Dorothy Dandridge was born in Cleveland on November 9, 1922. Her mother, Ruby Dandridge, was an actress who put Dorothy and her older sister Vivian into a song-and-dance act called the Wonder Children almost as soon as they could walk. The family moved to Los Angeles when Dorothy was young, and she spent her childhood performing on the Black vaudeville circuit and in bit parts for Hollywood studios.
She appeared in a string of musical short films and B-movies through the 1940s, often cast in exoticized roles that gave her little to work with. Her break came with Carmen Jones in 1954, Otto Preminger’s all-Black adaptation of Bizet’s opera. Dandridge played the title role (willful, magnetic, doomed) and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. She was the first Black woman nominated in that category.
The nomination did not translate into leading roles. Studios in the 1950s had no template for a Black dramatic actress at the top of the marquee. She appeared in Island in the Sun (1957) opposite Harry Belafonte, a film controversial at the time for its interracial storyline, and in Preminger’s Porgy and Bess (1959). But the parts dried up. She lost much of her money through a bad financial manager and filed for bankruptcy in 1962.
Dandridge was found dead in her West Hollywood apartment on September 8, 1965. She was 42. The coroner ruled the cause was an overdose of an antidepressant. Halle Berry, who portrayed Dandridge in a 1999 HBO biopic, was born at the same Cleveland hospital.