MILDRED WASHINGTON

Mildred Washington was a black African American actress and dancer in the 1920s and 1930s. She had major success in black cabarets in the 1920s, but she wanted to be in movies. She had a starring role in Hearts in Dixie, which was one of the first all-black movies made in Hollywood, but sadly, the film is believed lost. She appeared in 14 other Hollywood movies, but due to the prejudice of the times, she mostly played maids, although even then she stood out. Her best performance among those films was in Torch Singer, where she plays Claudette Colbert's maid, but also her confidant. She surely would have had far greater success if not for her getting appendicitis in 1933, and complications from it caused her passing, and she was only 28 years old.