Diahann Carroll

Carroll also had a recurring role on the NBC sitcom A Different World as Whitley Gilbert's (Jasmine Guy) mother. Lili Damita died of Alzheimer's disease in Palm Beach, Florida and was interred in the Oakland Cemetery in Fort Dodge, Iowa. She has also starred in the series Dynasty and The Colbys. During the Vietnam Conflict, her son Sean Flynn was working as a freelance photo journalist under contract to Time Magazine when he and fellow journalist Dana Stone went missing on the road south of Phnom Penh, Cambodia on April 6, 1970. Although Lili Damita spent an enormous amount of money searching for her son, he was never found and in 1984 was declared legally dead. In 1974 she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for Claudine. Following the marriage, she gave up her film career, taking up residence in Palm Beach, Florida. The couple divorced in 1942 and Damita eventually married Albert Loomis, a Fort Dodge, Iowa dairy owner. Opera singer Loulie Jean Norman provided Carroll's singing voice. Divorced from Curtiz, in 1935 she married a virtual unknown who would become Hollywood's biggest box office attraction, Errol Flynn with whom she had a son, Sean born in 1941.

and Pearl Bailey. In 1929, she went to Hollywood, making her American debut in a film titled "The Rescue." Soon, she was an important star at Warner Brothers Studios, appearing with rising male stars such as Gary Cooper and James Cagney. In 1959, she played Clara in the film version of Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess along with such distinguished actors as Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis Jr. She became the second wife of Hungarian born film director Michael Curtiz after appearing in three of his Austrian made films. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for the role. Offered a role in film, in 1921 she appeared in her first French made silent film before going on to perform in films in Britain, Austria, and Germany. Her first film role was in Carmen Jones in 1954, but her big break came when she became the first African American actress to star in her own television series in which she did not play a domestic worker, when Julia debuted in 1968. Born Liliane-Marie-Madeleine Carré in Bordeaux, France, by age 16 she was performing in popular music-halls, eventually starring in the Revue at the Casino de Paris.

Born Carol Diahann Johnson in The Bronx, New York, she attended the New York City High School of the Performing Arts, along with schoolmate Billy Dee Williams. Lili Damita (July 19, 1901 – March 21, 1994) was an actress. Diahann Carroll (born July 15, 1935) is an American actress and singer. No Strings (1962) in the part of Barbara Woodruff. House of Flowers (1954) in the part of Ottilie.