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Juanita Moore 1914 - 2014

Juanita Moore was born on October 19, 1914 in Greenwood, Leflore County, Mississippi United States, and died at age 99 years old on January 1, 2014 in Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, CA. Juanita Moore was buried on January 4, 2014 at Burial: Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, CA. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Juanita Moore.

Juanita Moore

October 19, 1914

Greenwood, Leflore County, Mississippi, United States

January 1, 2014

Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, United States

Female

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Juanita Moore Juanita Moore (1914 - 2014)

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Juanita Moore's History: 1914 - 2014

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Introduction

Juanita Moore was an American film, television, and stage actress. She was the fifth black actor to be nominated for an Academy Award in any category, and the third in the Supporting Actress category at a time when only one black actor, Hattie McDaniel in Gone with the Wind, had won an Oscar. Born: October 19, 1914, Greenwood, MS Died: January 1, 2014, Los Angeles, CA Place of burial: Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, CA Academy Awards, USA 1960 Nominee Oscar Best Actress in a Supporting Role Imitation of Life (1959) Faro Island Film Festival 1959 Winner Golden Moon Award Best Actress Imitation of Life (1959) Shared with: Lana Turner Golden Globes, USA 1960 Nominee Golden Globe Best Supporting Actress Imitation of Life (1959) Laurel Awards 1959 Nominee Golden Laurel Top Female Supporting Performance Imitation of Life (1959)
10/19

1914

Birthday

October 19, 1914

Birthdate

Greenwood, Leflore County, Mississippi United States

Birthplace

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Ethnicity & Family History

African American.
Professional Career

Early life and career Moore as Annie Johnson in Imitation of Life (1959) Juanita Moore was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, the daughter of Ella (née Dunn) and Harrison Moore. She had seven siblings (six sisters and one brother). Her family moved in the Great Migration to Los Angeles, where she was raised. Moore first performed as a dancer, part of a chorus line at the Cotton Club before becoming a film extra while working in theater. Moore was the vice president of the Original Cambridge Players, who took a Los Angeles production of The Amen Corner to Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in April 1965. She was friends with Marlon Brando and James Baldwin. It was Moore who asked Brando to lend the funds ($75) to Baldwin to write the play. After making her film debut in Double Deal (1939), Moore had a number of bit parts and supporting roles in motion pictures through the late 1930s and 1950s. Moore's performance in the remake of Imitation of Life (1959) as black housekeeper Annie Johnson, whose daughter Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner) passes for white, won her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for the role. When the two versions of Imitation of Life were released together on DVD (the earlier film was released in 1934), one of the bonus features was a new interview with Moore. Moore continued to act for film and TV, with a role in Disney's The Kid (2000), and guest-starring roles on Dragnet, Adam-12, Marcus Welby, M.D., ER and Judging Amy. On April 23, 2010, a new print of Imitation of Life (1959) was screened at the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival in Los Angeles. Both Moore and co-star Kohner attended. After the screening, the two women appeared on stage for a question-and-answer session hosted by TCM's Robert Osborne. Moore and Kohner received standing ovations. Personal life Moore was married for 50 years to Charles Burris, who died in 2001. He was a Los Angeles bus driver and they met when she stepped out in front of his approaching bus. She and Burris married a few weeks later. Her grandson is actor/producer Kirk E. Kelleykahn, who is CEO/President of "Cambridge Players – Next Generation", a theatre troupe whose founding members included Moore. Death Moore died at her home in Los Angeles on January 1, 2014, at age 99 of natural causes. She is buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery. Partial filmography Double Deal (1939) as Nightclub Patron (uncredited) Belle Starr (1941) as Dressed Up Freed Slave (uncredited) Broken Strings (1942) as Nightclub Patron (uncredited) Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) as Dancer (uncredited) Cabin in the Sky (1943) as Nightclub Patron / Churchgoer (uncredited) Pinky (1949) as Nurse (uncredited) Tarzan's Peril (1951) as Native Woman (uncredited) No Questions Asked (1951) as Maid in Lounge (uncredited) Skirts Ahoy! (1952) as Black Drill Team Member (uncredited) Lydia Bailey (1952) as Marie (uncredited) Affair in Trinidad (1952) as Dominique The Iron Mistress (1952) as Juanita – Judalon's Maid (uncredited) The Royal African Rifles (1953) as Elderly Woman Witness to Murder (1954) as Negress – Mental Patient The Gambler from Natchez (1954) as Yvette's Maid (uncredited) Women's Prison (1955) as Polyclinic 'Polly' Jones Lord of the Jungle (1955) as Molu's Wife (uncredited) Not as a Stranger (1955) as Mrs. Clara Bassett (uncredited) Ransom! (1956) as Shirley Lorraine The Opposite Sex (1956) as Powder Room Attendant (uncredited) The Girl Can't Help It (1956) as Hilda Something of Value (1957) as Tribal Woman (uncredited) Band of Angels (1957) as Budge (uncredited) The Helen Morgan Story (1957) as Lucey – Backstage Maid (uncredited) Bombers B-52 (1957) as Clarissa (uncredited) The Green-Eyed Blonde (1957) as Miss Randall (uncredited) Imitation of Life (1959) as Annie Johnson Tammy Tell Me True (1961) as Della Walk on the Wild Side (1962) as Mama A Child Is Waiting (1963) as Julius' Mother (uncredited) Papa's Delicate Condition (1963) as Ellie The Singing Nun (1966) as Sister Mary Rosie! (1967) as Nurse Gentle Ben (1967) as Mama Jolie Uptight (1968) as Mama Wells Angelitos negros (1970) as Nana Mercé Skin Game (1971) as Viney (Calloway slave) The Mack (1973) as Mother – Mrs. Mickens Fox Style (1973) as Hattie Fox Thomasine & Bushrod (1974) as Pecolia The Get-Man (1974) Abby (1974) as Miranda 'Momma' Potter Joey (1975) Fugitive Lovers (1975) as Assemblywoman Griffith Everybody Rides the Carousel (1975) as Stage 8 (voice) Paternity (1981) as Celia O'Hara's Wife (1982) as Ethel And They're Off (1982) as Sadie Johnson Two Moon Junction (1988) as Delilah The Sterling Chase (1999) as Grandma Jones (voice) Disney's The Kid (2000) as Kenny's Grandmother – Voice
Personal Life & Family

