Jane White

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Actress Jane White was born in New York City on October 30, 1922. She attended Smith College and The New School.^[1] In 1945, She made her Broadway debut in Strange Fruit. This performance was followed by roles in Razzle Dazzle, The Insect Comedy, The Climate of Eden, Take a Giant Step, Jane Eyre, and The Power and The Glory. In 1959, she opened the acclaimed musical, Once Upon a Mattress, originating the role of Queen Aggravain alongside Carol Burnett and Joseph Bova.^[2] She won an Obie Award in 1971.^[3]

Jane White
Born	October 30, 1922 (1922-10-30) (age 85) New York City, New York
Occupation	Stage, television, film actress

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 2.1 Early career 2.2 1970s-present 3 Personal and family life 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Early life

Jane was born to Walter Francis White, a notable Civil Rights leader and national secretary of the NAACP from 1931-1955, and Gladys Leah Powell. She grew up in the fashionable Sugar Hill neighborhood of Harlem at 409 Edgecombe Avenue. The house was nicknamed "The White House of Harlem" because of the prominent and important figures who frequented the home. Jane had one sibling, a brother, Walter Carl Darrow.^[4][5]

[edit] Career

[edit] Early career

In 1945, Jane secured her first part on stage playing the lead role, Nonnie, in the Broadway production of Strange Fruit. The play was an adaptation of the controversial novel about interracial love in the South. She was originally recommended for the part by Paul Robeson, a friend to the White family.^[5] The play opened to mixed reviews, but both Jane and the play received positive attention from Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote her own review in her column My Day. Of White's performance, Roosevelt wrote: "I should like to pay tribute to the cast of this play as a whole, but particularly to Jane White whose first venture this is on the stage and who plays her part with restraint and beauty."^[6]

Jane White went on, in 1959, to play the role of Queen Aggravain in the acclaimed Broadway musical Once Upon a Mattress, which later became best-known as the musical in which Carol Burnett made her Broadway debut. White reprised this role in both the 1964 and the 1972 televised productions of the musical.^[7]

White's role in this musical was particularly notable due to the fact that she was the first woman of color to play a role in whiteface on Broadway.^[5] In fact Jane White is of mixed race, and the casual observer's inability to identify her with one race or another at a glance caused her trouble through her career.^[8]; she lamented, in her later years, that she was frequently considered "too black for white roles, and—this really hurt—too white for black roles."^[5] As such, in Once Upon a Mattress, as in other roles she played later in her career, makeup was used to create a distinctly Anglo-Saxon look. At the time this was acknowledged by the director as a simple concession to the fact that of all the auditionees, White had been far and away the best for the role. However, in later years White went on to become an advocate for color-blind casting.^[5]

[edit] 1970s-present

Jane White continued to work steadily in theatre and occasionally in television and movies from the 1970s through the 2000s, frequently taking roles playing strong, imposing women onstage. Her theatrical work has spanned summer stock, off-Broadway, and on-Broadway shows. Much of her work has been in classical dramas, with particular focus on Shakespeare; she won an Obie Award for her roles in the 1965-66 New York Shakespeare Festival as Volumnia in Coriolanus and the Princess of France in Love's Labour's Lost. She also won the 1988-89 Los Angeles Critics Circle Award for her role as the Mother in Federico Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding. She has additionally held roles in such dramas as Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis and Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts; comedies such as Paul Rudnick's I Hate Hamlet; and musicals such as Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music and the 2001 production of Sondheim's Follies, to name a small selection.^[5]

In addition to the aforementioned televised productions of Once Upon a Mattress, her television work included a 1979 stint on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, playing the role of Tante Helene LeVeaux.^[9] Her most notable film role came in 1988, when she played the schoolteacher Lady Jones in the movie version of Toni Morrison's Beloved.^[10]

From 1979-80, Jane White starred in a self-written, one-woman cabaret show entitled Jane White, Who?, which interspersed autobiographical anecdotes and personal reminiscence with songs.^[5] As recently as 2006, she continued to perform in cabaret theater occasionally.^[11]

[edit] Personal and family life

Jane White attended Smith College beginning in the early 1940s; until her enrollment, Smith had been exclusively white.^[5] In fact, at the beginning of her freshman year, a fellow student in White's dormitory, who was white, told Smith that she would leave the school unless White were forced to leave, as she (the roommate) refused to share a dormitory with a woman of color. To the housemate's surprise, Smith told her that she was free to leave if she wished but that White would remain enrolled and in her current rooming situation. The startled roommate elected to stay.^[8] White majored in sociology at Smith, but found herself increasingly drawn to musical theatre, and studied voice and acting during her time there as well.^[5]

In 1962, White met the New York restaurateur Alfredo Viazzi, and after a short courtship they were wed. They moved to Europe in 1965, but moved back to the U.S. in the late '60s.^[5] Viazzi died of a heart attack on December 28, 1987, at the age of 66.^[12]

Jane White currently lives in New York.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Jane White at the Internet Movie Database
• Jane White at the Internet Broadway Database