New York - Diahann Carroll, a versatile
singer and stage actress who quietly blazed a trail for black
women on American television in the late 1960s by playing a
widowed nurse and single mother in "Julia," died on Friday at
age 84, her manager said.
Carroll, whose career also was punctuated by a pioneering
Tony Award and an Oscar nomination, had been suffering from
cancer and died in her sleep at home in Los Angeles with her
daughter by her side, her manager, Brian Panella, said by phone.
"She had been fighting it for quite some time, and did not
want the world to know," said Panella, who had managed her
career for 20 years.
With a handful of movie roles and an award-winning Broadway
career already under her belt, Carroll landed the title role in
the 1968 situation comedy "Julia." She played Julia Baker, a
nurse struggling to raise a young son by herself after her
husband was killed in the Vietnam War.
The show, which ran for three seasons on NBC and earned
Carroll a Golden Globe Award and Emmy nomination, was a
breakthrough for African-American women who were only beginning
to make inroads on the small screen at the time.
Actress Nichelle Nichols first appeared two years earlier on
"Star Trek" in the supporting role of communications officer
Lieutenant Uhura. But "Julia" was the first prime-time network
series to star a black woman playing a professional character,
as opposed to a maid or domestic worker, as was the case in the
1950s sitcom "Beulah."
"She never wanted to praise herself for anything in that
regard," Panella said. "It was more that she felt that she was a
part of the expansion of the African-American community in the
arts, not the sole creator of that movement."
Carroll's close friend and fellow vocalist from that era,
Dionne Warwick, reacted with grief, saying, "My personal world
has taken a downward spiral. Losing my dear friend and mentor
comes as a true hurt to my heart."
Carroll's success as "Julia" set her up for another title
role in the 1974 movie, "Claudine," for which she received an
Academy Award nomination as best actress. Playing opposite James
Earl Jones, she reprised her single-mother persona, this time
living in Harlem with six children and on public relief.
She went on to play numerous screen roles, mostly in
television shows and made-for-TV movies, until just a few years
ago. Besides "Julia," she is perhaps best remembered by TV
audiences for her role as Dominique Deveraux, a glamorous diva
on the 1980s hit prime-time soap opera "Dynasty."
This 1986 file photo shows Diahann Carroll, John Forsythe, Linda Evans and Joan Collins from "Dynasty" cutting a cake to commemorate the production of 150 episodes of the show in Los Angeles. Picture: Reed Saxon/AP
Carol Diann Johnson was born in the Bronx borough of New
York City on July 17, 1935, daughter of a subway conductor, and
began singing with her Harlem church choir at age 6, according
to IMDB.com.
Modeling for Ebony magazine by the time she was 15, she
adopted the more exotic-sounding Diahann Carroll as a teenager
auditioning for singing gigs, it said.
In 1954, she landed her first singing role on Broadway in
the musical "House of Flowers," before going on to play Clara in
the Otto Preminger's big-screen version of "Porgy and Bess in
1959. She also had auditioned for the lead in Preminger's 1954
film adaptation of "Carmen Jones" but ended up cast in the
supporting role of Myrt instead.
Her performance as a fashion model in the 1962 Broadway
musical interracial love story "No Strings" won her a Tony Award
as best actress, a first for an African-American performer.
Carroll, who had been married four times, also sang in
nightclubs and recorded several record albums from the late
1950s to the mid-1960s.
"She was a tremendous talent and just a very unique human
being," said Panella. "I was blessed to have her as my client
for all of that time.”