Juanita Moore Biography Born October 19, 1914 in Greenwood, Mississippi, USA Died January 1, 2014 in Los Angeles, California, USA (undisclosed) Height 5' 9" (1.75 m) Mini Bio (1) African American actress Juanita Moore entered films in the early 1950s, a time in which few black people were given an opportunity to act in major studio films. Fortunately Moore's roles began improving as Hollywood developed a social consciousness toward the end of the decade. In 1959 she received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in Imitation of Life (1959), a glossy updating of a once controversial Fannie Hurst novel about racism. Within the next decade Hollywood underwent several sociological upheavals, and Juanita was one of the beneficiaries. She became a fixture in black-oriented films of the 1960s and 1970s, appearing in such films as Uptight (1968), Thomasine & Bushrod (1974) and Abby (1974). She also appeared in Walt Disney Pictures' The Kid (2000), and was in a total of more than 50 films. Moore retired in 2001 and passed away New Year's Day 2014 . She was 99. Family (1) Spouse Charles Thomas Burris (8 October 1953 - 27 April 2001) (his death) Ananias Berry (1943 - 6 October 1951) (his death) Grandmother of Kirk E. Kelleykahn. Former chorus girl at Harlem's famed Cotton Club. She collapsed and died at her home in Los Angeles on January 1, 2014, from natural causes. She was 99 years old. Following her death, she was interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.
01/1

2014

Death

January 1, 2014

Death date

Unknown
Cause of death

Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California United States
Death location

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01/4

2014

Gravesite & Burial

January 4, 2014

Funeral date
Burial: Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, CA
Burial location
Obituary

