Diahann Carroll, the elegant star of stage and screen, changed the course of television history.
Tributes to the late actress Diahann Carroll poured in Friday from Oprah Winfrey, Ava DuVernay, Viola Davis and others in and around Hollywood.In the late 1960s, Carroll was cast in “Julia,” the enormously successful NBC sitcom that featured her as a war-widowed nurse raising a son. The pioneering role was a departure from her black predecessors who typically played domestic workers and was credited with shattering stereotypes ahead of “The Cosby Show,” which didn’t premiere until 1984.
Born Carol Diahann Johnson on July 17, 1935, in the Bronx, she moved to Harlem with her parents at a young age. With their support she enrolled in dance, singing and modeling classes and attended the High School of Music & Arts with Billy Dee Williams, who would later costar with her in “Dynasty,” “Lonesome Dove: The Series” and the widely panned “Star Wars Christmas Special.
It only took a few days into working on 1959’s “Porgy and Bess” for Poitier to take notice of his beautiful costar, whose nine-year love affair with him would result in the demise of his first marriage. “Julia“aired amid the Vietnam War protests, the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and thunderous civil rights marches across the country. It was criticized for being trite, unrealistic and a far cry from the bitter realities plaguing African Americans.
She took a grittier turn in the titular role of 1974’s “Claudine,” which earned Carroll her only Oscar nomination as a mother struggling to raise her six children on welfare who falls for a garbage collector, played by James Earl Jones. She racked up more TV credits in the early 2000s, appearing in “Whoopi,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Diary of a Single Mom” before landing a recurring role on USA’s “White Collar” as a wealthy widow. The actress declined to partake in the 2006 “Dynasty” reunion because she was “appalled” by the monetary compensation.
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