Ruby Dee

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Ruby Dee (2006)

Ruby Dee , actually Ruby Ann Wallace , (born October 27, 1922 in Cleveland , Ohio , † June 11, 2014 in New Rochelle , New York ), was an American actress and civil rights activist.

Life

When Ruby Dee was a year old, her family moved from Ohio to Harlem . Her birth mother had already left the family by then. Ruby was raised by her stepmother who made sure she got piano lessons. The family rented rooms to African-American travelers who were banned from staying in "white hotels" in New York .

Ruby Dee's first acting experience was in school plays during high school. While in college, she performed at the American Negro Theater in Harlem. There she played together with Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte . After a few off-Broadway productions, she made her Broadway debut in 1943 . In 1946 she met Ossie Davis , whom she married in 1948, during a joint Broadway production . They had three children and were married until Ossie Davis' death in 2005. Her acting training, she intensified the newly founded Actors Studio by Lee Strasberg , where Marlon Brando was trained. In the early 1950s, Ruby Dee and her husband began to get involved in the black civil rights movement. After her first roles in Afro-American films, she also got her first Hollywood roles. Most of the time, however, she only played housemaid. She only played a bigger role in 1958 in the music film St. Louis Blues on the side of Nat King Cole , Eartha Kitt , Cab Calloway , Ella Fitzgerald and Mahalia Jackson . The film tells the life story of the composer WC Handy , played by Nat King Cole.

Ruby Dee, photographed by Carl van Vechten in 1962

1959 returned Ruby Dee the theater back and played a starring role in the Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun . She also played her role in the 1961 film adaptation of Daniel Petrie . In the 1960s, she became the first African-American woman to star in the American Shakespeare Festival . As a political activist, she and her husband led the program of the closing rally of the March on Washington for Work and Freedom on October 28, 1963 . She wrote the screenplay for the film Black Power with director Jules Dassin in 1968 and took on the female lead in this film. In the early 1970s she starred in some of the films on the new wave of Afro-American films. In the following years she was mainly seen in television films and continued to act in the theater. In the late 1980s she cast Spike Lee together with husband Ossie Davis in his film Do the Right Thing .

In 2001 she and her husband Ossie Davis received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award for Lifetime Achievement . In 2004 she received the Kennedy Prize .

In 2005 she was filming the New Zealand family comedy No. 2 when her husband Ossie Davis died of a heart attack. In 2007 she returned to the big screen and played the mother of Denzel Washington in the movie American Gangster . The role earned her an Oscar nomination for best supporting female role. She is the only 21st century nominee in this category who is no longer alive. In 2008 she received the Spingarn Medal . Dee died of natural causes at her home in New Rochelle, New York, at the age of 91 on June 11, 2014. On the Friday after her death, Broadway theaters dimmed the lights for a minute in her honor.

Political commitment

Ruby Dee and her husband Ossie Davis were considered the "first couple in the civil rights movement ." Ruby Dee made her first public speech at a demonstration at the age of eleven. The occasion was the suicide of a teacher because of budget cuts. In the early 1950s she supported Ethel and Julius Rosenberg . In 1963 she and her husband moderated the speeches at the closing rally at the March on Washington . They not only had contact with in the civil rights movement , Martin Luther King , but was also with the more militant Malcolm X friends. Ruby Dee organized a Christmas shopping boycott and raised funds for Martin Luther King after the murder of four schoolgirls in a bomb attack in Birmingham, Alabama . At almost 80, she was arrested during a protest march against the shooting of Amadou Diallo by officers from the New York City Police Department . She also viewed her acting as a means of fighting for civil rights.

Filmography (selection)

theatre

  • 1940: On Strivers Row
  • 1941: Natural Man
  • 1942: Starlight
  • 1943: Three's a Family
  • 1943: South Pacific
  • 1944: Walk Hard
  • 1946: Jeb
  • 1946: Anna Lucasta
  • 1946: Arsenic and Old Lace
  • 1946: John Loves Mary
  • 1948: A Long Way From Home
  • 1949: The Smile of the World
  • 1953: The World of Sholom Aleichem
  • 1959: A Raisin in the Sun
  • 1961: Purlie Victorious
  • 1965: King Lear
  • 1965: The Taming of the Shrew
  • 1966: The Birds
  • 1966: Oresteia
  • 1970: Boesman and Lena
  • 1971: The Imaginary Invalid
  • 1972: The Wedding Band
  • 1975: Hamlet
  • 1979: Bus stop
  • 1979: Twin-Bit Gardens
  • 1983: Zora is My Name!
  • 1988: Checkmates
  • 1989: The Glass Menagerie
  • 1993: The Disappearance
  • 1994: Flying West
  • 1995: Two Hahs-Hahs and a Homeboy
  • 1996: My One Good Nerve: A Visit with Ruby Dee
  • 2002: A Last Dance for Sybil
  • 2003: Saint Lucy's Eyes

Web links

Commons : Ruby Dee  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Ruby Dee is dead , taz from June 13, 2014.
  2. ↑ Obituary: US actress was 91 years old - Ruby Dee is dead . In: Rheinische Post
  3. ↑ NBC -Washington: 10 Things You Didn't Know About the 1963 March on Washington ( Memento of the original from June 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , August 28, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nbcwashington.com
  4. ↑ a b c d e Hanns-Georg Rodek, Woe if this beautiful woman got angry , Die Welt from June 13, 2014.
  5. ↑ a b US actress and civil rights activist Ruby Dee dies , Neue Zürcher Zeitung of June 13, 2014.
  6. ↑ Ruby Dee Stage Credits. ( Memento of the original from March 10, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: OssieAndRuby.com (English). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ossieandruby.com
personal data
SURNAME Dee, Ruby
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wallace, Ruby Ann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH October 27, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Cleveland , Ohio , United States
DATE OF DEATH June 11, 2014
Place of death New Rochelle , New York , United States