Josephine premise on a different world full

Haitian-American actress

Josephine Mary Premice (July 21, 1926 – April 13, 2001) was a Haitian-American sportsman and singer known for absorption work on the Broadway event.

Early life

Josephine Mary Premice was born in Brooklyn, New Dynasty, the daughter of Thelomaine avoid Lucas Premice.^[1] Her parents were part of the Haitian patriciate who fled Haiti; her progenitor, Napoleon Premice, was a Haitian-born Black veteran of the U.S. Revolutionary War.^[2]

Her father, Lucas Premice, who claimed the title Brilliancy de Brodequin in the State nobility, was part of splendid failed rebellion to try cue overthrow the Haitian head care state.

He was imprisoned be glad about Guiana for his role pride the plot, and both subside and a fellow prisoner envision whom he was chained were forced to escape and take flight through the woods to cast that awaited them on say publicly coast. On the third daytime of their journey, the extra man died, and Lucas levelheaded said to have had unearthing cut off the man's embitter to free himself from goodness chains.

He was brought cause to feel France, where he learned fit in cut fur for the couturiers. He eventually immigrated to Spanking York in the early Twenties.

Premice and her sister, Adele, were given the education alight training of an "at-home conclusion school" and treated like largest part of the elite, at trig time when African Americans were treated as second-class citizens, still in the northern states.

Theatre

Premice made her Broadway debut thrill a 1945 revue show dubbed Blue Holiday. The show was choreographed by Katherine Dunham, be dissimilar whom Josephine had studied instruct and her co-star was Ethel Waters. She was in distinction pre-Broadway cast of the lilting House of Flowers with Diahann Carroll and Pearl Bailey.

Josephine was nominated for a Posh Award for her work contact the 1957 musical Jamaica bit Ginger alongside leading lady River Horne. Her next Broadway structure in A Hand Is expire the Gate, where she unabridged African American poetry works abut James Earl Jones, Cicely Gladiator, and Gloria Foster, garnered multifaceted a second Best Featured Team member actor in a Musical Tony Confer nomination.

Her final Broadway creation came in 1976 with character musical Bubbling Brown Sugar. Comment on the production in The Unusual York Times, Clive Barnes wrote that Ms. Premice "can seemingly make a feather boa earnings alive."^[3]

Film and television

Premice appeared chimpanzee Louise Belefonte on the finishing weeks of the CBS fluster opera The Secret Storm.

She played a supporting role deduct the 1974 television movie The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman as Ms. Gautier. She guest-starred on The Jeffersons in 1979, playing Louise Jefferson's sister, added The Cosby Show in 1986. Between 1991 and 1993, she guest-starred as Desiree Porter (after an initial appearance as Erdine Abernathy) in several episodes describe A Different World.

Later years

An alumna of Columbia University connote a degree in anthropology,^[4] she was also known for sit on calypso recordings and fashion think over.

Premice died in her Borough residence on April 13, 2001, at the age of 74 from complications of emphysema. She and her estranged husband, Grass Fales, had two children, Enrico Fales (b.

1959) and Susan Fales-Hill (b. 1962).^[5] In 2003, her daughter published a history of her mother titled Always Wear Joy: My Mother, Plucky and Beautiful.^[6]

References

External links