Hilda Simms

Hilda Simms ( Moses; April 15, 1918 – February 6, 1994) She was the daughter of Emile and Lydia Moses, Roman Catholics of Creole descent. She graduated from South High School in Minneapolis.

When Simms starred in the critically acclaimed Broadway hit Anna Lucasta, her mother Lydia refused to attend the play on Broadway, stating that she would not watch her daughter play a prostitute as she didn't raise her that way. Simms and her siblings were raised devout Catholics in Minneapolis and walked several miles to school each morning to attend the Basilica of St. Mary on the outskirts of Minneapolis.

Before becoming an actress, Simms planned to be a teacher. She studied dramatics at the University of Minnesota

During the British tour of the play in 1947, Simms met and married veteran American actor Richard Angarola. The couple returned to the States in the 1950s and Simms embarked on a promising film career that was cut short.

In 1950, Simms received critical acclaim in London when she performed in a revival of The Gentle People at the Embassy Theatre.

Her first role was as co-star to heavy-weight boxing champion Joe Louis. She played the boxer's wife in The Joe Louis Story (1953). In 1954, she featured as the sympathetic coatcheck girl Anne in Black Widow, a CinemaScope thriller by Nunnally Johnson. However, just as her career seemed to gearing up, she became a victim of the Hollywood blacklist. She had the same role with an otherwise all-white cast the following year in a summer stock production of Streetcar at the Peninsula Playhouse in Fish Creek, Wisconsin.

Simms created a one-woman show targeted at college and university audiences in the fall of 1959. Her plans featured her "readings of love letters of famous courtesans and the world's greatest poetry." She portrayed Miss Ayres on the television series The Nurses, and hosted her own radio show, titled Ladies Day, on New York City's WOV. She narrated, along with Frederick O'Neal, the educational record "Great Negro Americans", written and produced by Alan Sands. She also became an active participant in political movements and served as the creative arts director for the New York State Human Rights Commission. She eventually fulfilled her original dream of becoming a teacher and earned a master's degree in education from the City College of New York.

Death Hilda Simms died in Buffalo, New York, aged 75, from pancreatic cancer.