Marie Bryant

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Marie Bryant (born 1919 in New Orleans , †  May 23, 1978 in Los Angeles ) was an American singer , dancer of swing and Caribbean songs, and actress.

Live and act

Marie Bryant was a colored "exotic" dancer and singer popular in the late 1930s and early 1940s. She was the daughter of the MC of the Apollo Theater and band leader Willie Bryant and began performing at the Cotton Club at the age of 16, sponsored by Duke Ellington (she also appeared in one of his soundies ).

She also played in films, a. a. in The Duke Is Tops (1938, her first film, in which Lena Horne also starred, then a close friend), Gang War (1940, as a dancer), Jammin 'the Blues by Gjon Mili in 1944, where she “ On the Sunny Side of the Street ”, accompanied by Lester Young sings, They Live by Night (1948, by Nicholas Ray , as a night club singer) and Variety Princess (1950, a Betty Grable musical, also as a night club singer). From around 1952 to 1954 she lived in London , where she married an Indian engineering student and recorded calypso (and jazz) numbers, a. a. with Jackie Brown's Calypso Kings and Jazz with Humphrey Lyttelton . With one of her calypsos, she caused an international scandal in 1953 that made it to the front page of the New York Times . The Calypso Don't Malign Malan was directed against apartheid in South Africa ( Daniel François Malan was South African Prime Minister); "Don't malign Malan because he dislikes our tan. We know that it is wrong to have a skin that's all brown ". She sang the song in a West End revue "High Spirits" (by Stephen Mitchell) while the Prime Minister was in London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II .

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personal data
SURNAME Bryant, Marie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz singer
DATE OF BIRTH 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH New Orleans , Louisiana
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 1978
Place of death Los Angeles , California