Olga James, the singer, actress and nightclub performer who portrayed the jilted sweetheart of Harry Belafonte’s character in the landmark Otto Preminger-directed film musical Carmen Jones, has died. She was 95.
James died Jan. 25 at an assisted living facility in Los Angeles of complications from a fall in which she broke her pelvis, her niece, actress and acting teacher Janet Adderley, told The Hollywood Reporter.
James also portrayed the fiancée of Sammy Davis Jr.’s struggling showbiz entertainer in the 1956-57 Broadway musical Mr. Wonderful, and she recurred as Verna Kincaid, the sister-in-law of Bill Cosby’s high school gym teacher, on the comedian’s eponymous 1969-71 NBC sitcom.
James had attended the Juilliard School of Music and was a trained opera singer when she was cast as the heartbroken Cindy Lou, who loses her troubled man, Joe (Belafonte), to the bewitching title character (Dorothy Dandridge) in 20th Century Fox’s Carmen Jones (1954), filmed in CinemaScope.
Known for what one reviewer called “a high-voltage voice,” James sings the numbers “You Talk Jus’ Like My Maw” (with Belafonte, whose voice was dubbed), “My Joe” — she’s magnificent here when she’s out and about searching for him — and “He Got His Self Another Woman.”
Based on the 1943 Oscar Hammerstein stage musical — which had been set to the music of Georges Bizet’s 1875 opera, Carmen — the film also featured Pearl Bailey, Brock Peters, Diahann Carroll and Joe Adams in the first all-Black musical to come out of Hollywood since the 1943 features Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky.
James was born in Washington on Feb. 16, 1929. Her father was a saxophonist and her mother a dancer. After her parents separated, she was raised by her grandparents, then admitted into Juilliard.
After graduation, she performed with an opera company that participated in a music and arts festival in Paris and toured with Smart Affairs, a top-notch all-Black revue put together by impresario Larry Steele, when she returned to the States.
Managed by Abe Saperstein, owner of basketball’s Harlem Globetrotters, James — who spoke Italian, French and German — sang an aria for Preminger during her Carmen Jones audition at the Alvin Theatre in New York, after which “everybody applauded,” she recalled in Foster Hirsch’s 2007 book, Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King.
She was the third member of the cast to he hired, following Belafonte and Bailey. The role “wasn’t a stretch for me,” she said. “I was that character, a country-looking girl. I was just a little ingenue.”
Carmen Jones transformed her into a sought-after nightclub performer, and in 1955, she made her first appearance on television when Saperstein had her sing at halftime of a Globetrotters-Washington Generals game.
James played the supportive Ethel Pearson in Mr. Wonderful, which ran for 383 performances and also starred Jack Carter and Chita Rivera.
Later, she was the wife of Lee Weaver’s Brian Kincaid on The Bill Cosby Show and voiced a character on the 1972 Hanna-Barbera/NBC Saturday morning kids show Sealab 2020.
Adams was married to famed jazz alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley from 1962 until his death in August 1975 at age 46 and to folk singer and civil rights activist Len Chandler from 1990 until his death in August 2023 at age 88.
In addition to Janet, survivors include her nephew, Nat Adderley Jr., the arranger and pianist; another niece, Alison; great nieces Akina, a singer-songwriter, and Alana, a business partner in her mom’s acting schools; great-great nephew William; and great-great niece Amelia.
Rhett Bartlett contributed to this report.
English (US) ·