#ruby dandridge

Ruby Dandridge ~born March 3, 1900 in Witchta, Kansas

🎞 American actress from the early 1900s through to the late 1950s. Dandridge is best known for her role on the radio show Amos 'n Andy, in which she played Sadie Blake and Harriet Crawford, and on radio's Judy Canova Show, in which she played Geranium.

Portrait of actress Ruby Dandridge. Autographed on front: "Ruby Dandridge." Stamped on back: "CBS photo by Ed Braslaff."

30 Days of Classic Queer Hollywood

Day 24: Ruby Dandridge (1900 - 1987)

Ruby Dandridge was an African American actress best known for her roles on the radio shows Amos 'n' Andy and Judy Canova Show. She is recognizable for her performance in the films Dead Reckoning (1947) and A Hole in the Head (1959).

She was the mother of actresses Vivian Dandridge and Dorothy Dandridge, the latter of whom was an Academy Award nominee.

Dandridge was a bisexual woman. After her divorce from her daughters' father, she entered a relationship with a female companion, Geneva Williams. Dorothy Dandridge later revealed that Williams was a harsh disciplinarian and rather abusive towards the children.

Dorothy Dandridge was an American actress from the early 1900s through to the late 1950s. Dandridge is best known for her role on the radio show Amos 'n Andy, in which she played Sadie Blake and Harriet Crawford, and on radio's Judy Canova Show, in which she played Geranium.

Born Ruby Jean Butler in Wichita, Kansas, on March 3, 1900, she was one of four children. Dandridge's parents were Nellie Simon, a maid, and George Butler, who was a janitor, grocer and entertainer. Dandridge's father was also "a famous minstrel man."

On September 30, 1919, she married Cyril Dandridge. Dandridge moved with her husband to Cleveland, Ohio, where her daughter, actress Vivian Dandridge, was born in 1921. Her second daughter, Academy Award-nominated actress Dorothy Dandridge, was born there in 1922, five months after Ruby and Cyril divorced.

In 1937, Dandridge played one of the witches in what an article in The Pittsburgh Courier called a "sepia representation" of Macbeth in Los Angeles. California. The production began on July 8 at the Mayan Theater. Five years later, she appeared in a production of Hit the Deck at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, California. One of Dandridge's earliest appearances, thought uncredited, was as a native dancer in King Kong in 1933. Dandridge was also in Junior Miss (1945), Tap Roots (1948), Three Little Girls in Blue (1946), Cabin in the Sky (1943), and Tish (1942). Lillian Randolph, Ernest Whitman, and Ruby Dandridge of the radio cast of The Beulah Show from 1952–1953.

In 1955, Dandridge and her business partner Dorothy Foster bought land in Twentynine Palms, California, with plans to construct a subdivision of 250 homes. Also in the 1950s, Dandridge formed a nightclub act that played in clubs around Los Angeles. A review of her act cited her "flashes of effervescent showmanship" and stated "What Ruby lacks in her voice, she invariably makes up for it with her winsome personality."

Dandridge attended her daughter Dorothy's funeral in 1965.

On October 17, 1987, Dandridge died of a heart attack at a nursing home in Los Angeles, California. She was interred next to Dorothy at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. In the 1999 film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, Ruby is portrayed by Loretta Devine.