Jane White was an American actress best known for her Broadway and off-Broadway stage performances.
16 Facts About Jane White
2.
Jane White won Obie Awards in 1966 for her performance in a Shakespeare in the Park productions of Loves Labours Lost and Coriolanus and in 1971 for sustained achievement.
3.
Jane White was born in New York City to Gladys Leah Powell and Walter Francis Jane White, a civil-rights leader and national secretary of the NAACP.
4.
Jane White grew up in the fashionable Sugar Hill neighborhood of Harlem at 409 Edgecombe Avenue.
5.
Jane White attended Smith College beginning in the early 1940s; she majored in sociology so she might follow her father into social activism, but she maintained a stronger passion for the arts.
6.
Jane White minored in music, studying classical voice with Anna Hamlin, and participated in extracurricular dance and fencing.
7.
Jane White worked for a short time as a proofreader for the Research Institute of America while attending beginners' acting classes at New York's New School.
8.
In 1945, Jane White secured her first part playing the lead role of "Nonnie" in the Broadway production of Strange Fruit.
9.
Jane White was originally recommended for the part by Paul Robeson, a friend of the White family.
10.
Jane 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.
11.
In 1959, Jane White played the role of the scheming Queen Aggravain in Once Upon a Mattress, in which Carol Burnett made her Broadway debut.
12.
Jane White continued to work steadily in theatre and occasionally in television and movies from the 1970s through the 2000s.
13.
Jane White has additionally played roles in such dramas as Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis and Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts; comedies such as Paul Rudnick's I Hate Hamlet; and musicals such as Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music and the 2001 production of Sondheim's Follies, to name a small selection.
14.
In 1962, Jane White met the New York restaurateur Alfredo Viazzi, and after a short courtship they were wed.
15.
Jane White donated her papers to the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College in 1989 and continued to send additions until her death in 2011.
16.
Jane White died on July 24,2011, in New York City, aged 88.