the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”. You know how it goes…someone throws out an actor’s name and you have to try to connect them to Kevin Bacon in six steps or less.
I thought it might be fun to do the same thing with the theater’s luminaries. I will be trying to connect them to the longest running show in Broadway history, The Phantom of the Opera and its very first “Phantom”, Michael Crawford.
Dorothy Dandridge was born on this day in 1922 in Cleveland, OH. She first came to prominence as one of The Dandridge Sisters. Dorothy and her sister Vivian, along with a third woman, comprised the group. The club act was quite successful, with several bit parts in movies, performances at the Cotton Club in New York and a tour of Europe.
It was during this time that Dandridge made her one and only Broadway appearance. The Dandridge Sisters played pixies in Swingin’ The Dream (1939), a variation on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The musical was set in New Orleans, used popular music of the day and featured Louis Armstrong as Bottom/Pryamus.
But Dorothy yearned for a solo career and returned to the place that The Dandridge Sisters had gotten their start, Hollywood. Once there her life turned turbulent. Movie roles came but so did difficulties: a marriage that ended in divorce, a child with retardation and numerous encounters with racism.
The pinnacle of her career came in 1954 with the release of the movie version of Carmen Jones. Dandridge had actively campaigned to win the title role in the Oscar Hammerstein adaptation of the Bizet Opera and the campaigning paid off. For her performance in the movie she became the first black woman ever nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Actress category.
After riding the wave of success for a few years, Dorothy’s life began to come apart in 1959. Despite the advice of her friends she married white restaurant owner Jack Denison, who was abusive and stole money from her. She began to drink heavily as a result; and although she eventually filed for divorce and attempted to get her life back on track, in 1963 she had to declare bankruptcy.
On September 8, 1965, Dorothy was found dead in her apartment. She was discovered lying naked on her bathroom floor with only a blue scarf around her head. Originally her death was thought to be caused by a blood clot, but an autopsy revealed the cause of death to be an overdose of Tofranil, the antidepressant she had been taking.
Dorothy Dandridge was a talented actress and singer, a trail blazer and a tragic figure. We can only wonder how differently her life and her career might have been had she only been born 20 or 30 years later.
1) Dorothy Dandridge played a pixie in Swingin’ The Dream with Thomas Coley
2) Thomas Coley did I Never Sang for My Father with Hal HolBrook
3) Hal Holbrook was in An American Daughter with Penny Fuller
4) Penny Fuller once did a show called Rex with Tom Aldredge
5) Tom Aldredge was in Passion with Cris Groenendaal
6) Cris Groenendaal was the original Monsieur André in Phantom of the Opera with Michael Crawford
So that’s the game. Join me each week as I try to come up with new ways of connecting Michael Crawford to the entire theater community.
