Kindaris Pictures Podcast

In mid-April of 1939, The Afro American spent some time with The Dandridge Sisters (actual sisters, Vivian and Dorothy Dandridge, and friend, Etta Jones) after an engagement at the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C. 

The "Roaring Twenties" was a period in which Black entertainers emerged as forces on the stage, in music, and on the screen. As we now know, talent didn't always grant fair or even kind treatment. Black performers that thought they'd gotten their big breaks on the American stage, screen, or radio, found themselves fleeing to Europe for better treatment and better opportunities by the 1930s. Hollywood's first Black Leading Lady, Nina Mae McKinney, was one of them.

In this episode, "A.G. Marie" shares news of Nina Mae McKinney's sixteen-week tour of Europe in 1936. She'd made Paris her home just a few years after the release of HALLELUJAH (1929). Her life and career were split between the United States and various European countries until she finally returned to New York in 1960. Believed to have become a domestic worker in her final years, Nina Mae McKinney died of a heart attack on May 3, 1967. She was 54 years old.