Olga James, ‘Carmen Jones’ Actress and Singer, Dies at 95

Olga James, the vocalist, on-screen character and club entertainer who depicted the abandoned sweetheart of Harry Belafonte’s character in the point of interest Otto Preminger-directed film melodic Carmen Jones, has kicked the bucket. She was 95.

James kicked the bucket Jan. 25 at an helped living office in Los Angeles of complications from a drop in which she broke her pelvis, her niece, performing artist and acting educator Janet Adderley, told The Hollywood Reporter.

James too depicted the fiancée of Sammy Davis Jr.’s battling showbiz performer in the 1956-57 Broadway melodic Mr. Superb, and she repeated as Verna Kincaid, the sister-in-law of Charge Cosby’s tall school exercise center educator, on the comedian’s eponymous 1969-71 NBC sitcom.

James had gone to the Juilliard School of Music and was a prepared musical drama vocalist when she was cast as the devastated Cindy Lou, who loses her vexed man, Joe (Belafonte), to the charming title character (Dorothy Dandridge) in 20th Century Fox’s Carmen Jones (1954), shot in CinemaScope.

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Known for what one analyst called “a high-voltage voice,” James sings the numbers “You Conversation Jus’ Like My Maw” (with Belafonte, whose voice was named), “My Joe” — she’s radiant here when she’s out and around looking for him — and “He Got His Self Another Woman.”

Based on the 1943 Oscar Hammerstein arrange melodic — which had been set to the music of Georges Bizet’s 1875 musical drama, Carmen — the film too highlighted Pearl Bailey, Brock Diminishes, Diahann Carroll and Joe Adams in the to begin with all-Black melodic to come out of Hollywood since the 1943 highlights Stormy Climate and Cabin in the Sky.

James was born in Washington on Feb. 16, 1929. Her father was a saxophonist and her mother a artist. After her guardians isolated, she was raised by her grandparents, at that point conceded into Juilliard.

After graduation, she performed with an musical drama company that taken part in a music and expressions celebration in Paris and visited with Savvy Issues, a top-notch all-Black revue put together by producer Larry Steele, when she returned to the States.

Managed by Abe Saperstein, proprietor of basketball’s Harlem Globetrotters, James — who talked Italian, French and German — sang an aria for Preminger amid her Carmen Jones try out at the Alvin Theater in Modern York, after which “everybody applauded,” she reviewed in Cultivate Hirsch’s 2007 book, Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King.

She was the third part of the cast to he enlisted, taking after Belafonte and Bailey. The part “wasn’t a extend for me,” she said. “I was that character, a country-looking young lady. I was fair a small ingenue.”

Carmen Jones changed her into a sought-after club entertainer, and in 1955, she made her to begin with appearance on tv when Saperstein had her sing at halftime of a Globetrotters-Washington Officers game.

James played the steady Ethel Pearson in Mr. Brilliant, which ran for 383 exhibitions and moreover featured Jack Carter and Chita Rivera.

Later, she was the spouse of Lee Weaver’s Brian Kincaid on The Charge Cosby Appear and voiced a character on the 1972 Hanna-Barbera/NBC Saturday morning kids appear Sealab 2020.

Adams was hitched to well known jazz alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley from 1962 until his passing in Eminent 1975 at age 46 and to people vocalist and respectful rights extremist Len Chandler from 1990 until his passing in Admirable 2023 at age 88.

In expansion to Janet, survivors incorporate her nephew, Nat Adderley Jr., the arranger and piano player; another niece, Alison; incredible nieces Akina, a singer-songwriter, and Alana, a commerce accomplice in her mom’s acting schools; great-great nephew William; and great-great niece Amelia.

Rhett Bartlett contributed to this report