Dorothy Dandridge, Part 1: A Star of Her Own Making — Baptism by Show Business, Carmen Jones, and a Historic Oscar Nomination

This is Part 1 of our two-part series on Dorothy Dandridge.

Dorothy Dandridge was one of the most electrifying talents Hollywood ever tried to contain — a trailblazing performer who would become the first Black woman nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, and whose story began long before anyone in Hollywood was paying attention.

From a childhood spent on the road — singing and dancing through segregated churches and theaters across the South before she'd even learned to read — to performing at the Cotton Club by sixteen, Dandridge spent her early years chasing a stage of her own. While still a teenager, she'd walked away from the singing trio that had defined her childhood to chase something Hollywood almost never gave Black actresses: real, dramatic roles.

Part 1 of our two-part series on Dorothy Dandridge follows her from a Depression-era childhood split between a controlling guardian and a mother chasing her own Hollywood break, through the Dandridge Sisters' years on the Cotton Club stage, in films like The Big Broadcast of 1936 and A Day at the Races, and on a European tour disrupted by the outbreak of World War II. It follows her star-making specialty number in Sun Valley Serenade alongside the Nicholas Brothers, and back to the one thing she'd wanted all along: training at the integrated Actors' Lab alongside a young Marilyn Monroe, and taking the small, hard-won dramatic parts — including her first starring film role in Four Shall Die and MGM's Bright Road — that would eventually put her in the running for the role of a lifetime: Carmen Jones.

The episode also traces her tumultuous personal life — her marriage to star Harold Nicholas, the birth of her daughter Lynn, and the devastating diagnosis that would shape the rest of Dandridge's life.

This is the story of a woman who spent her childhood performing for other people's whims — and spent her adulthood fighting to perform on her own terms.

WTWMI is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Rankin. Original artwork by Simone Beech and original music by Lionel Ziblat.

Part 2 of our two-part series on Dorothy Dandridge releases next Tuesday, August 18.