Diahann Carroll Dies, Famed Oakland Black Filmmakers Hall Of Fame Guest
ONN – Diahann Carroll Dies, Famed Oakland Black Filmmakers Hall Of Fame Guest
Diahann Carroll, African American screen and stage legend, died at 84, reportedly due to breast cancer. Ms. Carroll has 58 screen credits, 40 credits, 220 credits as herself, and 15 credits in archived footage.
Diahann Carroll was born 17 July 1935 in The Bronx, New York. Here IMDB bio starts this way:
One of television’s premier African-American series stars, elegant actress, singer and recording artist Diahann Carroll was born Carol Diann (or Diahann) Johnson on July 17, 1935, in the Bronx, New York. The first child of John Johnson, a subway conductor, and Mabel Faulk Johnson, music was an important part of her life as a child, singing at age 6 with her Harlem church choir. While taking voice and piano lessons, she contemplated an operatic career after becoming the 10-year-old recipient of a Metropolitan Opera scholarship for studies at New York’s High School of Music and Art. As a teenager she sought modeling work but it was her voice, in addition to her beauty, that provided the magic and the allure.
Diahann Carroll is best know for playing Julia Baker, a widowed nurse raising a young son, on the comedy Julia. The NBC comedy premiered in September 1968, finished No. 7 in tv ratings in the first of its three seasons. Ms. Carroll received an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe award for her work in the role of Julia Baker.
But, locally in Oakland, Diahann Carroll lived in our city, and was known for her participation in the Oakland Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. My Mother, Patricia Abraham Yerger, who volunteered at the BFHF, is now 85, and was once mistaken for Diahann Carroll, remembers her as one of the “class acts” of the event. The Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame event ran from 1974 to 1993. Its Oscar Micheaux Awards Ceremony marked the end of the Oscar Micheaux Awards Weekend in Oakland. Oscar Micheaux, a black filmmaker during the 1920s, is known as “the grandfather of black film.”
Diahann Carroll is a signpost on the road that is the American Zeitgeist.
Stay tuned.
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