Clarice Taylor

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Clarice Taylor (born September 20, 1917 in Buckingham County , Virginia , † May 30, 2011 in Englewood , New Jersey ) was an American actress .

Life

Clarice Taylor was born to Leon B. Taylor Sr. and his wife Ophelia (Booker) Taylor. She was the second youngest of three children. Her father worked as a dispatcher for the United States Postal Service ; her mother was a nurse . In the 1920s the family moved to Harlem , where Taylor grew up and attended school. She often skipped school, according to her own account, to see African-American vaudeville actress and comedian Jackie "Moms" Mabley on stage when she performed at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Taylor's parents later separated; the father married again.

Taylor graduated from high school , graduated from Columbia University for a year , and then worked night shift clerks for over 20 years at the US Post Office. During the day and in the evening she worked as an actress.

Taylor graduated from the New Theater School in New York City with an acting degree . She began her career as a stage actress in New York in the 1940s.

In 1940 (according to other sources in 1942) she made her off-Broadway debut at the American Negro Theater in the role of Sophie Slow in a production of the play On Striver's Row by Abram Hill . She had other roles there in the productions Natural Man (1941), as Anne Drake in Home Is the Hunter (1945), as Sister Maloney in The Peacemaker by Kurt Unkelbach (1946), in Rain by John Colton and Clemence Randolph (1948) and in Skeleton by Nicholas Bela . In the 1950s she appeared in New York several times at the Greenwich Mews Theater, including in Major Barbara (1953), In Splendid Error by William Branch (1954) and 1955 in Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress .

In 1967 she was one of the founding members of the Negro Ensemble Company , which played in New York's East Village at St. Marks Playhouse. There she appeared regularly since 1967 and in the 1970s.

In 1975 she played the role of Addaperle, the good witch of the north, in the musical The Wiz at the Majestic Theater in New York . In 1987 she played in an off-Broadway production at the Hudson Guild Theater in New York in the world premiere of the one-person play Moms by Alice Childress, the role of Jackie Mobley, the great-granddaughter of a black slave, who was twice as a young girl by white men was raped, including by the sheriff of her hometown in North Carolina . For this stage role, Taylor received the Obie Award .

Taylor also took on several roles in US television series and television films since the late 1960s . Taylor achieved particular fame through her recurring series role in the US sitcom The Bill Cosby Show . She played Anna Huxtable, the mother of obstetrician and gynecologist Cliff Huxtable, played by Bill Cosby . For this role she received a 1986 Emmy Award nomination .

She had another recurring series role as Harriet in the series Sesame Street . In it, she played a rural farmer's wife who regularly visits her grandson David in town. She also had episode roles and guest roles in the television series The Boss (1973), The Lady with the Gun (1985) and Spenser (1986).

Taylor has also appeared in some movies . She played the housekeeper Birdie in the thriller Sadistico (1971) directed by Clint Eastwood . She also had minor roles as Mrs. McKay in Otto Preminger's drama So Gute Freunde (1971), as Esther in the southern love drama Sommersby (1993) and as grandmother Ethel in the comedy Smoke (1995).

Private

Taylor was with Claude Banks Jr. († 1977), a pharmaceutical representative who suffered from heart problems, married; the marriage was later divorced. In 1972 Taylor moved to Los Angeles with her husband . Two sons were born from the marriage. Since the death of her husband, Taylor lived in Harlem, New York, for a long time. Taylor died at her home in Englewood at the age of 93 of complications from congestive heart failure .

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Clarice Taylor Calls Cosby Her Son on TV, but Finds Sassier Fun as Moms Mabley in: People, October 26, 1987
  2. ↑ a b c d e Clarice Taylor Dies at 93; TV's Cosby Called her Mom obituary in: New York Times June 2, 2011
  3. ↑ a b c d e Clarice Taylor dies at 93; actress played Grandmother Huxtable on Cosby Show Obituary in: Los Angeles Times June 2, 2011
  4. ↑ a b c d e Bernard L. Peterson: Profiles of African American stage performers and theater people (available online at Google Books)
  5. ↑ Grandma Huxtable is dead Obituary in: Gala on June 3, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Taylor, Clarice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Buckingham County , Virginia, United States
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 2011
Place of death Englewood , New Jersey, United States