Entertainment: Diahann Carroll Through The Years

Oh, Diahann

Diahann Carroll: Through The Years
With the release of her latest memoir, 'The Legs Are The Last To Go: Aging, Acting, Marrying, and Other Things I Learned the Hard Way' (Amistad/HarperCollins), entertainment legend Diahann Carroll offers her most candid, revealing and compelling recollections, remembrances and thoughts of life and love spanning the past six decades. BlackVoices.com pays homage to the trailblazing diva of Broadway, film and television with a look at her life and times through the years. Join Us.


Harper Collins

All About 'The Legs'
Carroll, pictured showing leg in this photo from the late1960s, writes that "there's great pleasure to be had in the fact that even when the tummy isn't as taut as it used to be, the legs are still shapely and slender. They really are the last things to go, you know." According to the actress, HarperCollins editor Dawn Davis inspired her to name her 2008 memoir just that.


Harper Collins

A Rage In Harlem
In this photo, circa 1950s, Carroll is all dressed up in costumes with friends at a fund-raiser at New York City's very own Audubon Ballroom.


Harper Collins

So 'Tru'
The one and only Truman Capote (pictured here June 28, 1977 in New York City) was instrumental in launching Carroll's career; she made her Broadway debut in the 1954 musical, 'House of Flowers.' Pearl Bailey, Alvin Ailey and Geoffrey Holder also starred in the Harold Arlen-composed show.


Getty Images

Mother Pearl
Pearl Bailey -- pictured here in 1989 -- showed Carroll a thing or two about how cruel showbiz can be. Bailey played a madam in a West Indian bordello that raised a young ingénue played by Carroll. Conflict and drama behind the scenes led Bailey to take Carroll's show-stopping song, 'Don't like Goodbyes,' and sing it herself.


Getty Images

First of the First
Monte Kay, pictured with Carroll and her parents, was her first husband of four. A tan-skinned Jewish man, Kay was a respected casting director. The young couple were married in 1956. Fifty years later, she admits fault for the marriage ending the way it did.


Harper Collins

Soul Inspirations
(l-r) Lena Horne and Josephine Premice starred in the 1958 stage musical 'Jamaica.' The legendary entertainers were pivotal to Carroll's career. Horne, whom she was offered compared to early in her career, was someone she idolized. Premice was one of her dearest friends the person she dedicated the 2008 memoir to. "She was my mentor from the beginning. She was there for the entire experience, supportive and loving through it all."


Corbis

Black And 'Blues'
The 1961 film 'Paris Blues' starred Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Diahann Carroll, and Sidney Poitier. The film was a double romance about two expatriate musicians and a couple of vacationing teachers from America. It was on the French set of this film that Carroll and Poitier's nine year affair began to bloom.


Everett Collection

'No Strings' Attached
Carroll, pictured here in 1962 during her starring role in the Broadway musical, 'No Strings,' won a Tony Award for her role in the daring show, which was the very first to feature an interracial love affair. In 'No Strings,' she played an African-American couture model working in Paris.


Museum of the City of New York

People Get Ready
Carroll and her 'No Strings' co-star Richard Kiley flanked composer Richard Rodgers backstage after the opening of the Broadway show on March 15, 1962. Rodgers wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway musical. He also stood on the sidelines when Carroll was disinvited to a cast party for the show in Detroit because the hostess didn't want her in her home: "She felt that it would confuse her children to see a black woman who was sophisticated and elegant because they didn't exist."


AP