{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"When They Were Making It","title":"Dorothy Dandridge, Part 1: A Star of Her Own Making — Baptism by Show Business, Carmen Jones, and a Historic Oscar Nomination","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":4899,"description":"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.\nFrom 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.\nPart 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.\nThe 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.\nThis 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.\n\nPart 2 of our two-part series on Dorothy Dandridge releases next Tuesday, August 18.\n\n—\n\nWhen They Were Making It is written,...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/Tes24ZxB1qT02fjSVHxfJY99rJ8MnAs1gX-xKNBvoeY/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8yZDVj/YjVjNTA5NWZiZTdh/Mjk1OWU2MDQ1M2Nm/MDdiYy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}