Ellen Holly (1931- ) is an American actress, the first black actress ever to appear regularly on a soap opera. She played Carla Hall on “One Life to Live” from 1968 to 1985. She also played the president’s wife in “School Daze” (1988).
Holly grew up in New York, the daughter of a chemical engineer and a librarian. She studied acting at Hunter College and went on from there to act on stage. By 1956 she was on Broadway. She got in to the Actors Studio, the first black woman ever to do so. She later got parts in film and television too.
In 1968 Holly wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times about what it was like to be a light-skinned black woman. Agnes Dixon, who was then starting a new soap called “One Life to Live”, read that letter. It led her to create the character of Carla Gray (later Hall). She offered the part to Holly herself. Holly took it and became the first regular black female character on a soap. Other soaps soon followed their lead and had black characters of their own too.
When Holly first appeared on “One Life to Live”, on July 25th 1968, the second week of the show, no one knew that she was black! Because of how she looks viewers assumed that she was white – so much so that when she kissed a black doctor many of them called to complain! So then they brought her black mother into the story, showing that Holly’s character was trying to pass for white.
Her character was supposed to only last a year, but it was so successful that she was on the show till 1985 (with a break from 1980 to 1983). She wrote some of the storylines for Carla, becoming one of the few blacks who have written for a soap.
She later appeared on “Guiding Light”, another soap, from 1991 to 1993 as Judge Collier.
“One Life to Live” was the first time she played a regular character on a television show, though before that she had made appearances on “The Defenders”, “Nurses” and “Dr Kildare”. Her first television appearance was on “The Defenders” in 1963.
She was on “Spenser: For Hire” in 1986 and on “The Heat of the Night” four times in 1990.
She is been in a few films. “School Daze” is probably the best known one. In 2002 she was in the Mario Van Peebles film, “10,000 Black Men Named George”.
She has done quite a bit of Shakespeare, especially in the New York Shakespeare Festival. She has played Lady Macbeth in “Macbeth”, Desdemona in “Othello” and the shrew herself in “Taming of the Shrew”. You can see her in the 1974 film “King Lear” starring James Earl Jones. She plays one of Lear’s evil daughters, Regan. You can see a bit of it on YouTube (at least in April 2009 you could).
She wrote about her life in “One Life: The Autobiography of an African American Actress” (1994). It is a powerful account of being talented, beautiful and black.
See also:
Abagond 
Ellen Holly is a superb actress and very gifted woman. Hollywood wasn’t ready for very talented Black actress who refused to play stereotypical roles. She always carried herself with dignity and respect.
La Reyna
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Yes – thank you abagond – these are the posts I was missing!
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What a beautiful women. I never watch TV, though, so I don’t know anything about soaps.
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Ellen Holly has written in her memoir that Hollywood has bypassed her in film roles because she wasn’t stereotypically Black enough, too “white-looking”, or too beautiful. Many of her collegues suffered that same type of discrimination she described in her book. For Example, Josephine Primice was passed over for roles because she was too sophisticated, Lonette McKee because she wasn’t Black enough. Hollyweird has a double standard regarding Black actresses.
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Thandie Newton too has had trouble getting work because she is not stereotypically Black.
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Thank you La Reyna for suggesting I do a post on Ellen Holly.
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You’re welcome, Abagond.
As for Thandie Newton, I forgot to include her along with Jennifer Beals, and Lisa Bonet. All three were told that they weren’t ethnic enough or were too beautiful to play any movie part. It’s sad but true.
La Reyna
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Too beautiful? Wow.
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Abagond,
I was thinking about a comment said by an interviewer while interviewing Janet Langhart Cohen at a job interview regarding hosting a talk show. He told her that she’s too beautiful and that beauty would threaten White women. She countered by saying that she’s not planning to sleep with their husbands, all she wanted was a job and that’s all.
La Reyna
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Wow, La Reyna,
You can read my mind! I was going to bring up Janet Langhart Cohen’s experience of a white producer at Entertainment Tonight telling her that she was too beautiful and thus would threaten white women. I loved her comeback to his nonsense, which La Reyna stated! LOL.
Cohen, also was fired by Bob Johnson over at BET in the late ’80s because she wasn’t “black enough”. Appearently, BET’s mostly black viewership felt she was too “light” and not represenative enough of their race.
Too dark for one world, too light for another.
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Everyone should read Ellen Holly’s “One Life” autobiography along with Janet Langhart Cohen’s “From Rage to Reason”. Those books were eye-openers concerning the lives of multiracial and light-skinned African Americans.
We should remember that Lena Horne was discriminated against in Hollywood despite media hype. She was cast in roles as a singer so that theaters down South and parts of the Midwest would cut her out of the film. That’s because people were too jealous of her elegance and femininity that they thought that only non-Black women possess those traits alone. Also, she was bypassed for movie roles that call for passing as a White woman, i.e. “Show Boat.” That role for the said movie was given to her friend Ava Gardner.
Hollyweird has a bad history when it comes to Black actresses.
La Reyna
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I remember watching Holly on One Life to Live as a teenager. At the time, I didn’t appreciate that she was breaking new ground for black actors in the soaps.
I can see why so many people thought she was white: it wasn’t until the late 1960s that color TVs started selling in large numbers. On black and white TV, her light skin did make her look white.
