Everything and Nothing: The Dorothy Dandridge Tragedy (Part 3) A Wondering Kid

'You ain't going to work in Mister Charley's kitchen like me. I don't want you to go into service. You are not going to be a scullery maid. We're going to fix it so you be something else than that.' - Ruby to Dorothy


Ruby had three brothers.  Her father was a musical and religious West Indian known as George Frank or George Butler.  George was born in Jamaica and he married a Mexican girl (which means Maternal Grandmother 1/2 Spanish and 1/2 West Indian).  Ruby's dad George had a winning West Indian accent.  Dorothy never met him or her uncles.  He ran a local grocery store and later a local Negro school in Kansas, as a principal.

I had been raised with no man around the house; I had never seen a man shaving; I had never seen a man in his shorts. ~ Dorothy

The marriage to Harold almost did not happen.  Dorothy had an interim small romance with a
saxophone player named Joe.  Dorothy was at one point hesitant about Harold,  Joe gave Dorothy an ear-gasm.  Dorothy was a calculating girl through and saw the Nicholas Brothers moving up in the entertainment world, Harold had talent and money and a career before him.  Harold wanted Dorothy and Dorothy wanted him.


At 17 you might marry a thrill in the ear, at 30 you'll thrill as hard if a guy shows he can pay the rent ~ Dorothy (philosophizing)

Dorothy's mind was made up once the Nicholas Brothers secured a contract with Twentieth Century in Hollywood.

While seated on a piano stool singing to Dorothy, Harold whipped out a ring and they set a date after of course her saying yes.

Dorothy and Harold's home located on Cimmaron and Arlington on 27th street.  They selected the furniture together. Shopping at the good stores,  Had the house remodeled and visited it while it was being redone.  Twin beds in bedroom.  Dorothy selected them.  She had fears of a double (full) bed.

Essentially Dorothy wanted a house, children, a domestic life, not the world of entertainment.



Boys and girls should be raised together.  They need to know something about one another from the earliest days.  You cannot overcome wrong teaching and alienation by reason or imagination. ~ Dorothy



Within days of their marriage Harold started cheating on Dorothy.  They bickered back and forth.

Joe Adams

Joe Adams was one of  L.A.'s most popular disc jockeys.

Was Ray Charles' personal manager for 45 years.

Fayard Nicholas

Fayard taught Harold to dance.  Harold's dance inspiration was not Bojangles or John Bubbles or Astaire?  It was Fayard.

Clarence Muse

Clarence Muse loved saying he foresaw Dorothy Dandridge's stardom.  

Ruby wanted Muse to help her daughters get into the movies.  Clarence told her to forget Hollywood and take her girls back to Cleveland where thy had come from.  According to him her daughters were too light skinned for the movies.  

Muse  said this later about Ruby and her daughters, "I paid their first damn money for an apartment they lived in and I never got my $70 back either."