Jane White

Jane White (October 30, 1922 – July 24, 2011) was an American actress and singer best known for her Broadway and off-Broadway stage performances. She won Obie Awards in 1966 for her performance in a Shakespeare in the Park productions of Love's Labour's Lost and Coriolanus

In 1945, she made her Broadway debut in Strange Fruit. This performance was followed by roles in Razzle Dazzle, The Insect Comedy, The Climate of Eden, Take a Giant Step, Jane Eyre, and The Power and The Glory. In 1959, she opened the acclaimed musical Once Upon a Mattress, originating the role of Queen Aggravain alongside Carol Burnett and Joseph Bova.

Early life and education White was born in New York City to Gladys Leah Powell and Walter Francis White, a civil-rights leader and national secretary of the NAACP. She grew up in the fashionable Sugar Hill neighborhood of Harlem at 409 Edgecombe Avenue. The house was nicknamed "The White House of Harlem" because of the prominent and important figures who were part of her parents' circle, such as James Weldon Johnson, Paul and Eslanda Robeson, Carl Van Vechten, and George Gershwin. She had one brother, Walter Carl Darrow White.

White attended Smith College beginning in the early 1940s;

Career Early career White worked for a short time as a proofreader for the Research Institute of America while also attending beginners' acting classes at New York's New School.

White made her TV debut as a dramatic actress on June 14, 1950, in "You Have Been Warned", an episode of Stage 13 on CBS.

In 1959, White played the role of the scheming Queen Aggravain in Once Upon a Mattress, in which Carol Burnett made her Broadway debut.

1970s–2011 White continued to work steadily in theatre and occasionally in television and movies from the 1970s through the 2000s. Her theatrical work has spanned summer stock, off-Broadway and on-Broadway shows. Much of her work was in classical dramas, with particular focus on Shakespeare; she won an Obie Award for her roles in the 1965–66 New York Shakespeare Festival as Volumnia in Coriolanus and the Princess of France in Love's Labour's Lost.

In the late 1970s, White and her husband opened Alfredo's Settebello in the Village, and White performed there as a cabaret singer.

Personal life In 1962, White met the New York restaurateur Alfredo Viazzi, and after a short courtship they were wed. They moved to Italy in 1965, but moved back to the U.S. in the late 1960s.

White donated her papers to the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College in 1989 and continued to send additions until her death in 2011.

Death White died on July 24, 2011, in New York City, aged 88, of cancer.

Work Film Year Title Role Notes1971 Klute Janie Dale 1998 Beloved Lady Jones (final film role)

Stage

Television

1952Crime PhotographerEpisode: "Brains"

Awards White won the 1965–66 Obie award for her performances in the New York Shakespeare Festival as the Princess of France in Love's Labor's Lost and Volumnia in Coriolanus, and the 1988-89 Los Angeles Critics Circle Award for the Mother in Lorca's Blood Wedding.