Evelyn Preer
Evelyn Preer was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, United States on July 16th, 1896 and is the Movie Actress. At the age of 36, Evelyn Preer biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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Evelyn Preer (born Evelyn Jarvis; July 26, 1896 – November 17, 1932), was a pioneering African-American stage and screen actress and jazz and blues singer of the 1910s through the early 1930s.
Preer was known within the black community as "The First Lady of the Screen." She was the first black actress to earn celebrity and popularity.
She appeared in ground-breaking films and stage productions, such as the first play by a black playwright to be produced on Broadway, and the first New York-style production with a black cast in California in 1928, in a revival of a play adapted from Somerset Maugham's Rain.
Early life
Evelyn Jarvis was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi on July 26, 1896. After her father, Frank, died prematurely, she moved with her mother, Blanche, and her three other siblings to Chicago, Illinois. She completed grammar school and high school in Chicago. Her early experiences in vaudeville and "street preaching" with her mother are what jump-started her acting career.
Career in cinema
Preer's first film role came in Oscar Micheaux' 1919 debut film The Homesteader, in which she played Orlean. Preer was marketed by Micheaux as his leading actress with a regular tour of personal appearances and a public relations campaign. She was one of the first African American women to enter the black community. She appeared in Within Our Gates (1920), where she played Sylvia Landry, a teacher who needs to raise funds to save her school.
She continued her career by appearing in 19 films. Micheaux produced several of his sequel films to emphasize Preer's versatility. They included The Brute (1920), The Gunsaulus Mystery (1921), Deceit (1923), The Devil's Disciple (1926), The Conjure Woman (1926), and The Spider's Web (1926). Preer made her racially debut in the race musical Georgia Rose (1930). She appeared in the film Ladies of the Big House in 1931 and performed with Sylvia Sidney. Lola, a prostitute, was Joséf von Sternberg's 1932 film Blonde Venus, starring Cary Grant and Marlene Dietrich. Both the black and white press praised Preer's ability to excel in ever more challenging roles: "...her roles spanned villain to hero, an attribute that many black actresses who worked in Hollywood cinema history did not have the opportunity or luxury to enjoy." Micheaux's film and three shorts were the only ones to survive. She was known for refusing to perform roles that she felt deaned African Americans.
Career in theatre
Preer founded The Lafayette Players, a Chicago stage and film company founded in 1915 by Anita Bush, a pioneering stage and film actress known as "The Little Mother of Black Drama" in 1920. At a time when theatres were racially segregated by law in the South, and often by custom in the North, and the interest in vaindeville was fading. The Lafayette Players brought drama to black audiences, which helped it flourish during the Great Depression.
Preer began to be noticed by the white press in the mid-1920s, and she began to appear in crossover films and stage parts. Willis Richardson's production of The Chip Woman's Fortune in 1923 appeared in the Ethiopian Art Theatre's production of The Chip Woman's Fortune. It was the first dramatic performance by an African-American playwright to be staged on Broadway, and it lasted two weeks. In 1926, Preer appeared in David Belasco's production of Lulu Belle on Broadway. In Edward Sheldon's drama of a Harlem prostitute, Preer supported and understudied Lenore Ulric. In a West Coast revival of Somerset Maugham's play about a deceased woman, she received acclaim in Sadie Thompson.
In their first show at the Lincoln Center in Los Angeles, she rejoined the Lafayette Players. Preer and her colleagues appeared in the first New York-style play starring black actors to be produced in California under Robert Levy's direction. She appeared in Rain, a play based on Maugham's short story by the same name during the year.
Preer has performed in cabaret and musical theater, where she was often supported by such diverse artists as Duke Ellington and Red Nichols early in their careers. Many people regard Preer as the best actress of her time.