DIAHANN CARROLL

(17 July 1935 - 4 October 2019)

From the age of six, music was an important part of the life of the actress and singer Diahann Carroll, who has died at the age of 84 from complications following cancer. Early on she was a member of her Harlem church choir in New York, then studied voice and piano with an operatic career in mind, after securing a scholarship to the Metropolitan Opera. However, as a teenager she won a radio talent competition and later on began a nightclub act, appearing at the Latin Quarter. At age nineteen she was on Broadway in the Harold Arlen-Truman Capote show House of Flowers and subsequently Richard Rodgers’ No Strings, from which she sang ‘The Sweetest Sounds’ and won a Tony Award. She was cast in Preminger’s films of Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess, but between movies appeared on television (Peter Gunn, Naked City, Julia, The Love Boat, etc). Other films Carroll made include Goodbye Again, Paris Blues, Hurry Sundown, The Split and Claudine (as Claudine), after which she took on television in such blockbusters as Dynasty and The Colbys, as well as a TV movie of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a sequel series of Alex Haley’s Roots: The Next Generation and Grey’s Anatomy. Then it was mostly television again apart from Mo’ Better Blues, The Five Heartbeats and Eve’s Bayou with Samuel L. Jackson. Her final film was The Masked Saint in 2016. She also had a recording career and often guested on TV shows with Andy Williams, Judy Garland, Danny Kaye and Carol Burnett. Diahann Carroll was married four times, latterly to the singer Vic Damone but had also been engaged to both Sidney Poitier and David Frost. She is the mother of the journalist and screenwriter Suzanne Kay Bamford, from her first marriage to the record producer Monte Kay. Carroll founded the charity Celebrity Action Council, working with women in rehabilitation.

MICHAEL DARVELL