Diahann Carroll, groundbreaking star of TV's 'Julia' and 'Dynasty,' dies at 84
Diahann Carroll, the elegant star of stage and screen who changed the course of television history as the first African American woman to shatter stereotypes, in 1968's ground-breaking sitcom "Julia," and to win a lead actress Tony Award, has died. She was 84.
The Oscar-nominated actress and breast cancer survivor, who also starred in "Dynasty" and "White Collar," died of cancer, her daughter Suzanne Kay said Friday.
The leggy beauty burst on the scene among the first black actresses to star in studio films. Assisted by her breathy, deep voice, the established recording artist debuted on the big screen in 1954's Oscar-nominated adaptation of "Carmen Jones," a retelling of the Bizet opera with an all-black cast alongside Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte and Pearl Bailey. In 1959, she headlined the musical "Porgy and Bess" with Dandridge, Sidney Poitier and Sammy Davis Jr.
The dynamic entertainer, whose TV credits also include "A Different World" and "Grey's Anatomy," sang in nightclubs and on the Broadway stage, headlined in Las Vegas with her fourth husband, Vic Damone, and notched Emmy, Grammy and Golden Globe nominations. Carroll was nominated for a lead-actress Oscar for her turn as a welfare mom in the 1974 comedy "Claudine" and earned a Tony Award in 1962 for Richard Rodgers' "No Strings."
In the late 1960s, Carroll was cast in "Julia," the enormously successful NBC sitcom that featured her as a war-widowed nurse raising a
