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Actress/singer Dorothy Dandridge was Hollywood's first African-American superstar, the first Black performer ever nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. Dandridge and her sister Vivian teamed up in the song-and-dance duo the Wonder Children as kids in Cleveland, Ohio. The family relocated to Los Angeles during the mid-'30s, and in 1937 Dandridge made her film debut in the Marx Brothers' classic A Day at the Races. She and Vivian continued their singing career as the Dandridge Sisters, and during the early '40s, Dorothy became a sensation on the nightclub circuit. Her breakthrough was the title role in Otto Preminger's 1954 screen musical Carmen Jones, earning her an Academy Award nomination. However, she did not reappear onscreen until 1957's Island in the Sun, and despite winning a Golden Globe for 1959's Porgy and Bess, she was offered virtually no future film roles, returning to nightclubs in the early '60s. Wikipedia