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Medal of Arts Winner LeNoire Dies Tue Mar 19, 2002
Known to TV audiences for her long-running role as Grandma Winslow on the television comedy "Family Matters," LeNoire died Sunday in Teaneck, N.J., after a long illness, publicist Cynthia Snyder said Monday. The nature of the illness was not disclosed. LeNoire founded the Amas Repertory Theatre in New York in 1968, a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing musicals and new talent. The company produced such popular shows as "Bojangles" and Tony nominee "Bubbling Brown Sugar." "I produce musicals. Music is one avenue where no one seems to have any discriminatory attitudes," LeNoire once said. "Theater techniques are a marvelous implement to bring people of all races, colors and creeds together." Born in New York City, LeNoire took music lessons from legendary jazzman Eubie Blake. By age 15, she was a chorus girl working with her godfather, dancing great Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. She made her Broadway debut in "The Hot Mikado" in 1939, going on to appear in such shows as "A Streetcar Named Desire," "The Sunshine Boys" and "Lost In The Stars." LeNoire also co-starred in the film version of "Anna Lucasta" with Sammy Davis Jr. and Eartha Kitt, and appeared in such TV series as "Search for Tomorrow," "The Guiding Light" and "Gimme a Break." She played Grandma Winslow on "Family Matters," a sitcom about a middle-class black family in Chicago, from 1989 to 1997. |
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LOS
ANGELES (AP) - Actress-producer Rosetta LeNoire, who was
directed by Orson Welles in a landmark, all-black version
of "Macbeth" in the 1930s and received the
National Medal of Arts in 1999, has died. She was 90.