Literary Lives 12

CARROLL started modelling at the age of 15 to Oakland in California. Carroll was widowed two years later when DeLeon was killed in a car accident.

Carroll joined the nightime soap opera Dynasty in 1984 as the mixed-race jet set diva Dominique Deveraux, Blake Carrington’s half-sister. She remained on the show until 1987 and made several appearances on the show’s short-lived spin-off The Colbys. She received her third Emmy nomination in the role of Marion Gilbert in A Different World (1980).

Carroll’s fourth and final marriage was to singer Vic Damone in 1987. They made several television appearances together and were constantly on the road. Carroll admitted that it was an unsteady and turbulent marriage that led to a legal separation in 1991, a reconciliation, and a final divorce in 1996.

“You have to keep your sanity as well as know how to distance yourself from situations while still holding onto the reins tightly. That is a very difficult thing to do, but I’m learning.”

- Diahann Carroll

In 1991, an ageing Carroll played Eleanor Potter in The Five Heartbeats – the musical drama film. Some years later she reunited with her childhood friend Billy Dee Williams in Lonesome Dove: The Series as Mrs Greyson, and in 1996 she starred as the deluded silent movie star Norma Desmond in the Canadian production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version of Sunset Boulevard. CARROLL and Sir Sidney Poitier had a years-long affair

“I like to think I opened doors for other women, although that wasn’t my original intention.”

- Diahann Carroll

Diahann Carroll was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997 – a diagnosis which “stunned” her because there had been no family history of breast cancer and she had always led a healthy lifestyle. After nine weeks of radiation therapy she was clear of the disease for several years and spoke often of the need for early detection. She died on October 4, 2019 at her home in Los Angeles. She was eight-four years old.

The following month, on November 24, 2019, Carroll was saluted in a star-studded Memorial at the Helen Hayes Theatre in New York City for her pioneering work in entertainment, particularly for AfricanAmerican artists.

• Sir Christopher Ondaatje is the author of The Last Colonial. He acknowledges that he has quoted liberally from Wikipedia; Encyclopedia of African American Actresses in Film and Television (2009) by Bob McCann; and The Legs Are the Last to Go: Aging, Acting, Marrying, Mothering, and Other Things I Learned Along the Way (2009) by Diahann Carroll.

CARROLL and her former classmate Billy Dee Williams in Ebony magazine in 1984