Diahann Carroll

At 84 years old, Diahann Carroll has this physical status:

Diahann Carroll (born Carol Diann Johnson; July 17, 1935 – October 4, 2019) was an American actor, singer, and activist.

Carmen Jones (1954) and Porgy and Bess (1959), among other early major studio films to feature black actors, including Carmen Jones (1954).

Carroll received a Tony Award for best actress in 1962, the first for an African American woman, for her appearance in the Broadway musical No Strings. Julia's 1968 debut, as the first television series to feature a Black woman in a non-stereotypical setting, was a monumental accomplishment both in her career and media.

Dominique Deveraux, a mixed-race diva in the prime time soap opera Dynasty, appeared in the 1980s.

Carroll was nominated for numerous stage and television awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress In a Television Series in 1968.

For the film Claudine (1974), she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

She died on October 4, 2019, after a fight with breast cancer.

Early years

Carol Diann Johnson was born in the Bronx, New York City, on July 17, 1935, to John Johnson, a subway conductor, and Mabel (Faulk), a nurse. 152 Though Carroll was still an infant, the family migrated to Harlem, where she grew up until a brief period in which her parents left her with an aunt in North Carolina. 152 She attended Music and Art High School and was a classmate of Billy Dee Williams. Carroll recalls her parents' love and their enrollment in dance, singing, and modeling classes in several interviews about her childhood. By the time Carroll was 15, she was modeling for Ebony. "She has also participated in television competitions, including Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts," she said, under the name Diahann Carroll." 152 "But she left high school to pursue a show-business degree, pledging her family that if the job does not materialize after two years, she will return to college."

Personal life

Carroll was married four times. Her father presided over her first wedding, which was presided over by Adam Clayton Powell Jr. at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, has postponed the event. In 1962, the couple announced that they had broken up. Suzanne Kay (born September 9, 1960), a writer and screenwriter, became a mother and actress.

Carroll began a nine-year affair with married actor Sidney Poitier in 1959. Carroll said in her autobiography, Poitier persuaded her to divorce her husband and said he would leave his wife to be with her. Poitier did not keep his part of the agreement when she started her divorce. He eventually divorced his wife. According to Poitier, the couple's marriage ended because he wanted to live with Carroll for six months without her daughter's presence, so he would not be "jumping from one marriage to another." She declined.

Carroll dated and was engaged to British television host and producer David Frost from 1970 to 1973. Carroll shocked the world by marrying Fred Glusman, a Las Vegas boutique owner. In June 1973, Glusman, who had been married for four months, requested divorce. Carroll responded but did not contest the divorce, which was finalized two months later. According to reports, a Glusman was physically abused.

Carroll, who was then 39, married Robert DeLeon, the 24-year-old managing editor of Jet magazine, on May 25, 1975. They met when DeLeon assigned themselves to a cover story on Carroll about her 1975 Oscar nomination for Claudine. DeLeon had a child from a previous marriage. Carroll and the Jets were based in Chicago, but DeLeon quit his job quickly and the couple moved to Oakland. Carroll was widowed when DeLeon was killed in a car accident on March 31, 1977. In 1987, Carroll's fourth and final marriage was to singer Vic Damone. Carroll, who admitted that it was turbulent, suffered in 1991, reconciliation, and divorce in 1996.

Carroll was a founding member of the Celebrity Action Council, a nonprofit group of celebrity women who served with the Los Angeles Mission's women's service, helping people recover from heroin, opioid, or prostitution problems. She, along with other female television stars such as Mary Frann, Linda Gray, Donna Mills, and Joan Van Ark, helped to create the group.

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Career

Carroll's biggest break came at the age of 18, when she appeared on the DuMont Television Network's Chance of a Lifetime program, hosted by Dennis James. 152 "Why Was I Born," she won the top prize on the show, which aired January 8, 1954. She went on to win the following four weeks. The Café Society and Latin Quarter nightclubs in Manhattan followed, shortly.

Carroll's debut was as a supporting actor in Carmen Jones (1954), as a companion to Dorothy Dandridge's sultry lead character. She was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical the previous year for her role in the Broadway musical House of Flowers. Clara appeared in George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (1959), but opera singer Loulie Jean Norman dubbed her Clara. Carroll made a guest appearance in Peter Gunn's "Sing a Song of Murder" (1960). She appeared in Sidney Poitier, Paul Newman, and Joanne Woodward's film Paris Blues (1961) for the first time for a Black woman) and received the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1962. Sands was nominated for an Academy Award for her acting role in the film Claudine (1974), but she discovered she was terminally ill with cancer right away, as Carroll's cousin Sara. Sands tried to keep up with the role, but she became too ill to continue filming and recommended that her friend Carroll take over the role. Sands died in September 1973, long before the film was released in April 1974.

Carroll is best known for her recurring role in Julia (1968-71), 141–151, making her the first African-American actress to appear in her own television series in which she did not play a domestic employee. She received the Golden Globe Award for Best TV Star Female for its first year, as well as a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award in 1969. Earlier in Carroll's career, she included appearances on shows hosted by Johnny Carson, Judy Garland, Merv Griffin, Jack Paar, and Ed Sullivan, as well as the Hollywood Palace variety show. Carroll joined the nighttime soap opera Dynasty in 1984 as the multi-race jet set diva Dominique Deveraux, Blake Carrington's half-sister, joined the narrator. Billy Dee Williams, a young girl who briefly played her onscreen husband Brady Lloyd, was also reunited with her on-screen husband Brady Lloyd. Carroll stayed on the show and made several appearances on its short-lived spin-off, The Colbys, before she departed at the end of the seventh season in 1987. Marion Gilbert, a 1989 actress, began appearing in A Different World as Marion Gilbert, for which she received her third Emmy Award the same year.

Eleanor Potter, Jimmy Potter's doting, worried, and protective wife (portrayed by Chuck Patterson) appeared in the musical drama film The Five Heartbeats (1991), which also stars actor and singer Robert Townsend and Michael Wright. In 1995, she reunited with Billy Dee Williams, portraying his character's wife Mrs. Greyson in Lonesome Dove: The Series. Carroll appeared in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical version of the film Sunset Boulevard for the next year. Carroll made her animation debut in The Legend of Tarzan in 2001, in which she played Queen La, the king of the ancient city of Opar.

Carroll appeared in several episodes of Grey's Anatomy as Jane Burke, the adamant mother of Dr. Preston Burke. She appeared on USA Network's series White Collar from 2008 to 2014, the savvy widow who rents out her guest room to Neal Caffrey. Carroll appeared in UnGlobe Entertainment's breast cancer docudrama titled 1 Minute in 2010 and appeared as Nana in two Lifetime movie adaptations of Patricia Cornwell's At Risk and The Front.

Carroll appeared on stage at the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2013 to briefly discuss being the first African-American nominee for a Primetime Emmy Award. Kerry Washington, who was nominated for Scandal, was quoted as saying, "She should get this award."

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Awards and nominations

• 2011: Inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame
• 1992: Women in Film Crystal Award.
• 1998: Women in Film Lucy Award
• 2000: NAACP Image Award — Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years
• 2005: NAACP Image Award — Soul Food
• 2016: Hollywood Legacy Award