LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Dorothy Dandridge: New York
built 647 days ago
Recent efforts to create a legend aside, Dorothy Dandridge was one of many should-have-been-movie-stars who never quite got the fame their talent deserved. Dandridge was ... a popular nightclub performer – one of the first black entertainers to perform in Las Vegas – and it is as a singer that she is presented on this disc. This material remained unreleased for over forty years, and is of historic value because of the legacy left on film by Dandridge that continues to be discovered by the new generations, as well as being part of pianist Oscar Peterson’s discography.
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Now her memory is revived by ''Dorothy Dandridge,'' Donald Bogle's splendid and highly readable new biography (Amistad Press), and by a two-week retrospective (enterprisingly programmed by Mr. Bogle and Bruce Goldstein) at the Film Forum from tomorrow through July 3. In charting the course of her life, both the book and the film series ... offer considerable insight into the racial climate that shaped Dandridge's rise and fall.
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For a brief period in early 1965, it seemed that Dandridge might succeed in getting her life back in order. She left Hollywood for Mexico, where she checked into a health spa and worked at getting in shape. Several deals were in the works, including starring roles in a couple of new movies. However, on September 8, 1965, just a few days after returning to Hollywood, the forty-two-year-old Dandridge was found dead in her apartment of an overdose of antidepressant medication. Authorities could not determine whether it was an accident or suicide.
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Dorothy was given many opportunities to display her talents as a singer and brought her headline acts in the nation's finest hotel nightclubs in New York, Miami, Chicago, and Las Vegas. She may have been allowed to sing in these fine hotels, but because of racism, she couldn't stay there.
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