Nell Carter (born Nell Ruth Hardy;[5][6] September 13, 1948 – January 23, 2003) was an American singer and actress.
Carter began her career in 1970, singing in the theater, and later began work on television. She was best known for her role as Nell Harper on the sitcom Gimme a Break!, which aired from 1981 to 1987. Carter received two Emmy and two Golden Globe award nominations for her work on the series. Prior to Gimme a Break!, Carter won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical in 1978 for her performance in the Broadway musical Ain't Misbehavin' as well as a Primetime Emmy Award for her reprisal of the role on television in 1982.[7]
Early life
Nell Ruth Hardy[8] was born on September 13, 1948 in Birmingham, Alabama,[9] one of nine children born to Edna Mae and Horace Hardy. She was born into a Catholic family and raised Presbyterian.[10][11] Carter later self-identified as Pentecostal.[12]
At the age of two, Hardy witnessed her father's electrocution when he stepped on a live power line.[13][14]
As a child, she began singing on a local gospel radio show and was also a member of the church choir. At age 15, she began performing at area coffee houses, and later joined the Renaissance Ensemble that played at coffee houses and gay bars.
On July 5, 1965 at the age of 16, Hardy was raped at gunpoint by a man whom she knew. She became pregnant as a result of the rape and gave birth to daughter Tracy the next year. Finding raising a baby alone too difficult, she sent her child to live with her older sister Willie. She later claimed that Tracy was the product of a brief marriage, but she revealed the truth in a 1994 interview.[15][16]
Career
Broadway work
At age 19, Hardy changed her surname to Carter and left Birmingham, Alabama, moving to New York City with the Renaissance Ensemble, where she sang in coffee shops, nightclubs and bathhouses before landing her first Broadway role in 1971.[17]
Carter made her Broadway debut in the 1971 rock opera Soon, which closed after three performances. She was the music director for the 1974 Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective's production of What Time of Night It Is. Carter appeared with Bette Davis in the 1974 stage musical Miss Moffat, based on Davis' earlier film The Corn Is Green, but the show closed before reaching Broadway. She became a star for her role in the musical Ain't Misbehavin, for which she won a Tony Award in 1978. She later won an Emmy for the same role in a televised performance in 1982.
In 1978, Carter was cast as Effie White in the Broadway musical Dreamgirls but departed the production during development to take a television role on Ryan's Hope. When Dreamgirls premiered in late 1981, Jennifer Holliday had taken the lead role.
Carter's additional Broadway credits include Dude and the 20th-anniversary production of Annie, in which she played Miss Hannigan.
Film and television
In 1979, Carter had a part in the Miloš Forman-directed musical adaptation of Hair. and her voice is heard on the film's soundtrack.[18]
Carter became best known to audiences for her lead role in the NBC television series Gimme a Break!, in which she played a housekeeper for a widowed police chief (Dolph Sweet) and his three daughters. The show earned Carter nominations for a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award. A total of 137 episodes of Gimme a Break! were produced over a run of six seasons, airing from 1981 to 1987.
In August 1987 after the cancellation of Gimme a Break!, Carter returned to the nightclub circuit with a five-month national tour with comedian Joan Rivers.[20]
Further television work
In 1989, Carter played the assistant to a banquet-hall owner in an unsuccessful pilot for NBC titled Morton's by the Bay, which aired as a one-time special that May. In October, she performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" before Game 4 of the 1989 World Series in San Francisco.[21]
In 1990, Carter starred in the CBS comedy You Take the Kids. The series, which was perceived as the black answer to Roseanne with its portrayal of a working-class black family, featured Carter as a crass, no-nonsense mother and wife.[22]You Take the Kids faced poor ratings and reviews and only ran from December 1990 to January 1991.[23]
In the mid-1990s, Carter appeared on Broadway in a revival of Annie as Miss Hannigan. She was upset when commercials promoting the show used white actress Marcia Lewis as Miss Hannigan. The producers stated that the commercials, which were created during an earlier production, were too costly to reshoot. However, Carter felt that racism played a part in the decision. She told the New York Post: "Maybe they don't want audiences to know Nell Carter is black. ... It hurts a lot. I've asked them nicely to stop it—it's insulting to me as a black woman."[25][26] Carter was later replaced by Sally Struthers.[27]
Later years
In 2001, Carter appeared as a special guest star on the pilot episode of Reba and continued with the show, making three appearances in Season 1. The following year, Carter made two appearances on Ally McBeal.[24]
In 2002, she rehearsed for a production of Raisin, a stage musical based on A Raisin in the Sun in Long Beach, California. She appeared in the 2003 film Swing. Her final onscreen appearance was in the comedy film Back by Midnight, released in 2005, two years after her death.[24]
Death
On January 23, 2003 at the age of 54, Carter collapsed and died at her home in Beverly Hills.[28][29] Her son Joshua discovered her body that night.[10][30] Per a provision in Carter's will, no autopsy was performed. Using blood tests, X-rays and a cursory physical examination, the Los Angeles County coroner's office ruled that Carter's death was the likely result of "probable arteriosclerotic heart disease, with diabetes a contributing condition."[31]
Carter attempted suicide in the early 1980s, and around 1985 she entered a drug-detoxification facility to break a longstanding cocaine addiction. Her brother Bernard died of complications from AIDS in 1989.[15]
Carter married mathematician and lumber executive George Krynicki, and she converted to Judaism in 1982.[10][11] She filed for divorce from Krynicki in 1989 and the divorce was finalized in 1992.
Carter had three children: daughter Tracy and sons Joshua and Daniel. She adopted both Joshua and Daniel as newborns over a four-month period. She attempted to adopt twice more, but both adoptions failed. In her first attempt, she allowed a young pregnant woman to move into her home with the plan that she would adopt the child, but the mother decided to keep the baby. Carter also had three miscarriages.[15]
In 1992, Carter had surgery to repair two aneurysms. She married Roger Larocque in June 1992[36] but divorced him the next year. Carter declared bankruptcy in 1995 and again in 2002.[15]
^Wilson, Scott; Mank, Gregory William (2016). Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons (3rd ed.). McFarland. p. 122. ISBN978-1-476-62599-7.
