Juanita Moore, who earned an Academy Award nomination in 1960 for the single major film role she ever landed, then fell through the cracks of a Hollywood system that had little to offer a black actress besides small parts as maids and nannies, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. She was 99.
Her death was confirmed by her grandson, Kirk Kelleykahn, an actor and dancer.
Ms. Moore received a best supporting actress nomination for her role in the 1959 film “Imitation of Life,” in which she played opposite Lana Turner in a story about two single mothers, one black and one white. It was only the fifth time an African-American performer had been nominated for an Oscar.
The two women begin ostensibly as social equals living under the same roof, but their lives diverge along racial and class lines. Ms. Turner’s character becomes a famous actress; Annie Johnson, played by Ms. Moore, becomes her housemaid.
The last movie that the filmmaker Douglas Sirk directed in Hollywood, “Imitation of Life” was widely dismissed at the time as campy melodrama. Its treatment of the intense suffering caused by racial bias, including a subplot in which Annie’s light-skinned daughter renounces her mother to live as a white person, was seen as unbelievable. (“If by accident we should pass in the street,” the daughter, played by Susan Kohner, tells her, “please don’t recognize me.” Ms. Kohner was also nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar.)
But the film has since been re-evaluated and given high marks by many film historians and critics for the subtlety of its social criticism and psychological insight.
Ms. Moore’s performance, in particular, has earned her generations of new fans, said Foster Hirsch, a professor of film at Brooklyn College who has organized several academic conferences on “Imitation of Life.”
“She delivers an astounding performance,” Mr. Hirsch said. “She does a death scene that still reduces audiences to tears — I have seen it many times.”
But after she was nominated for an Oscar, Ms. Moore told The Los Angeles Times in 1967, the work seemed to dry up. “The Oscar prestige was fine, but I worked more before I was nominated,” she said. “Casting directors think an Oscar nominee is suddenly in another category. They couldn’t possibly ask you to do one or two days’ work.”
It would be a decade more before black actresses like Ms. Moore would be considered for major roles, Mr. Hirsch noted.
Ms. Moore was born in Greenwood, Miss., on Oct. 19, 1914, and raised in South Central Los Angeles, the youngest of Harrison and Ella Moore’s eight children. After graduating from high school and spending a few months at Los Angeles City College, she decamped for New York in search of a stage career.
She became a dancer. Throughout the 1930s and ’40s she performed in the elaborate stage shows of nightclubs in Harlem, including the Cotton Club, and in Paris and London, before returning to Los Angeles. She studied acting at the Actors’ Laboratory and began getting small, uncredited parts in films, like that of a maid or an African tribeswoman. She was already in her mid-30s by the time she made her film debut, in Elia Kazan’s “Pinky” (1949), also a film about race. (Throughout her career she hid her true age, saying she had been born in 1922.)
After “Imitation of Life,” she appeared in television dramas and in films including “Walk on the Wild Side” and “The Singing Nun.” She appeared on Broadway in James Baldwin’s play “The Amen Corner” in 1965 and in a London production of “A Raisin in the Sun.” And she was active on the Los Angeles stage, performing with the Ebony Showcase Theater and the Cambridge Players.
Mr. Kelleykahn, her grandson, is her only immediate survivor. Ms. Moore’s first husband, the dancer Nyas Berry, died in 1951. Her second husband, Charles Burris, a Los Angeles bus driver, died in 2001.
Sam Staggs, author of the 2009 book “Born to Be Hurt: The Untold Story of ‘Imitation of Life,’ ” said in a telephone interview on Friday that Ms. Moore’s performance was the major reason for the film’s box-office success (it was one of the most successful movies made up until then by Universal Studios).
People came in droves to watch in the dark and weep, Mr. Staggs said: “There are many, many people alive today who remember crying at her performance, but who could not tell you her name.”
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Juanita Moore (October 19, 1914 – January 1, 2014) was an American film, television, and stage actress. She was the fifth African American to be nominated for an Academy Award in any category, and the third in the Supporting Actress category at a time when only a single African American had won an Oscar. Her most famous role was as Annie Johnson in the movieImitation of Life (1959).[1]
Career[edit]
Born in Los Angeles in 1914, Moore was a chorus girl at the Cotton Club before becoming a film extra while working in theater. After making her film debut inPinky (1949),[1] she had a number of bit parts and supporting roles in motion pictures through the 1950s and 1960s. However, her role in Imitation of Life(1959), a remake, as housekeeper Annie Johnson, whose daughter Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner) passes for white, won her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for the role.[2] When the two versions of Imitation of Life were released together on DVD, the earlier film was released in 1934, one of the bonus features was a new interview with Juanita Moore.
