LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Dorothy Dandridge: Harold Nicholas
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In 1941 and 1942, Dandridge worked in several musical film shorts and Hollywood features before marrying Harold Nicholas of the celebrated Nicholas Brothers dance duo. While he pursued a film career, she temporarily set aside her ambitions to await the arrival of their first child in 1943. However the marriage was an unhappy one almost from the start, due to Nicholas's philandering. The couple's difficulties were compounded when their daughter, Harolyn (known as Lynn), was diagnosed as being severely mentally retarded due to brain damage suffered at birth. She was eventually institutionalized. For the rest of her life, Dandridge blamed herself for Lynn's condition.
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Dorothy would eventually marry Harold Nicholas on 6 September 1942. The couple had one child, Harolyn Nicholas, Dandridge's only child. Harolyn was born on 2 September 1943; she was severely mentally handicapped. The couple divorced in October of 1951. After this marriage, Dorothy became involved with her director, Otto Preminger, while he was still married. This affair lasted for years, but Preminger refused to divorce his wife and marry Dorothy.
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Dorothy eventually divorced Harold and pursued her career. She worked with Phil Moore and refined her night club act. Dorothy's provocative singing act gained her popularity. She was booked in clubs throughout California and Las Vegas. She was often confronted by racism but continued to perform despite this discouragement. Her work in night clubs brought her the popularity she needed to begin getting roles in films.
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Temporarily retired from the stage, Dandridge hoped to begin a life of a more settled nature with Nicholas and their daughter, Harolyn (nicknamed Lynn), but Dandridge's marriage turned out to be a disaster from its beginning. As she later candidly admitted in her autobiography Everything and Nothing, Dandridge was inexperienced sexually and guarded in her emotions, a combination Nicholas found to be excellent cause to return to his previous womanizing. Dandridge raised her daughter as she herself had been raised--without the help of a man--only to discover that Lynn was mentally retarded and would need special care for her entire life. Dandridge underwent a crisis that eventually resulted in divorce and a second career as an adult actress and singer.
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In the late 1930s and in the early 1940s, Dandridge appeared in a few films, including A Day at the Races (1937) and Drums of the Congo (1942). Dandridge’s career as an entertainer ended temporarily in 1942 when she married Harold Nicholas, a dancer with the Nicholas Brothers. In 1943, their daughter Harolyn was born with severe brain damage. Dandridge and Nicolas’ marriage ended in divorce in 1949.
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Dandridge and Nicholas were married in September 1942. Dorothy, who had never had a conventional childhood or a permanent home, reveled in being a wife, and the following year, a mother, with the birth of her only child, Lynn. She continued to play small parts in films like Since You Went Away (1944) and Pillow to Post (1945) in which she sang "Watcha Say" backed by Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra, but mainly devoted her time to being a mother. When Lynn was two, Dandridge worried that her daughter wasn't speaking and never seemed to interact with other people. Medical tests revealed that she was brain damaged and that the damage appeared to have been caused by oxygen deprivation during birth. Her former sister-in-law, Geraldine Branton said, "Dottie never got over the overwhelming guilt she felt because she thought she was responsible for her child's condition.
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Harold Nicholas