July 71 Daytime TV

Sterling's Magazines, Inc

Edited November 22, 201015 yr by CarlD2

She was strikingly beautiful. None of the soap rags would print this article today.

girl; and her mother is Sadie Gray (played by the black Esther Rolle).

This black-white confusion makes exciting dramatic material on a serial, but in real life it brings anguish.

People are always asking Ellen why she doesn't "pass" as a white, but she points out, "I'm not white. I'm a black, because my experience has been a black experience."

Like virtually all blacks, she has experienced indignities, as the time she was in a St. Louis restaurant and the waitress asked, "What's your race?" Ellen said, "Black," and the waitress charged her $2 for a glass of orange juice.

She was in a New York restaurant when the waiter spilled something on her, and Ellen looked up to say, 'Oh, that's all right,' only to realize the waiter was smiling. He had done it purposely.

She was in Boston, in an airport restaurant with a black man, a lecturer at Harvard Business School when the cashier and the manager insisted, loudly, that his credit card was no good. The Harvard man proved that his credit card was still valid, then said, "Would you make this fuss if I had been a white man?"

In a Maryland diner, she was thrown out because she was a black. And she recalls the time her father, a successful chemical engineer and inventor, went to a white rich man's house with some plans. It was dark, and the man's wife opened the door, saw Ellen's father, and assuming any black man must be a messenger, took the plans and gave him 25 cents. "My father accepted the 25 cents and left, rather than reveal who he was an embarrass her," says Ellen.

She enjoys working on One Life to Live, and she adores Nat Polen, who's now playing Dr. James Craig, but after studio hours, she usually hurries to her midtown apartment. "I hate to go out. Going out means trauma, trouble. Someone may do something horrible on the bus. When people do something savage, it takes me time to recover. All the racial things...I have trouble forgetting. And I'd rather stay in my apartment. It's safe."

She bought a duplex apartment in a reconditioned brownstone in New York, and has decorated it in bright, tropical colors, filling the walls with paintings by Haitian artists. Her beautiful apartment, bought by earnings from a couple of years on One Life to Live, is her refuge.

In this apartment, she gets up at 6 a.m. (when she's not due at the ABC studio) to write. She gulps a 10-minute breakfast, and works at her typewriter until exhaustion. Since 1964, she has been writing a film script, The Sorcerer, and now she's extremely busy rewriting it into a novel.

"I'm obsessed with this project," she confesses.

As a child, she was brought up in a middle-class family in Richmond Hill, New York. Black history and achievement were stressed, and Ellen points to her father's success in engineering, her great grandfather being the first black bishop of the Episcopal Church, her great grandmother being the first black to graduate from an American medical school, in 1871; her cousin Caroline Adams being with the Paul Taylor dangers. But it wasn't until she discovered a "certain fact about the black person," which she's put into The Sorcerer, that everything finally came into proper perspective.

Now she's driven to finish the novel and get it produced as a movie. It will then be the fulfillment of her life. It will not be a "message story," but a "gut experience," which is "always more powerful than an intellectual experience," Ellen told us.

Of course, she hopes to play a lead role in the movie "because I couldn't trust the lead to anybody else."

Writing is a lonely craft, and she admits, "I'm becoming a hermit, but I keep telling myself it's only temporary."

It seems a shame that such a brilliant, intense, gorgeous woman should be a hermit. But there have been times when she paused for romance.

"Four men - three blacks and one white - caught my imagination," she says, "But they were not husband material. Fascinating...but unthinkable as husbands!"

The older she grows, the fussier she gets. "I'm getting to like my aloneness. Besides, I cannot bear the thought of being shut up with somebody perpetually, which is what marriage means. I'm a terribly private person. I can be alone, and keep myself company."

But she's not really alone. There's that typewriter, and the script, and her vision of a great movie that will illuminate the black experience for all Americans.

She was strikingly beautiful. None of the soap rags would print this article today.

+1

I love this. Thank you Carl. Ellen and Robin, if I didn't know better I'd think you were giving me a belated birthday present.

Opposed to the white Esther Rolle.

It's very similar to a NYT article she did the year before that I have saved on my computer but can't figure out how to get it here without typing it all out--in that one she gives Agnes a lot of praise but does say basically that despite that, Agnes doesn't know the whole experience (something I bet even Aggie would agree with). But the comments about feeling like an outsider are the same too. It's too bad that she seems to have been wasted for much of the 70s and certainly the 80s... I know she felt it beneath her when she was let go on OLTL and Agnes offered her and her character's mother's actress to move their characters to Loving, but I wish they had (though that show changed focus so much in the 80s who knows what impact it woulda had).

