Posted on 10/04/2019 9:27:42 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Diahann Carroll, the captivating singer and actress who came from the Bronx to win a Tony Award, receive an Oscar nomination and make television history with her turns on Julia and Dynasty, has died Friday. She was 84.
Carroll was known as a Las Vegas and nightclub performer and for her performances on Broadway and in the Hollywood musicals Carmen Jones and Porgy & Bess when she was approached by an NBC executive to star as Julia Baker, a widowed nurse raising a young son, on the comedy Julia.
As the sultry fashionista Dominique Deveraux ... Carroll played a much edgier character for three seasons on ABC's Dynasty and its spinoff The Colbys, delightfully dueling with fellow diva Alexis Carrington Colby (Joan Collins).
While recuperating after starring on Broadway in Agnes of God, Carroll had found herself digging Dynasty — "Isn't this the biggest hoot?" she said — and lobbied producer Aaron Spelling for a role on his series.
"They've done everything [on the show]. They've done incest, homosexuality, murder. I think they're slowly inching their way toward interracial," she recalled in a 1984 piece for People magazine.
In 1963, she earned the first of her four career Emmy noms for portraying a teacher yet again on ABC's gritty Naked City.
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More recently, Carroll had recurring roles as Jasmine Guy's mother on NBC's A Different World, as Isaiah Washington's mom on ABC's Grey's Anatomy and as a Park Avenue widow on USA's White Collar. She also appeared in such films as Eve's Bayou (1997) and on stage as Norman Desmond in a musical version of Sunset Blvd.
She was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2011.
(Excerpt) Read more at hollywoodreporter.com ...
Shame. She was a good actress. When I was kid I always watched her show. Lloyd Nolan played her boss.
Yes I remember watching Julia as a very young child. Had no idea at the time that it was groundbreaking. She was very talented. RIP.
My husband and I watch old Naked City episodes. The one she was in was great. The kid in the episode played Dill in To kill a Mockingbird. We knew him.
I enjoyed Julia.
Condolences to families and friends of Diahann Carroll. R.I.P., lady
love
RIP to a beautifully talented lady.
Anyone have a recent picture? Would like to see how she aged.
I recently was watching Detectorists and was shocked at how Dianna Rigg looked. Age really does you in. Didn’t even recognize her. But I did keep looking at the other character and wondered who she was..her voice reminded me of someone.
It was Diana Rigg’s daughter. Sounded a lot like her when she was young
I loved that show. What a long way we have come for the better.
“Julia” is on Cozi TV.
Here she is in 2018. WOW..she aged well. Even if part of it is plastic surgery and a wig (not sure if that is the case) AND good makeup artist and lighting
https://www.bet.com/video/celebrity/2018/matriarchs-of-the-movement-diahann-carroll-part-2.html
Dianne was a good actress. She was also a very good singer.
One of my favorite Christmas LP Albums was with Dianne singing a duet of “Silver Bells” with Perry Como, and “Do You Hear What I Hear?” on a different album.
I always thought she was quite beautiful and talented. Still, 84 is a ripe old age IMO for an entertainer. R.I.P.
Rigg had a big role in Game of Thrones. I didn’t even know I was looking at Emma Peel for a long time.
Julia was the first TV show to have a “cuddly little” black kid as a cast member. That was long before Gary Coleman and Webster. I wonder whatever happened to that child actor.
One of my schoolboy crushes.
RIP.
Must mention she won a Tony Award for best actress, a first for a black woman, for her role in the hit Broadway musical
“No Strings” with Richard Kiley.
Although no mention is made of the musical’s interracial theme back in 1960’s it was controversial.
In her memoir she writes that on opening night, when Diahann was acclaimed as a major star, composer Richard Rogers told her she could not go to the opening night party-—b/c she was black.
This from Richard Rodgers who won a Pulitzer Prize for his pro-civil rights music in South Pacific.
What ever happened to Cory? Don’t know his real name.
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