Hall, Juanita (1901–1968)

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Hall, Juanita (1901–1968)

African-American singer and actress . Born Juanita Long on November 6, 1901, in Keyport, New Jersey; died on February 29, 1968, in Bayshore, New York; one of three children, two girls and a boy, of Abram and Mary (Richardson) Long; attended schools in Keyport and Bordentown, New Jersey; attended Juilliard School of Music, New York; married Clement Hall (an actor, d. 1920s); no children.

Selected theater:

chorus member in Show Boat (1928); chorus member in Green Pastures (1930); appeared in The Pirates (1942), Sing Out Sweet Land (1944), The Secret Room (1944), Deep Are the Roots (1945), Mr. Peebles and Mr. Hooker (1946), Street Scene (1947), S. S. Glencairn (1948), and Moon of the Caribees (1948); appeared as Bloody Mary in South Pacific (1949), Madame Tango in House of Flowers (1954), and Madame Liang in Flower Drum Song (1958).

Selected films:

South Pacific (1958); Flower Drum Song (1961).

Remembered for her portrayal of Bloody Mary in the 1949 Pulitzer Prize-winning Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, Juanita Hall set her sights on a singing career at age 12, after hearing her first spirituals at a revival meeting in New Jersey. "The whole quality of the singing grabbed hold of me," she said. By age 14, she was teaching singing at Lincoln House in East Orange, New Jersey. After studying at Juilliard and with private teachers, Hall made her first professional stage appearance in the chorus of the Ziegfeld production of Edna Ferber 's Show Boat in 1928, but it was not until 20 years later, at age 49, that the plum role of Bloody Mary came her way. In the interim, Hall made concert appearances and played countless small roles in dramatic and musical productions both on and off-Broadway. In 1935, she formed her own group, the Juanita Hall Choir, which was together for five years under the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The choir made public appearances and was also heard three times a week on the radio. In October 1939, it was one of several groups that participated in the ASCAP Silver Jubilee at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Choir members, many of whom went on to Broadway, remembered Hall's high standards of musicianship and discipline.

Juanita Hall won a Tony Award for South Pacific, in which her songs "Bali H'ai" and "Happy Talk" contributed largely to the show's success. She went on to play Madame Tango in the 1954 musical House of Flowers, and in 1958 she played Madame Liang in a second Rodgers and Hammerstein collaboration, Flower Drum Song. She also performed in the film versions of South Pacific and Flower Drum Song.

During the 1950s, Hall appeared in major night clubs across the country and on television, in shows like "Philco Television Playhouse," "The Ed Sullivan Show," and "Mike Wallace P.M. East." In 1966, two years before her death, she gave a successful blues recital at the East 74th Street Theatre. Following her death, Richard Rodgers remembered her as an extraordinarily kind woman and a joy to work with. "Everything she did on stage came across with such zestful spontaneity that many were surprised to learn of her classical voice training at Juilliard or her career as a concert singer," he wrote. "Juanita was also highly emotional. I recall that when I first played her song 'Bali H'ai,'

she was so overcome that she wept. For a composer, there's no nicer compliment."