She started out on the show doing a story line where she is a black person passing for white. A white male character on the show actually proposed to her, but she had to reject the proposal because she was not white.
I later found out that the theme of the “tragic mulatto who passes for white” was a not an uncommon one for Hollywood (see Imitation of Life). But at the time, I was shocked that this kind of race-sensitive stuff was being shown on daytime television.
See also:
http://allotherpersons.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/check-it-out-links-of-interest-41309/
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@Abagond,
To be honest with you, I must say that I do not agree
with your comparison of Ellen Holly’s inability to get
many roles (due to looking so very racially-ambiguous)
— with that of Thandie Newton’s inability to get very
many roles (that did not fall into a racist stereotype).
It was the fact that Ellen Holly is a woman who is both
fully of the African-American Ethnic grouping and is also
of a continually Mixed-Race lineage that results in her
“looking White” (rather than in looking Black or even
in looking Mixed-Race) — that left Hollywood in a fix
as to what to do with/about her … while bi-racial
British actress Thandie Newton’s lineage, on the
other hand is very clearly of being at least part-Black
lineage … and there is NO AMBIGUITY in that at all.
Thandie Newton (a first-generation-mixed “Mulatto” —
which is a person who is 1/2 Black and 1/2 White) was
even cast as Sally Heming’s (a multi-generation-mixed
“Quadroon” — which is a person who is 1/4 Black
& 3/4 White) in the mini-series ‘Jefferson in Paris’.
[[ ON A NOTE:
Although she is very beautiful and talented, the selection
of Thandie Newton for the part of Sally Hemings in the
miniseries ‘Jefferson in Paris, was an absolute TERRIBLE
casting decision on the part of the series producers.
Historically — Sally Heming’s was described as a grey-eyed,
light-brown haired, white-skinned women (and thus, would
have likely looked more like a Mariah Carey than a Thandie
Newton) who Jefferson began setting up and coercing into
a “relationship” of sexual-exploitation by him (including
having a small room built right off of his bedroom where
he locked her into nearly every night) right after she was
12 years old (1st”noticing” her when she was 10 years old)
In the mini-series, they inaccurately have Hemings (looking
to be at least 20 years old and having very dark skin, eyes
and hair) pursuing and going after “poor Jefferson” — and
many people (including descendants of both Jefferson and
Hemings) have tried to “romanticize” his sexual exploitation
of the 12 year old Hemings (with whom he had several kids
— none of whom he “set free” or treated with privilege —
but a few of whom he did not pursue when they ran away)
… but the reality of the situation is that he was a powerful
man and she was a child that was considered to be chattel
and the situation was no more a “romance” or “love story”
than would any other situation of a free, very powerful,
full grown adult male with a helpless enslaved child.
Hemings was actually the white-skinned, grey-eyed, light
brown-haired, enslaved, paternal 1/2 sister — and “mirror
image”, say most sources — of Jefferson’s deceased wife. ]]
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.
Ellen Holly is truly one of the best, most talented and most
beautiful actresses (and most courageous of role-models for
women-of-color) to have ever graced Hollywood or Broadway!
God bless Ellen !!!
.
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.
Ellen Holly’s very frustrating and unfair
encounters with not being cast to portray
characters that she was more than talented
to portray — is very reminiscent of what a
number of earlier racially-ambiguous looking
/ part-Black actresses (ex. Hilda Simms, Fredi
Washington, Lena Horne, etc.) had regularly
encountered in Hollywood and on Broadway.
Also, Ms. Holly’s face sort of reminds one
a bit of another soap opera actress who
(is both racially-ambiguous looking and)
is said to have made quite an impact on
the soap opera world / audience back
in the 1990s when she starred on a
very short-lived soap called “The City”.
The name of the actress is that of “Maggie Miller”
(a.k.a. “Maggie Miller-Rush”) and the character
that she was cast to play was called ‘Lorraine’
Like the earlier and equally talented and beautiful
part-Black actresses, Ms. Miller is also said to have
left show business and pursued another career.
Hopefully, both Hollywood and Broadway will, one
day, wake up to the fact of the existence of other
people who do not fit their pre-judged images.
.
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“Thandie Newton too has had trouble getting work because she is not stereotypically Black.”
I’ve heard that racial ambiguity was also one reason why Jennifer Beal’s career didn’t take off in the 80s. She looks too white to play black characters but she’s not pure white and so audiences wouldn’t have accepted her playing white roles. It is interesting though that she’s been able to acquire parts playing explicitly mixed race characters. These include roles in Devil In A Blue Dress, The L Word, Lie to Me, and Feast of All Saints (where she played a gens de couleur libre).
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I thought Carmen Ejogo(a British biracial actress) better portrayed the role of Sally Hemmings, far better than Thandie Newton. I wasn’t aware that Sally was thought of as white skinned, more a coffee colored complexion!
Ellen Holly, beautiful as she is, does not look white, she look like a typical coloured woman with significant white admixture. It’s quite interesting what would pass for white in the US as opposed to say, South Africa.
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I knew jennifer beal was half black even i can tell
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Americans are so racist. She’s a mixed race woman. Why do Americans have such an issue with calling mixed people mixed? White passing is a racist concept too. You fools hang onto the one drop rule and other racist concepts and wonder why racism persists in America.
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Remember her from back in the day on the soap opera One Life to Live.
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