Thu 2 Jan 2014 11.00 EST From its earliest days, Hollywood, which has always lagged behind wider social advances, limited the roles of black actors to stock, wide-eyed cowards, simpletons or servants, often referred to as "uncles" and "mammies". Juanita Moore, who has died aged 99, suffered from this limitation by having to play maids throughout most of her long career. However, Moore could have echoed what Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award, once said: "Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making $7 a week being one." Where McDaniel as Mammy, Scarlett O'Hara's lovable, sassy servant in Gone With the Wind (1939) was the apotheosis of the black maid, Moore's Oscar-nominated portrayal of Annie Johnson, housekeeper to the glamorous Broadway star Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) in Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life (1959), was the most substantial, progressive and sympathetic version. Moore was only the fourth black Oscar nominee, male or female, in the 20 years since McDaniel's victory. Although Hollywood was part of an ideological superstructure, still projecting a largely conservative, white, middle-class view of the world, the superior melodrama Imitation of Life dared to deal with racism. Despite rigidly knowing their places, Annie and Lora are close friends, each having trouble with their daughters. Annie's light-skinned daughter, Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner), rejects her mother in an attempt to pass as a white woman. Moore commented: "My husband's mother was Caucasian and so I was living that kind of thing with my husband prior to Imitation of Life: one family black, one family white." Moore brings great warmth, charm and sensitivity to the part of the saintly, self-sacrificing Annie. "I think my part was the greatest dramatic role ever given to an actress of my race and I was determined to do it justice," she remarked. Unforgettable is the scene in which she painfully stands by as Sarah Jane, working in a nightclub, introduces her mother to her white colleagues as her old nanny. On her deathbed, Annie forgives her errant daughter. "Tell her I know I was selfish – and if I loved her too much, I'm sorry – but I didn't mean to cause her any trouble. She was all I had." Moore remembered that Sirk was patient with her: "There were times I was so nervous the muscles were jumping in my face. One day I cried all day long, yet he didn't fire me. During my dying scene, Sirk said: 'Juanita, you got to remember you are dying not crying.'" She was grateful for the role of her life. "They auditioned a lot of people before casting me in the part," she recalled. "Pearl Bailey was their first choice. But producer Ross Hunter really wanted me. I have been in a lot of pictures. However, most of them consisted of my opening doors for white people." Born in Los Angeles, Moore started her career in her teens, dancing at the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York. She then returned to LA, where she got jobs as a movie extra, and was seen as a chorus girl in the Sharp as a Tack number in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), Paramount's all-star variety show, and in the all-black-cast musical Cabin in the Sky (1943). Gradually, Moore began to get a few small speaking parts, such as a nurse in Elia Kazan's Pinky (1949), a precursor of Imitation of Life. Advertisement At the same time, Moore was a member of the Ebony Showcase theatre, Los Angeles, founded by Nick and Edna Stewart, which provided a venue for black performers to play the types of roles they were denied elsewhere. In films, it was back to stereotypes, tending to shift between the African jungle and the boudoir: a native girl in Tarzan and the Jungle Queen (1951); maid to a southern belle played by Virginia Mayo in The Iron Mistress (1952). In Affair in Trinidad (1952), Moore had a key role – though way down the credits – as Rita Hayworth's intuitive maid, Dominique, who says: "It is the prerogative of a faithful and loyal servant to be impertinent." In slight contrast, she was a patient in a psychiatric hospital to which Barbara Stanwyck has been committed in Witness to Murder (1954) and a convict called Polyclinic Jones – "named after the hospital where she was born" – in Women's Prison (1955), first seen scrubbing floors and singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot. Unfortunately, after her triumph in Imitation of Life, Moore's film and television roles were only marginally bigger and better. "I think I made less money after that, to tell you the truth, because I thought I was going to make more money with better parts and things like that but found myself right back making minimum." She was the sweet Sister Mary in The Singing Nun (1966) and a feisty mother in Up Tight (1968), Jules Dassin's transposition of Liam O'Flaherty's The Informer from Dublin to a black ghetto of Cleveland, Ohio. On television, she appeared in several episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1963-65), among other series. Moore gained more satisfaction from her stage role as the strong and devoted matriarch Mama Lena in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, which ran at the Adelphi theatre in London in 1959. On Broadway, she played Sister Boxer in James Baldwin's The Amen Corner (1965). In the 70s, Moore profited somewhat from the wave of blaxploitation movies, mostly in long-suffering maternal roles. In The Mack (1973), Moore played the mother of a pimp (Max Julien) whom she expects to lead a respectable life. The following year, she was in Thomasine and Bushrod, based on Bonnie and Clyde; and Abby, based on The Exorcist – and was also inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. She continued to appear in films and television until 2001, her last movie role being the wise grandmother in the time-travel film The Kid (2000). Moore's husband predeceased her. Juanita Moore, actor, born 19 October 1914; died 1 January 2014

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