Juanita Moore, a groundbreaking actress and an Academy Award nominee for her role as Lana Turner's black friend in the classic weeper "Imitation of Life," has died.
Actor Kirk Kelleykahn, her grandson, said that Moore collapsed and died Wednesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 99, according to Kelleykahn. Accounts of her age have differed over the years.
Moore was only the fifth black performer to be nominated for an Oscar, receiving the nod for the glossy Douglas Sirk film that became a big hit and later gained a cult following. The 1959 tearjerker, based on a Fannie Hurst novel and a remake of a 1934 film, tells the story of a struggling white actress' rise to stardom, her friendship with a black woman and how they team up to raise their daughters as single mothers.
It brought supporting actress nominations for both Moore and Susan Kohner, who played Moore's daughter as a young adult attempting to pass as a white woman. Kohner's own background is Czech and Mexican. By the end, Turner's character is a star and her friend is essentially a servant. The death of Moore's character sets up the sentimental ending.
"The Oscar prestige was fine, but I worked more before I was nominated," Moore told the Los Angeles Times in 1967. "Casting directors think an Oscar nominee is suddenly in another category. They couldn't possibly ask you to do one or two days' work. You wouldn't accept it. And I'm sure I would."
Moore also had an active career in the theater, starting at Los Angeles' Ebony Showcase Theatre in the early 1950s, a leading black-run theater. She also was a member of the celebrated Cambridge Players, with other performers including Esther Rolle and Helen Martin.
Her grandson is currently president and CEO of the Cambridge group.
She appeared on Broadway in 1965 in James Baldwin's play "The Amen Corner" and in London in a production of "Raisin in the Sun."
"The creative arts put a person on another level," she told the Los Angeles Times. "That's why we need to bring our youngsters into the theater."
Her first film appearance was as a nurse in the 1949 film "Pinky." As with other black actresses, many of Moore's early roles were as maids. She told the Times that "real parts, not just in-and-out jobs," were opening up for black performers.
Among Moore's other films were "The Girl Can't Help It," ''The Singing Nun," ''Paternity" and "The Kid." Her TV credits include "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour," ''Adam-12," ''Judging Amy" and "ER."
Born in Los Angeles, Moore got her start in show business as a chorus girl at New York's Cotton Club, then joined the Ebony theater.
She was the widow of Charles Burris. She is survived by her grandson and two nephews.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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