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Virginia Capers
Age: 78 (passed away May. 6th, 2004)
Height:
Birth Place: Sumter, South Carolina, USA
Born: Sep. 22nd, 1925
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Virginia Capers' Main TV Roles
NOTE: Complete List of Works can be found at
IMDB
BIOGRAPHY: With plenty of heart and soul, actress Virginia Capers served up loads of music in a career that spanned several decades. Born in 1925, she attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., then studied voice at Juilliard in Manhatten. By happenstance, she was introduced to band leader Abe Lyman (I) who hired her for his radio program and for on-the-road tours. In the late 50s, she had made it to Broadway with productions of "Jamaica" and "Saratoga." She would cap things off with a Tony Award for her Lena Younger matriarch in the 1974 musical "Raisin", the musical version of A Raisin in the Sun (1961). In 1979, she was given an opportunity to perform in a straight dramatic version of the Lorraine Hansberry play. A benevolent, heavyset African-American woman, Virginia worked diligently to fight off rigid Hollywood stereotypes and, on occasion, played judges, nurses and other professional types. Just the same, she found herself too often typecast, along with her peers Theresa Merritt and Mabel King, as poor, husband-less mothers or proud domestic help. Recognition on stage sparked a move to TV where she appeared generously from the 1960s on in both drama ("Daniel Boone," "Mannix," "Knot's Landing," "ER") and comedy ("Evening Shade," "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," "The Hughleys"). Her best known roles in films were as Diana Ross (I)' mother, Mama Holliday, in Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and as Nurse Sparrow in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986). Virginia died of pneumonia in 2004 at age 78.
TRIVIA:
- Won Broadway's 1974 Tony Award as Best Actress (Musical) for "Raisin".
- She won a Tony for "Raisin".
- Founded the Lafayette Players, a Los Angeles repertory theatre company comprised of black actors.
- Spoke several languages as part of her musical training, and even sang in Yiddish on radio for 'Abe Lyman (I)' (qv)'s popular show.
- She and her son Glenn once took in an Inuit runaway named Nilak Butler and eventually helped her secure a five-year contract with Warner Brothers as an actress. Nilak later became a prominent voice in the American Indian Movement.
- The recipient of the National Black Theatre Festival Living Legend Award, the 'Paul Robeson' (qv) Pioneer Award and the NAACP's Image Award for theatre excellence.
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