Dorothy Dandridge :(Celebrity In Spotlight)

Dorothy Jean Dandridge was an American actress and popular singer. The first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, she was also the first African-American woman to appear at the Las Vegas Frontier[citation needed] and the Waldorf-Astoria, as well as the first to be featured on the cover of Life.[citation needed] Dandridge went on to appear on the Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson shows and received good reviews for her nightclub appearances at the Cafe de Paris and the La vie en Rose.

She was cast, along with Harry Belafonte, Pearl Bailey, Madame Sul-Te-Wan, Diahann Carroll, and Joe Adams. Dandridge's voice was dubbed by Marilyn Horne in Carmen Jones.Carmen Jones grossed $60,000 during the first week and $47,000 in the second upon release in 1955.The film received favorable reviews, and Dandridge was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming only the third African American to receive a nomination in any Academy Award category (after Hattie McDaniel and Ethel Waters).

In addition to Dandridge, the Best Actress Award nominees were Judy Garland, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, and Jane Wyman.On March 26, 1955, Dandridge presented the Academy Award for Film Editing to Gene Milford for On the Waterfront.Dandridge married dancer and entertainer Harold Nicholas on September 6, 1942, and gave birth to her only child, Harolyn Suzanne Nicholas, on September 2, 1943. Harolyn was born brain-damaged, and the couple divorced in October 1951. Dandridge openly discussed her daughter on The Mike Douglas Show in 1963.On September 8, 1965, Dandridge was found dead by her manager, Earl Mills, in her West Hollywood apartment from an overdose of Imipramine, a tricyclic antidepressant. She was 42 years old. Dandridge's death was later ruled accidental.