Diahann Carroll

Carroll, by Carl Van Vechten, 1955

Carol Diahann Johnson was born in the Bronx, New York City, on July 17, 1935,[3] to John Johnson, a subway conductor, and Mabel (Faulk),[4] a nurse.[5][6]^:152 While Carroll was still an infant, the family moved to Harlem, where she grew up.[7][6]^:152 She attended Music and Art High School,[8][3][7] and was a classmate of Billy Dee Williams. In many interviews about her childhood, Carroll recalls her parents' support, and their enrolling her in dance, singing, and modeling classes. By the time Carroll was 15, she was modeling for Ebony.[5][8] "She also began entering television contests, including Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, under the name Diahann Carroll."[5][3][6]^:152 After graduating from high school, she attended New York University,[3] where she majored in sociology,[6]^:152 "but she left before graduating to pursue a show-business career, promising her family that if the career did not materialize after two years, she would return to college."[5]

Carroll's big break came at age 18, when she appeared as a contestant on the DuMont Television Network program, Chance of a Lifetime, hosted by Dennis James.[5][7][6]^:152 On the show, which aired January 8, 1954, she took the $1,000 top prize for a rendition of the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein song, "Why Was I Born?" She went on to win the following four weeks. Engagements at Manhattan's Café Society and Latin Quarter nightclubs soon followed.[9]

Carroll's film debut was a supporting role in Carmen Jones (1954),[5][8][3] as a friend to the sultry lead character played by Dorothy Dandridge. That same year, she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her role in the Broadway musical, House of Flowers.[5][3] A few years later, she played Clara in the film version of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (1959), but her character's singing parts were dubbed by opera singer Loulie Jean Norman.[5][8][3] The following year, Carroll made a guest appearance in the series Peter Gunn, in the episode "Sing a Song of Murder" (1960). In the next two years, she starred with Sidney Poitier, Paul Newman, and Joanne Woodward in the film Paris Blues (1961)[5] and won the 1962 Tony Award for best actress (the first time for a Black woman) for portraying Barbara Woodruff in the Samuel A. Taylor and Richard Rodgers musical No Strings.[1][5][8][3] Twelve years later, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role alongside James Earl Jones in the film Claudine (1974),[1][5][8][3] which part had been written specifically for actress Diana Sands (who had made guest appearances on Julia as Carroll's cousin Sara), but shortly before filming was to begin, Sands learned she was terminally ill with cancer. Sands attempted to carry on with the role, but as filming began, she became too ill to continue and recommended her friend Carroll take over the role.[8] Sands died in September 1973, before the film's release in April 1974.[8]

Carroll and Sammy Davis Jr. on The Hollywood Palace, 1968

Carroll is known for her titular role in the television series Julia (1968),[5][3][6]^:141–151 which made her the first African-American actress to star in her own television series who did not play a domestic worker.[1][8] That role won her the Golden Globe Award for "Best Actress In A Television Series" for its year,[3][10] and a nomination for an Emmy Award in 1969.[3] Some of Carroll's earlier work also included appearances on shows hosted by Johnny Carson, Judy Garland, Merv Griffin, Jack Paar, and Ed Sullivan, and on The Hollywood Palace variety show. In 1984, Carroll joined the nighttime soap opera Dynasty as the mixed-race jet set diva Dominique Deveraux,[5] Blake Carrington's half-sister.[8] Her high-profile role on Dynasty also reunited her with her schoolmate Billy Dee Williams, who briefly played her onscreen husband Brady Lloyd. Carroll remained on the show until 1987, simultaneously making several appearances on its short-lived spin-off, The Colbys. She received her third Emmy nomination in 1989 for the recurring role of Marion Gilbert in A Different World.[8]

Carroll portrayed Eleanor Potter, the doting, concerned, and protective wife of Jimmy Potter (portrayed by Chuck Patterson), in The Five Heartbeats (1991),[3] a musical drama film also featuring actor and musician Robert Townsend, and Michael Wright. In a 1995 reunion with Billy Dee Williams in Lonesome Dove: The Series, she played Mrs. Greyson, the wife of Williams' character. In 1996, Carroll starred as the self-loving and deluded silent movie star Norma Desmond in the Canadian production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical version of the film Sunset Boulevard. In 2001, Carroll made her animation début in The Legend of Tarzan,[11] in which she voiced Queen La,[12] ruler of the ancient city of Opar.[13]

In 2006, Carroll appeared in the television medical drama Grey's Anatomy as Jane Burke, the demanding mother of Dr. Preston Burke. From December 2008, she appeared in USA Network's series White Collar as June, the savvy widow who rents out her guest room to Neal Caffrey.[14] In 2010, Carroll was featured in UniGlobe Entertainment's breast cancer docudrama titled 1 a Minute, and she appeared as Nana in two Lifetime movie adaptations of Patricia Cornwell novels: At Risk and The Front.[15]

