LADY SCREENS THE BLUES

By RICHARD CORLISS

Some called her the black Marilyn. Dorothy Dandridge was light-skinned--or, as she would say, in mock haughtiness, "tan. Teasing tan, darling!" In old Hollywood, black was the color not of a skin tone but of a stop sign for gifted actors. So Dandridge's impact as a fiery siren in the 1954 Carmen Jones--she earned the first Oscar nomination for an African American in a leading role--allowed her and all blacks to hope Hollywood might finally find a place of honor for people of color. But like Marilyn, Dandridge doubted her talent, had bad luck with the men in her life, suffered a mid-career crisis and died early (at 42, in 1965) after a barbiturate overdose.

To most filmgoers, Dandridge is either a faded memory or no memory at all; but her life and death are the stuff of movie legend, and a poignant cautionary tale for the audience that adored her. Thus even before she gets an hour-long Biography, she is the subject of a careful, doting biography--film historian Donald Bogle's Dorothy Dandridge (Amistad Press; 613 pages; $27.95)--and of a contest among black stars to play her onscreen. It is the hottest bio-pic property for a black actress since Lady Sings the Blues, the story of Billie Holiday--a doomed figure Dandridge had for years yearned to play.

Lady. That was the image Dandridge projected, and it seemed nicely suited to a Hollywood just then scouting for a dark face to introduce to audiences. But beneath this delicate elegance, Dorothy was a nest of insecurities. Born in 1922, she'd been drilled for stardom by her bisexual mother Ruby, who fled a Cleveland marriage for Hollywood with her two daughters and her domineering girlfriend in tow. Dottie and sister Vivian were onstage from childhood and in films from 1935. Did they want to be? Ruby never asked.

Growing up onscreen, Dorothy was pretty as a Keane picture, vivacious as Betty Boop, and slim--slim as a black actress's chance of movie stardom in the whites-only golden age. Nina Mae McKinney (in Hallelujah) and Fredi Washington (in Imitation of Life) had radiated passion and depth, but by the late '30s Hollywood was consigning blacks to comedy roles and musical numbers.

So Dandridge sang of "Ten little jitterbug boys" with Louis Armstrong in Going Places and about the "Harlem Sandman" ("He makes you Count Basie/ Instead of countin' sheep") in Hit Parade of 1943. She starred in the video-jukebox "soundies," dolled up in jewels for Easy Street or jiving expertly in Swing for Your Supper ("They made me rock 'n' roll...brought me up on good ol' rhythmatic"). In the 1940 Sun Valley Serenade she introduced Chattanooga Choo Choo, dancing with the great Nicholas brothers. By then Dottie was a solo act. Much later, Vivian worked as her star sister's hairdresser--but that's another sad show-biz tale.

Dandridge built a career as a suave nightclub singer before playing the jungle queen in Tarzan's Peril (1951). Here and in Bright Road (1953), a sweet drama starring Dorothy as a rural teacher, she flashed limpid eyes aching with sympathy; imagine Olivia de Havilland with a little sex and a little color (Dorothy's face had to be darkened with makeup).

Otto Preminger needed persuading that demure Dorothy could be the heartbreaking Carmen. But there she stands, hands on svelte hips, unleashing a wonderfully womanly laugh and dazzling the hapless Joe (Harry Belafonte) by sitting down and slinging his leg over her shoulder or urging him to dry her toenails: "Blow on 'em, Sugar." Here was an adult sexuality Hollywood had rarely shown. It surfaces again in the French Tamango (1957), where Dandridge--as Aiche, the half-caste slave mistress of captain Curt Jurgens--summons a complex ferocity, connecting with Aiche's hurt as well as her love-hatred of the man who owns her.

Dorothy's sex life was just as stormy. Her first husband, Harold Nicholas of the dance team, was absent and faithless; their daughter Lynn was brain damaged and had to be institutionalized. Her second marriage, to Las Vegas sharpie Jack Denison, yanked her into bankruptcy. Her trysts with Preminger, Jurgens, Peter Lawford and others left her forlorn. Her nightclub career dipped; after Porgy and Bess (1959), good film offers dried up. Dorothy was yesterday's darling.

Luck is often a matter of timing. Dandridge was pretty and gifted at the right time; that gave her a taste of stardom. But she aspired to it the old way--by being a dignified actress, a chanteuse, a lady--at just the time when pop culture was busting into rowdiness. Bogle says she was "the beauty as loner." That isolation may have scuttled her. Now it makes her a heroine, a nostalgia pinup and a source for the kind of movie role Dorothy Dandridge was rarely lucky enough to play.