Miss Holly lives not far from me in NY and I've often considered writing her but had my doubts about invading her privacy. And now reading this article I really wonder. Life is short however.

SFK, I was saving the Ellen Holly one for when I knew you were back on the board. I'm glad you got to read it. Thanks for replying, both of you, I'm glad people enjoy reading this.

It's sad to think this actress and this story would never be on a soap today. At least we have some of this as a legacy I guess.

It's very similar to a NYT article she did the year before that I have saved on my computer but can't figure out how to get it here without typing it all out--in that one she gives Agnes a lot of praise but does say basically that despite that, Agnes doesn't know the whole experience (something I bet even Aggie would agree with). But the comments about feeling like an outsider are the same too. It's too bad that she seems to have been wasted for much of the 70s and certainly the 80s... I know she felt it beneath her when she was let go on OLTL and Agnes offered her and her character's mother's actress to move their characters to Loving, but I wish they had (though that show changed focus so much in the 80s who knows what impact it woulda had).

Actually, I think the offer was only to Miss Hayman as Miss Holly was still employed at the time, but I'm not sure. I remember in her book her saying that Mrs. Nixon remarked that she was familiar with Mr. Rauch's history and none of his behaviour at One Life surprised her.

Edited August 29, 201015 yr by SFK

I know she felt it beneath her when she was let go on OLTL and Agnes offered her and her character's mother's actress to move their characters to Loving, but I wish they had (though that show changed focus so much in the 80s who knows what impact it woulda had).

I can't blame her for not wanting to go to Loving but like you said, I wish she had. (If that was the offer). The show was socially conscious in those first few years, yet did not have a black presence for a long time. I think Agnes also might have been more interested in Loving in the 80s if Carla and Sadie had been there.

The whole thing is so sad...and yet it's something which can't be told enough.

Edited August 29, 201015 yr by CarlD2

SFK, I was saving the Ellen Holly one for when I knew you were back on the board. I'm glad you got to read it. Thanks for replying, both of you, I'm glad people enjoy reading this.

It's sad to think this actress and this story would never be on a soap today. At least we have some of this as a legacy I guess.

<--The manliest ever.

She was strikingly beautiful. None of the soap rags would print this article today.

Exactly.

I can't blame her for not wanting to go to Loving but like you said, I wish she had. (If that was the offer). The show was socially conscious in those first few years, yet did not have a black presence for a long time. I think Agnes also might have been more interested in Loving in the 80s if Carla and Sadie had been there.

The whole thing is so sad...and yet it's something which can't be told enough.

Yeah, it would have been really awesome if they'd had the opportunity to do a Carla and Sadie 2.0 on Loving where they got back in touch with some socially-relevant juicy material. I choke up imagining a s/l where Carla finally meets her fair-skinned father and Sadie mournfully shares that she always felt that she was too dark and unattractive for him, that she thought he was ashamed of her and that's why he left, why Carla's rejection was twice as painful.

I've brought this up before, but I can't help but hold Carla and Sadie up against Erica and Mona, Ada and Rachel, even Kate and Ava... these mother-daughter duos with absent fathers, no siblings... all daughters a handful for their put upon mothers. Though Carla wasn't a bitch, she did have shades of selfish vixen if we judge by the synopses. I guess she was motivated by something deeper however, and the idea of making her character less than sympathetic would have undermined the story.

Edited August 29, 201015 yr by SFK

Some of us have talked about these actors or characters or stories so much, when I was able to post some of the material from that time which helps shed some light I thought we'd enjoy it.

Eric, I didn't remember about the NYT article, sorry; I hope you can still post it eventually.

Yeah, it would have been really awesome if they'd had the opportunity to do a Carla and Sadie 2.0 on Loving where they got back in touch with some socially-relevant juicy material. I choke up imagining a s/l where Carla finally meets her fair-skinned father and Sadie mournfully shares that she always felt that she was too dark and unattractive for him, that she thought he was ashamed of her and that's why he left, why Carla's rejection was twice as painful.

I've brought this up before, but I can't help but hold Carla and Sadie up against Erica and Mona, Ada and Rachel, even Kate and Ava... these mother-daughter duos with absent fathers, no siblings... all daughters a handful for their put upon mothers. Though Carla wasn't a bitch, she did have shades of selfish vixen if we judge by the synopses. I guess she was motivated by something deeper however, and the idea of making her character less than sympathetic would have undermined the story.

Cabot Alden!

There weren't enough black mother/daughter relationships on soaps. I guess the one which was most striking was Lilliebelle and Dru on Y&R, then some others (I liked Gilly/Vivian on GL until it got very trashy). I wish more of Carla and Sadie was available.