Olive Moorefield

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Olive Moorefield (1970)

Olive Moorefield (born August 23, 1932 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , United States ) is an American singer and actress with various excursions to German films of the 1950s and appearances on television shows in the 1960s.

Live and act

Olive Moorefield had seven siblings. After attending Pennsylvania College, she took singing and acting lessons. In October 1952 she made her Broadway debut in New York in the play My Darlin 'Aida . She then went on an extensive European tour and settled in Vienna in 1953 .

There she received - very unusual for a black artist in Europe at the time - an engagement from the Vienna Volksoper and initially celebrated a success with the Cole Porter musical Kiss Me Kate . At first she played the supporting role of Bianca, later also the main role of Kate. Olive Moorefield remained connected to this house for the next two decades for guest appearances as well as for permanent engagements. Occasionally the artist appeared in other theaters in Central Europe, such as the Frankfurt Opera . Her many years of activity in Vienna brought her great popularity in Austria .

Above all, however, she made a career as a record artist (with contracts with Polydor , Ariola and Heliodor ) and did not shy away from trips to the hit business (for example, 'Nobody bites on the shooting iron'). From 1956 there were also offers from German films, in which she appeared sometimes as a singer and sometimes as an actress. In the 1960s, German and Austrian television began to gain in importance, where it was mainly seen in shows (for example, Between Bach and Beat, Vienna Side Story ). 1964 Olive Moorefield appeared in a movie for the last time and took on the role of slave Cassy in the film adaptation of the famous southern novel Uncle Tom's Cabin . In 1965 she played a rare serious role with Nancy Mannigoe in another southern drama called Requiem for a Nun , this time for German television, based on a novel by William Faulkner . Almost at the same time (autumn 1965) Olive Moorefield achieved a great success with Bess in George Gershwin's musical Porgy and Bess , which was first performed at a large opera house, the Volksoper.

As a result of the marriage with the doctor Dr. Kurt Mach At the end of 1969, Olive Moorefield gradually withdrew from the limelight into private life. In later years her name reappeared (now as Olive Moorefield-Mach), this time on the administrative side at music festivals ("Association of Friends of the Salzburg Jazz Autumn") or an association that unites people. She also acts as the treasurer of the Austria-Barbados Society, a subdivision of the umbrella organization PaN (= partner of all nations). President of the Austria-Barbados Society, founded in 2004, is her husband.

Filmography

Singing and acting

literature

  • Johann Caspar Glenzdorf: Glenzdorf's international film lexicon. Biographical manual for the entire film industry. Volume 2: Hed – Peis. Prominent-Filmverlag, Bad Münder 1961, DNB 451560744 , p. 1156.
  • The New York Times Directory of the Theater , Introduction by Clive Barnes. New York 1973. p. 652
  • Andreas Kloner: An American in Vienna. Portrait of the American singer Olive Moorefield . ORF radio feature 2012, 54 min.
  • Christian Fastl, Monika Kornberger: Moorefield, Olive. In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon . Online edition, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5 ; Print edition: Volume 3, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-7001-3045-7 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Moorefield, Olive
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Moorefield-Mach, Olive
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American singer and actress
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , United States