White, Jane, 1948-

Actress.

Jane White was born in 1922, daughter of Walter White, author and Executive Secretary of the NAACP, and Gladys (Powell). The Whites stood among the elites of the Harlem Renaissance. Known as the "White House of Harlem," their apartment in the fashionable Sugar Hill neighborhood served as the setting for a range of cultural and political events with such guests as James Weldon Johnson, Paul and Essie Robeson, Carl Van Vechten, and George Gershwin. After earning an A.B. from Smith College in 1944, Jane White made her stage debut on Broadway as Nonnie in "Strange Fruit." White studied dance with Hanya Holm and acting with Herbert Berghof and Uta Hagen. She has appeared in many roles on and off Broadway, on television, and in films. White created the role of Queen Agravaine in "Once Upon a Mattress" on Broadway in 1959 and later appeared in the television version. She was a board member of the American Negro Theatre and a co-founder and vice-president of Torchlight Productions, Inc. (1947-1949), an organization that promoted interracial casting. She married restauranteur Alfredo Viazzi in 1962. In 1965, she won a best actress Obie award for her work in "Coriolanus" and "Love's Labor's Lost". White created and starred in an autobiographical musical "Jane White, Who?" (1979-80). From the 1970s to the 1990s, she filled roles of imposing, strong-willed women in a gamut of productions including Pygmalion, I Hate Hamlet, Follies, Ghosts and Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle. She also found work in television, memorably as a villain in the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, and in film, playing the role of the Madam in Klute.

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