Moore continued to perform in front of the camera, with a role in the movieDisney's The Kid (2000) and guest-starring roles on television shows Dragnet,Marcus Welby, M.D., ER and Judging Amy.
On April 23, 2010, a new print of Imitation of Life (1959) was screened at the TCM Film Festival in Los Angeles, to which Moore and co-star Kohner were invited. After the screening, the two women appeared on stage for a question-and-answer session hosted by TCM's Robert Osborne. Moore and Kohner received standing ovations.[3]
Personal life and death[edit]
Moore was married for 50 years to Charles Burris; he died in 2001. He was a Los Angeles bus driver and, although she was a frequent passenger, she had stepped out in front of his approaching bus to cross the street to a local bar, hoping to find someone to study for the Inès Serrano role in the play No Exit—Serrano was a lesbian, and Moore was unfamiliar with the lifestyle. She and Burris married a few weeks later.[4]
Her grandson is actor/producer Kirk Kelley-Kahn, who is CEO/President of "Cambridge Players - Next Generation", a theatre troupe whose founding members included Moore, Esther Rolle, Helen Martin, Lynn Hamilton and Royce Wallace.[5]
Moore died at her home in Los Angeles on January 1, 2014, from natural causes. She was 99 years old.[1][6]
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Overview (2)
| Date of Birth | 19 October 1914 , Los Angeles, California, USA |
| Date of Death | 1 January 2014 , Los Angeles, California, USA |
Mini Bio (1)
African American actress Juanita Moore entered films in the early 1950s, a time in which few black people were given an opportunity to act in major studio films. Fortunately Moore's roles began improving as Hollywood developed a social consciousness toward the end of the decade. In 1959 she received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in Imitation of Life (1959), a glossy updating of a once controversial Fannie Hurst novel about racism. Within the next decade Hollywood underwent several sociological upheavals, and Juanita was one of the beneficiaries. She became a fixture in black-oriented films of the 1960s and 1970s, appearing in such films as Uptight (1968),Thomasine & Bushrod (1974) and Abby (1974). She also appeared in Walt Disney Pictures' The Kid (2000), and has been in a total of more than 30 films. Moore is semi retired.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: A. Nonymous
Spouse (2)
| Charles Thomas Burris | (8 October 1953 - 27 April 2001) (his death) |
| Nyas Berry | (1943 - 6 October 1951) (his death) |
Trivia (3)
Grandmother of Kirk Kelleykahn.
Former chorus girl at Harlem's famed Cotton Club.
She collapsed and died at her home in Los Angeles on January 1, 2014, from natural causes. She was 99 years old.
*****
Juanita Moore (October 19, 1914 – January 1, 2014) was an American film, television, and stage actress. She was the fifth African American to be nominated for an Academy Award in any category, and the third in the Supporting Actress category at a time when only a single African American had won an Oscar. Her most famous role was as Annie Johnson in the movie Imitation of Life (1959).
Born in Los Angeles in 1914, Moore was a chorus girl at the Cotton Club before becoming a film extra while working in theater. After making her film debut in Pinky (1949), she had a number of bit parts and supporting roles in motion pictures through the 1950s and 1960s. However, her role in Imitation of Life (1959), a remake, as housekeeper Annie Johnson, whose daughter Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner) passes for white, won her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for the role. When the two versions of Imitation of Life were released together on DVD, the earlier film was released in 1934, one of the bonus features was a new interview with Juanita Moore.
Moore continued to perform in front of the camera, with a role in the movie Disney's The Kid (2000) and guest-starring roles on television shows Dragnet, Marcus Welby, M.D., ER and Judging Amy.
On April 23, 2010, a new print of Imitation of Life (1959) was screened at the TCM Film Festival in Los Angeles, to which Moore and co-star Kohner were invited. After the screening, the two women appeared on stage for a question-and-answer session hosted by TCM's Robert Osborne. Moore and Kohner received standing ovations.
Moore was married for 50 years to Charles Burris. He died in 2001. He was a Los Angeles bus driver and, although she was a frequent passenger, she had stepped out in front of his approaching bus to cross the street to a local bar, hoping to find someone to study for the Inès Serrano role in the play No Exit -- Serrano was a lesbian, and Moore was unfamiliar with the lifestyle. She and Burris married a few weeks later.
Her grandson is actor/producer Kirk Kelley-Kahn, who is CEO/President of "Cambridge Players - Next Generation", a theatre troupe whose founding members included Moore, Esther Rolle, Helen Martin, Lynn Hamilton and Royce Wallace.
Moore died at her home in Los Angeles on January 1, 2014, from natural causes. She was 99 years old.
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