Dorothy Dandridge

The character was a slave, which made Dorothy decline the offer. After some convincing from Fox chief, Darryl F. Zanuck, that the role was a good one, Dandridge agreed to take the part. Otto Preminger, however, told her the role was too small, and that she would be better off to wait for a leading role in a big-budget motion picture: Dandridge would again decline the role of Tuptim.

A few months before the offer of The King and I, Dandridge was asked to play Sandra Roberts in The Lieutenant Wore Skirts, a romantic-comedy film starring Tom Ewell and Sheree North. She turned this role down for the same reasons that she would turn down The King and I, in future months - it was too small. Had Dandridge agreed to make The Lieutenant Wore Skirts, her character would have been a parody of Marilyn Monroe's character in Fox's The Seven Year Itch (1955). Dorothy was not a fan of parodies, which was another reason she turned the part down. Not making these two films started the slow, but steady, decline of Dandridge's film career. Read Less

Dandridge lost, this time to Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot.

Despite positive reviews, Porgy and Bess was a box office failure. The film's characters were described by several African-Americans as "stereotypical": Bess was a drug addict, Porgy a crippled drunk, Sportin' Life another drug addict, and Crown a rapist. Many believed these characters pandered to stereotypes about African-Americans, adding to its controversy.

The actor who got the most blame for the failure of Porgy and Bess was Dandridge. Before the film, many other African-American actresses and actors looked up to Dandridge as someone who had proved that an African-American woman could achieve what a white woman or man could. But many thought Dandridge was "selling out" when she accepted the role of Bess.

A few weeks after the box-office disappointment of Porgy and Bess, Dandridge was released from her 20th Century Fox contract. Though she had been with Fox for about five-and-a-half years, she had only made two films that were released by them: Carmen Jones (1954) and Island in the Sun (1957). Her contract committed her to making three pictures, but Fox failed to find enough viable opportunities for Dandridge. Read Less