Background

She was born on August 22, 1934 in the borough of the Bronx, New York City, United States, and was brought up mainly in suburban Elmsford, N. Y. , and in Manhattan. Her father, Rudolph Thomas Sands, Jr. , was a carpenter; her mother, Shirley Walker, was a milliner. Canada Lee's performance in Native Son (1941), which she saw when only seven, inspired her to go on the stage.

Education

She attended the High School of Performing Arts in New York City, from which she graduated in 1952, winning the school's Best Actress award.

She studied under a variety of teachers, including Michael Howard and Lloyd Richards, and she took special courses in speech, pantomime, dancing, and singing.

Career

While still in school, Sands began to work professionally, one of her first jobs being part of an "Oriental" dance team, Twan and Diana.

Although she was black, Sands began her legitimate acting career playing mostly nonblack roles. Her debut was as Juliet in an Off-Broadway presentation called An Evening with Will Shakespeare (1953). She also appeared Off-Broadway in The World of Sholem Aleichem (1953) and a revival of Major Barbara (1954). During these years, when good roles for blacks were rare, she encountered considerable hardship and had to take a variety of day jobs, such as key-punch operator for the utility company Con Edison.

After a stint with Lionel Shepard's Pantomime Art Theatre in 1955, Sands appeared in Off-Broadway plays that included The Man with the Golden Arm (1956), Fortunato (1956), Mary and the Fairy (1956), A Land Beyond the River (1957), and The Egg and I (1958). Her first part on Broadway, playing Beneatha in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1959), earned her many awards. Ironically, her cynicism regarding the commercial theater's attitude toward blacks had made her reluctant to audition for the part.

After A Raisin in the Sun, Sands was in such Off-Broadway pieces as the revue Another Evening with Harry Stoones (1961), Black Monday (1962), and Brecht on Brecht (1962). She was in Hyannisport, Massachussets, with the improvisational Compass Players in 1963, and in the same year appeared Off-Broadway in The Living Premise. On Broadway she was in Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright (1962) and Blues for Mister Charlie (1964).

In the mid-1960's, Sands worked extensively in American regional theaters, acting in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, playing a variety of classical roles. New York audiences saw her in Phaedra (1967) and St. Joan (1968). The last play was produced by the Repertory Theater at Lincoln Center, to which Sands belonged for a season, and where she also played Cassandra in Tiger at the Gates (1968).

Her work also took her on tour across the United States and Europe. A major touring role was the female lead in Caesar and Cleopatra (1967). Sands's first film role was as a bar girl in Caribbean Gold (1952). She later was seen in Four Boys and a Gun (1957); the film version of A Raisin in the Sun (1961), in which she repeated her stage role; and eight more films, including The Garment Jungle (1957), An Affair of the Skin (1963), Mr. Pulver and the Captain (1963), The Landlord (1970), Doctors' Wives (1971), and Georgia, Georgia (1972).

Two films produced by Third World Cinema, of which Sands was a cofounder, were not released until after her death: Willie Dynamite (1973) and Honeybaby, Honeybaby (1974), filmed in Beirut, Lebanon.

Sands appeared frequently on television, guest starring in many series, such as "East Side, West Side, " "Dr. Kildare, " and "I Spy. "

She died of cancer in New York City.

Achievements

• She was honored for making a successful career playing important roles in the mainstream, mostly white theater at a time when black actors were largely confined to marginal parts in such work. She made a major Broadway contribution in Bill Manhoff's romantic comedy, The Owl and the Pussycat. Sands played a role which had been written for a white actress. She played the lead in St. Joan (1968), the first black actress to play Joan of Arc in a major professional production. Besides, she appeared in famous plays, including We Bombed in New Haven (1968) and The Gingham Dog (1969). Her play in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1959), earned her the Outer Circle Critics' Award and Variety's Critics Poll Award as the most promising young actress. She won an Emmy for her reading of poetry in "Beyond the Blue" (1964). Junior High School 147, located in the Bronx, New York, was named in Sands' honor.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Free to Be... You and Me

    (CONTENTS: FREE TO BE - YOU AND ME, BOY MEETS GIR, WHEN WE...)

  • Lorraine Hansberry - A Raisin In The Sun Box LP set

    (lps 3 X 12" in box)

  • African Village Folktales, Vol. 1

Views

She thought that the classical theater was the only medium wherein she could be taken seriously as an artist.

Quotations: She told Anthony Wolff in 1968, "If you're black there's only so far you can go. . It's like a brick wall; and one day you realize you've given yourself all kinds of scars that the wall is insurmountable. "

Personality

Sands, attractive, slim, and chain-smoking, was recognized as one of the finest performers of her day.

Quotes from others about the person

• Critic Walter Kerr wrote in the New York Herald Tribune: "(There is) a breathtaking passage which Diana Sands delivers at unbelievable pitch with a pulsing hysteria that is still just within control. I know of no other single sequence as powerful in New York today. "
  
  Director, Larry Storch, said of her: "She has this stunning, kaleidoscopic quality, a great comedic sense. "

Connections

She married James Baldwin's manager, Swiss-born artist Lucien Happersberger, they had no children and were divorced in 1967. She was engaged to marry the director, Kurt Baker.

Father:

Rudolph Thomas Sands, Jr.

Mother:

Shirley Walker

Spouse:

Lucien Happersberger

coworker:

James Earl Jones

teacher:

Lloyd Richards

teacher:

Michael Howard

friend:

Diahann Carroll