Nina Mae McKinney

At 54 years old, Nina Mae McKinney physical status not available right now. We will update Nina Mae McKinney's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

In January 1928, Lew Leslie's Blackbirds Revue played at Les Ambassadeurs Club. McKinney probably joined after her 16th birthday as a chorus girl in the Blackbirds Beauties under the name Nina Mae McKinney. The show itself was renamed Blackbirds of 1928 and moved to the Liberty Theatre, where it ran for 518 successful performances, starring Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Adelaide Hall.

In October 1928, King Vidor arrived in New York searching for actors for his upcoming all-Black talking picture, "Hallelujah!". Actor Daniel L. Haynes and dancer Honey Brown, from Club Highland, were to be the stars. During casting sessions in Harlem, McKinney walked back and forth in front of the building to gain the attention of King Vidor. He said, "Nina Mae McKinney was third from the right in the chorus. She was beautiful and talented and glowing with personality." In Hollywood she first had just a minor role in the film.

On March 20, 1929, McKinney, Haynes and Victoria Spivey appeared on Radio-KHJ. She performed songs from Blackbirds: "I Must Have That Man" and "Diga Diga Doo".

On May 20, 1929, McKinney was engaged to James Marshall, director of Harlem's Lafayette Theatre, and signed a five-year contract with MGM, the first African American performer to do so.

McKinney returned to New York and worked as a domestic for Springs, who was caring for his ailing wife. McKinney appeared at the Embassy Theatre on August 20 for the premiere of Hallelujah!, which was an immense success. McKinney was the first African-American actress to hold a principal role in a mainstream film, which had an African American cast. Vidor was nominated for a directing Oscar and McKinney was praised for her role. Vidor told audiences "Nina was full of life, full of expression, and just a joy to work with. Someone like her inspires a director."

The following day, McKinney wed Marshall, but she returned to California in September, moving into the Hotel Dunbar and traveling daily to Culver City to film The Bugle Sounds, Manhattan Serenade and They Learned About Women. Few Hollywood movies had mixed race casts, and it was difficult for African Americans to find enough work in the creative side of the film industry. Hollywood was reluctant to make McKinney into a glamorized icon like the white actresses of the time, despite her beauty; film production codes prohibited suggestions of miscegenation, so filming interracial romance was impossible.

By late-January 1930, McKinney had grown tired of MGM. She had begun failing to appear for promotional appearances, especially if her name was not in lights above the marquee. That spring, her new manager, Al Munro, sports writer of The Chicago Whip, arranged a tour of the Midwest for her. She was to appear in Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Kansas City, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. In late-March, she left for Chicago to appear in a vaudeville show, Circus at the 35th Regiment Armory. The following month, she moved on to the Metropolitan Theatre for two weeks. During this engagement, on April 9, McKinney appeared on two of Reverend A.W. Nix's Black Diamond Train to Hell sermons (Part 5 and 6), which was recorded at the Brunswick Recording Library. Horrible reviews followed McKinney, declaring her a money-hungry, star struck girl who had grown to despise her own race. McKinney claimed to have filed a libel suit during 1930 against a white reporter, Elisabeth Goldbeck, who stated that McKinney had "repudiated her race" in an article that composed for the Motion Picture Classic magazine.

In January 1934, Garland Wilson and McKinney departed for a tour of the Cote d'Azur, beginning in Nice, which ended up being a successful five-month project. The partnership enjoyed a success-filled month in Prague immediately afterwards. On March 2, she arrived in Budapest and appeared at the Parisian Grill-Bar for another month. She arrived in Athens, Greece, to open on April 7 at the Femina Cinema, where she was billed as the Black Garbo (prior to this, she had been referred to only as the Black Clara Bow).

Instead, on July 15, McKinney opened at London's Alhambra Theatre, where she remained for the next two weeks. In the meantime, she also appeared in Kentucky Minstrels (released in the United States as Life is Real.), her first British film, alongside Scott & Whaley and Debroy Somer's Orchestra.

During summer 1934, alongside Paul Robeson, McKinney began filming, Zoltan and Alexander Korda's Bosambo (later known as Sanders of the River) at the Denham Film Studios near London. The film, which was partly set in Africa, would portray African culture positively, which Robeson had made a condition of his participation in the project. McKinney and Robeson later discovered the film was re-edited without their knowledge, and that their roles in the film had been significantly downgraded.

Destitute and desperate, McKinney returned to Hollywood in July 1944 appearing alongside Merle Oberon, playing a servant girl in the film Dark Waters, and Irene Dunne in Together Again as a nightclub attendant.

Source