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| Diahann Carroll passes away. |
Born in The Bronx, Diahann (born Carol Diahann Johnson) was an American actress, singer, and model. She rose to stardom in performances in some of the earliest major studio films to feature black casts, including Carmen Jones in 1954 and Porgy and Bess in 1959. In 1962, Carroll won a Tony Award for best actress, a first for a black woman, for her role in the Broadway musical No Strings.
Her 1968 debut in Julia, the first series on American television to star a black woman in a nonstereotypical role, was a milestone both in her career and the medium. In the 1980s she played the role of a mixed-race diva in the primetime soap opera Dynasty.
Carroll would work steadily in TV throughout the 1970s and returned to the stage in 1983 to become the first black actress to replace a white actress in a dramatic role with Agnes of God, but it would be the role of Dominique Deveraux on Dynasty that would cement Carroll as a legend.
Deveraux was the jet-setting and glamorous rival half-sister to Blake Carrington, putting her toe-to-toe with Joan Collins as Alexis Carrington Colby. The starring role just so happened to also be the first time a primetime soap had a black lead.
Carroll was the recipient of numerous stage and screen nominations and awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress In A Television Series in 1968. She received an Academy Award for Best Actress nomination for the 1974 film Claudine.
The 1990s would see Carroll star in projects of particular importance to the black audiences and entertainers she inspired, starring as Whitley Gilbert’s mother on A Different World, and appearing in Robert Townsend projects like The Five Heartbeats and Jackie’s Back.
In more recent years, Carroll was one of the select actresses to play Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical version of Sunset Boulevard, and gained a new generation of fans as Jane Burke, mother of Dr. Preston Burke on Grey’s Anatomy, as well as savvy landlord June on the USA series White Collar.
Carroll wrote two memoirs, Diahann! in 1986 and The Legs Are the Last to Go in 2008.
She was also a breast cancer survivor and activist.
Carroll was married four times, first to record producer Monte Kay in 1956. Her father boycotted the wedding ceremony which was presided over by Adam Clayton Powell Jr. at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. The marriage ended in 1962. The union produced a daughter, Suzanne Kay Bamford (born September 9, 1960), who became a freelance media journalist. In 1959, Carroll began a nine-year affair with married actor Sidney Poitier. She claimed that Poitier persuaded her to divorce her husband and he would leave his wife to be with her. When Carroll got her divorce, Poitier did not keep up his end of the bargain, yet the relationship continued until 1968. Carroll dated and was engaged to British television host and producer David Frost from 1970 until 1973.
In 1973, Carroll surprised the press by marrying Las Vegas boutique owner Fred Glusman. Several weeks later, she filed for divorce, charging Glusman with physical abuse.
In 1975, Carroll married Robert DeLeon, a managing editor of Jet. She was widowed two years later when DeLeon was killed in a car crash.
Carroll's fourth marriage was to singer Vic Damone in 1987. The union, which Carroll admitted was turbulent, had a legal separation in 1991, reconciliation, and divorce in 1996.
Carroll was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997. She said the diagnosis "stunned" her because there was no family history of breast cancer and she had always had a healthy lifestyle. She underwent nine weeks of radiation therapy, and was clear since. She frequently spoke on the need for early detection and prevention of the disease.
Carroll was among the trailblazing black women Halle Berry paid tribute in her historic 2002 Oscar acceptance speech, and will long be remembered for her enormous contributions not only to entertainment but to the country.
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