Bob Hope visits the set of “Julia,” the first sitcom to star an
African-American actress. Diahann Carroll was also the first black
woman to win a Tony.
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By Dustin Fitzharris
Monday, October 06, 2008
She’s television’s “first black bitch.” Dripping in sequins, coifed big hair and wearing more shoulder padding than Brett Favre on game day, Diahann Carroll played Dominique Devereaux to perfection on the 1980s drama “Dynasty.”
But long before Carroll was having on-screen catfights with Joan Collins, she was making history by breaking down racial barriers in the NBC sitcom “Julia.” The series, which ran from 1968–1971, was the first to star an African-American actress in the leading role.
Now after 60 years in show business, Carroll is opening up about everything from love and motherhood to plastic surgery in her candid memoir she’s been writing for six years, “The Legs Are the Last to Go: Aging, Acting and Marrying & Other Things I Learned the Hard Way.” It’s not the first book from Carroll. In 1986, she wrote what she called the “definitive biography.”
“Oh, we say a lot of things in our lifetime,” Carroll tells me with a girlish giggle from her Beverly Hills home. “Mick Jagger said he would never sing a rock ’n’ roll song after 50. How old is he now? 60? And look, he’s still doing it. So, we all tell little lies along the way.”
She’s poised and serious, with perfect diction and very little nonsense. I quickly realize this Bronx native doesn’t simply possess sophistication—she defines it. Trying my best to act just as demure, I ask why she decided to write this book.
“There were things I wanted to clarify in my own tone before I was too old to do so,” explains Carroll, who turned 73 this past summer. (By the way, Carroll says she never lies about her age, but that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to ask!)
“I also think there is information in the book that may be helpful to those who are always in front of the public,” Carroll explains. “There are certain life traps that I’ve noticed keep presenting themselves—not only to me, but also to young people who are in this very, very vulnerable business. We are prey.”
Carroll certainly knows what it’s like to be picked apart by vultures. In 1962, while working on the musical “No Strings,” in which she became the first black actress to win a Tony Award, composer Richard Rogers paid a special visit to her dressing room. In a voice that Carroll describes as “condescending,” Rogers informed her that the hostess of their opening-night party did not want her in her home. She felt it would confuse her children to see a black woman who was elegant because “they didn’t exist.”
From the time she was a young girl, Carroll, who was born Carol Diann Johnson, was taught by family to project a “better than” quality. This, she says, created a feeling of “separate from” other African Americans that stayed with her throughout her life. In fact, it’s been said that one of the reasons Carroll succeeded in “Julia” was because the character made whites feel comfortable.
But you find Carroll dwelling on people’s misconceptions about her —she tells me she doesn’t deal with them. She likes to think of herself as a woman who “paved the way” for an awful lot of women—third-world women, Asian, Latin, black and even some white women.
She is also embracing the aging process. She says the best thing about getting older is that “you’ve been here so long.”
With longevity, Carroll has gained her share of wisdom. After surviving breast cancer, four marriages—her last being to singer Vic Damone—a few engagements and a nine-year affair with actor Sidney Poitier, Carroll realizes she no longer needs a man to feel loved.
“I’ve never really had time alone without a man of some sort in and out of my life, my home, my bed,” Carroll laughs. “I’ve realized that at this point in my life I need to live alone. It’s a totally new experience, and for the most part, it’s the most comfortable I’ve ever been.”
One of the toughest lessons for Carroll has been that she can’t rely on universal recognition for value.
“As one begins to work less, then visibility is less,” Carroll says without any sadness. “It’s been an adjustment for me [to hear] people saying, ‘What’s your name?’ or ‘I know you were on television, but what did you do?’ You never thought those days would come because you were lead to believe that ‘Julia’ was going to tear down the world and history would never be able to forget there was ‘Julia.’”
Through all of Carroll’s reincarnations to remain a player in the industry, the LGBT community has always embraced her. Her first manager, Chuck Wood, was gay, and she credits Christine Jorgensen, the first widely known transsexual, for teaching her how to bow.
“I have a lot of friends in the gay community, but I don’t relate to them as gay,” Carroll says. “I don’t relate to my heterosexual friends as heterosexual. They are either my friend, or they are not. Their private life is their own. I’m not going to go to my heterosexual friends and say, ‘What do you do at night in your bedroom?’ and I’m not going to do that to my homosexual friends.”
There is one thing she will ask of straight or gay individuals—Don’t call her “diva!”
“I don’t like that word. It doesn’t make me feel comfortable, and it’s meaningless,” Carroll says. “It has too many tinsel things dangling all over it. It’s like a very inexpensive ornament on the tree.”
Even though Carroll may not be keen on slang, make no mistake, she is keeping up with the times. She’s following this presidential election closely, calling Barack Obama “brilliant.”
“I feel as though our political system keeps trying to pull him down into the muck and the mire,” Carroll says. “He’s an eloquent human being, and when you have an elegant soul, it’s difficult for you to be a part of our political structure. I think he’s having a hard time understanding that this mudslinging and childish and immature way that we run this political process is something that he has to deal with on a daily basis.”
Carroll also has an opinion on the doubts that have been raised on wife, mother and now Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Can a woman have it all?
“It depends on what their ‘all’ is,” Carroll says.
Carroll found it very difficult to balance family and career. At the height of her career, work came first and she often left her only child, Suzanne, at home with nannies and her father, Carroll’s first husband, Monte Kay. Once Suzanne asked, “Mommy, why don’t we bake cookies?” Carroll looked at her little girl and replied that she wasn’t that kind of mother.
“Being in show business is extremely difficult because you never know where you’re going to be the next year,” Carroll explains. Most recently she’s enjoyed success on “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Today Carroll is at peace with her daughter and can’t get enough of her grandchildren. She’s traded in her furs for clothes she that can actually be thrown into the washing machine! She’s even swooshing down slides in playgrounds with her granddaughter.
Not long ago, while playing with her granddaughter, a woman approached her and said, “Isn’t it wonderful that she [granddaughter] doesn’t even know you’re Diahann Carroll?”
Carroll responded, “I can’t even begin to tell you. It’s magnificent.”
Well, Ms. Carroll, we know who you are—a pioneer, an icon, an advocate and a survivor. But we, per your request, won’t call you a diva.
“The Legs are the Last to Go” is available now. For the latest on Diahann Carroll, visit diahanncarroll.net.
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