Word: fredy
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...various television shows, including “Law and Order” and “Ally McBeal.” While most cast members jumped at the chance to reprise the roles which they premiered, there are two notable exceptions. The role of Joanne, originally played by Fredi Walker, is now being played by Broadway veteran Tracie Thoms. Drug addict/stripper with a heart of gold Mimi Marquez is played by Rosario Dawson, who, while a well-known actress, is a musical theater novice. Dawson is arguably one of the biggest names in the production, but many were uncertain whether...
...Obviously there was risk, drama, in trying to pass. But the few films that approached the subject did so not as a quest or adventure but as a betrayal of family, roots, self. That was the message of Fredi's masterpiece, "Imitation of Life": know yourself. And if you're black, know your place...
...long, rich life (she died in1994 at the age of 90) in which she was associated with many prominent black artists. Born in 1903 in Savannah, Ga., educated at a convent school in Cornwell Heights, Pa., and at the Christophe School of Languages in New York City, young Fredi was dancing with the Happy Honeysuckles when she was 15. She worked as a bookkeeper for W.C. Handy's record company, and was soon appearing with Baker in the musical "Shuffle Along"(1921). She co-starred with Paul Robeson in the Broadway play "Black Boy"(1926) and with Ethel Waters...
...plays Duke Ellington's girlfriend, a dancer who performs despite illness and collapses after her big number. In this ambitious, primitive two-reeler, she delicately embodies the wild soul inside the dying swan; few actresses looked more wanly gorgeous than she does in her death scene. Murphy (who cast Fredi's sister Isabelle as the Other Woman in his Bessie Smith short, St. Louis Blues") also chose Fredi to play a prostitute in the Paul Robeson "Emperor Jones," where makeup darkened her skin so viewers would not think Robeson was consorting with a white woman. Washington's role is small...
...bosses even as it tempted them; she took the hint and went back to New York. She co-founded the Negro Actors Guild of America and wrote theater reviews for The People's Voice, published by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who was at the time married to Isabelle. Later Fredi was a casting consultant on the Dorothy Dandridge-starring films "Carmen Jones" and "Porgy and Bess," the most lavish black-cast musicals of the 50s. She devoted most of her productive life to civil rights causes that tried to redress the indignities she and others had suffered...