In 2013, Carroll was present on stage for the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards, to briefly speak about being the first African-American nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. She was quoted as saying about Kerry Washington, nominated for Scandal, "she better get this award."[16]

Carroll was married four times. Her father boycotted the ceremony for her first wedding, in 1956, to record producer Monte Kay,[5][8] which was presided over by Adam Clayton Powell Jr. at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. The marriage ended in 1962.[17] Carroll gave birth to her daughter, Suzanne Kay Bamford (born September 9, 1960), who became a journalist and screenwriter.[5][18][19]

In 1959, Carroll began a nine-year affair with the married actor Sidney Poitier.[5][7] In her autobiography, Carroll said Poitier persuaded her to divorce her husband and said he would leave his wife to be with her. While she proceeded with her divorce, Poitier did not keep his part of the bargain.[20] Eventually he divorced his wife. According to Poitier, their relationship ended because he wanted to live with Carroll for six months without her daughter present so he would not be "jumping from one marriage straight into another." She refused.[21]

Carroll dated and was engaged to British television host and producer David Frost from 1970 until 1973.[5][7] In 1973, Carroll surprised the press by marrying Las Vegas boutique owner Fred Glusman.[5][8] After four months of marriage Glusman filed for divorce in June 1973. Carroll filed a response, but did not contest the divorce, which was finalized two months later.[7][22] Glusman was reportedly physically abusive.[23]

On May 25, 1975, Carroll then age 39, married Robert DeLeon, the 24-year old managing editor of Jet magazine.[5][8] They met when DeLeon assigned himself to a cover story on Carroll about her 1975 Oscar nomination for Claudine.[24] DeLeon had a child from a previous marriage. Carroll moved to Chicago where Jet was headquartered, but DeLeon soon quit his job so the couple relocated to Oakland.[24] Carroll was widowed two years later when DeLeon was killed in a car crash.[7][25][26] Carroll's fourth marriage was to singer Vic Damone in 1987.[5][8] The union, which Carroll admitted was turbulent, had a legal separation in 1991, reconciliation, and divorce in 1996.[7][27][28]

Carroll was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997.[30] She said the diagnosis "stunned" her, because there was no family history of breast cancer, and she had always led a healthy lifestyle. She underwent nine weeks of radiation therapy and had been clear for years after the diagnosis. She frequently spoke of the need for early detection and prevention of the disease.[8][31] She died on October 4, 2019, in Los Angeles, aged 84.[1][8][30]

Carroll was saluted in a star studded memorial on November 24, 2019 at the Helen Hayes Theater in New York City where she was lauded for her trailblazing work in entertainment. Among those paying tribute were Laurence Fishburne, Phylicia Rashad, Vanessa Williams, Lynn Whitfield, Judith Jamison, Valerie Simpson, Lenny Kravitz, Angela Bassett, Cicely Tyson and Jasmine Guy.[32][33]

• 2011: Inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame[19]
• 1969: Photoplay Magazine Medal - Actress of the Year 1968-69 (Julia)
• 1992: Women in Film Crystal Award.[65]
• 1998: Women in Film Lucy Award[65]
• 2000: NAACP Image Award — Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years[66]
• 2005: NAACP Image Award — Soul Food<ref name="NAACP"/

• 2016: Hollywood Legacy Award

• Carroll, Diahann (2009). The Legs Are the Last to Go: Aging, Acting, Marrying, Mothering, and Other Things I Learned Along the Way. New York: HarperPaperbacks. ISBN 9780060763275.
• Carroll, Diahann, with Ross Firestone (1987). Diahann: An Autobiography (1st Ivy Books ed.). New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0804101310.
• Plowden, Martha Ward (2002). Famous Firsts of Black Women. Illustrated by Ronald Jones (2nd ed.). Gretna, LA: Pelican Pub. Co. ISBN 9781565541979.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Diahann Carroll.

• "Diahann Carroll". discogs.
• Diahann Carroll at the Internet Broadway Database
• Diahann Carroll at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Diahann Carroll at IMDb
• Diahann Carroll at Find a Grave
• Diahann Carroll. Makers: Women Who Make America. Biographical video.
• Diahann Carroll at the TCM Movie Database
• Diahann Carroll at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television
• "Diahann Carroll". The HistoryMakers. Archived from the original on February 26, 2014.
• "Diahann Carroll". The National Visionary Leadership Project. Diahann Carroll's oral history video excerpts.