Virginia Capers
| Virginia Capers | |
|---|---|
| 180px | |
| Born | Eliza Virginia Capers September 22, 1925 Sumter, South Carolina, U.S. |
| Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1957–2003 |
Eliza Virginia Capers (September 22, 1925 – May 6, 2004) was an American actress[1][2][3] She won the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical in 1974 for her performance as Lena Younger in Raisin, a musical version of Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun.
Personal life
Born in Sumter, South Carolina, Capers attended Howard University and studied voice at the Juilliard School in New York City.
Career
She made her Broadway debut in the musical Jamaica in 1957 as a replacement for Adelaide Hall in the role of Grandma Obeah, taking over the role when Hall left the musical.[4][5][6][7][8] Capers went on to appear in Saratoga[9] and Raisin.[10]
Capers was a familiar face to television audiences. In addition to a recurring role on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as Hattie Banks, she appeared in many television shows, including Have Gun Will Travel, Marcus Welby, M.D., My Three Sons, Mannix, The Waltons, Mork & Mindy, Highway to Heaven, St. Elsewhere, Murder, She Wrote, Evening Shade, The Golden Girls, Married... with Children, The Practice and ER.
Capers appeared in such films as Norwood (1970), The Great White Hope (1970), Lady Sings the Blues (1972), The North Avenue Irregulars (1979), The Toy (1982), Teachers (1984), Howard the Duck (1986), Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), Beethoven's 2nd (1993) and What's Love Got to Do with It (1993).
Capers founded the Lafayette Players, a Los Angeles repertory theatre company for African-American performers. She was the recipient of the National Black Theatre Festival Living Legend Award, the Paul Robeson Pioneer Award, and the NAACP Image Award for theatre excellence.
Capers provided the narration for the adventure game Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers.[11]
Death
Capers died on May 6, 2004, of complications from pneumonia in Los Angeles, California, aged 78.
References
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- ↑ Ken Mandelbaum, Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops, St. Martin's Press (1991), pp. 230-33 (ISBN 0-312-06428-4).
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External links
- Virginia Capers at the Internet Broadway DatabaseLua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- Virginia Capers at the Internet Movie Database
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles with hCards
- 1925 births
- 2004 deaths
- Tony Award winners
- Actresses from South Carolina
- People from Sumter, South Carolina
- Howard University alumni
- Juilliard School alumni
- Deaths from pneumonia
- Infectious disease deaths in California
- 20th-century American actresses
- 21st-century American actresses
- African-American actresses
- American television actresses
- American film actresses
- American musical theatre actresses
- African-American female singers
- American stage actresses
