Jackée Harry

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Jackée Harry
Harry, 1988
Born	Jacqueline Yvonne Harry August 14, 1956 (1956-08-14) (age 53) Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1970–present
Spouse(s)	Elgin Charles Williams (1996-2003)
Official website

Jackée Harry (born Jacqueline Yvonne Harry; August 14, 1956) is an American actress. She is best known as a star of the TV series 227.

Biography

Early life

Harry was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and raised in Harlem, New York, with her four siblings by her mother, Flossie Harry. Her father, Warren Harry, died when she was three, leaving her the youngest of five children. At the age of 14, Harry landed the lead role of the King of Siam in her school's production of The King and I. After graduating from New York City's High School of Music and Art, Harry attended the Long Island University C.W. Post Campus in Brooklyn, where she earned a B.A. in education. Harry began her career as a history teacher at Brooklyn Technical High School. After two years of teaching, she departed from her profession, claiming she did not have the knack for it. “They started whistling at me everyday. I was trying to teach them how to behave — it didn’t work,” she said of her experience.

Personal life

Harry has been divorced three times. Her first marriage lasted from 1980-1984. After her departure from 227, she married a bass player and woke up the next morning knowing she needed to file for divorce. On December 1, 1996, Harry married a third time to Elgin Charles Williams, her hair dresser at Joyce’s Exquisite Styles & Hair Care and ministry student at Crenshaw Christian Center in South Los Angeles. The wedding took place at the Beverly Hills Hotel in the gardens of the historic hotel and the reception in the Crystal Room, with over 550 guests. Bishop E. Lynn Brown officiated, and Cheryl Lynn and Ali-Ollie Woodson of the Temptations sang for the couple.

"It was time," she said of the marriage. "I knew him for two years even before we started dating. And we dated for a year and a half. I thought he had a girlfriend with all those women in there!" The couple adopted a son, Frank, at the age of one. They divorced in 2003.

Career

Television

She began studying acting at the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side in New York City and began a career on the New York stage. In 1973, she debuted with a small part in a play written by Richard Wesley. She then starred in A Broadway Musical as a chorus girl. In 1983, Harry made her television debut by acting opposite the then-relatively unknown Morgan Freeman in the daytime soap opera Another World. She carried this role from 1983 to 1986 as the prostitute Lily Mason alongside other African-Americans such as Petronia Paley and Michele Shay. In 2003, she was the surprise guest on the Another World Reunion that SOAPnet coordinated and aired. She appeared at former co-star and close friend Linda Dano’s request claiming Dano was the only one who calls her “Jack”.

In 1985, Harry found her signature role, starring as "Sandra Clark" on the NBC sitcom 227. Her mother, Flossie, celebrated her getting the part but died before the show aired.

As the breakout star of the show, she became the first African American to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Her performance on 227 inspired NBC producers to create a television pilot for her entitled Jackée. The pilot episode failed with audiences and is now shown as an episode of 227. For her portrayal of Sandra on the series, Maxim magazine awarded her #5 placement on their "TV's Best Nympho" list.

After leaving the cast of 227 in 1989, Harry starred opposite Oprah Winfrey in the adaptation of Gloria Naylor's novel, The Women of Brewster Place. In 1991, Harry was apart of an all-star cast that included Redd Foxx and Della Reese when she played the role of "Ruth 'CoCo' Royal" in The Royal Family. From 1994 to 1999, Harry starred as the adoptive mother of Tia Mowry's character on the ABC/WB sitcom, Sister, Sister. "When I got the Sister, Sister offer to be the mother, I was like 'I don't want to be mama!' But, it turned out to be the best that could happen.” She won NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for two consecutive years in 1999 and 2000.

Harry summed up the show’s plot outline by explaining-

The series moved to the WB network and Harry's character, Lisa Landry, became the center for the show’s final episode.

Other attempts were made for Harry to star in her own production with pilots for The Cheech Show and Friday Night Surprise (1988) as Sheila, and We’ll Take Manhattan in 1990 as Yvonne. Harry has said, "I knew I would do something. I always had confidence but it was a big let down for me. There weren't even phone calls."

She just recently had a recurring role as Vanessa on the CW's Everybody Hates Chris.

Theatre

In 1994, Harry made her return to the theater by starring as Billie Holiday in the play Lady Day at Emersons Bar and Grill. Following that stage production, she fulfilled the role of "madam who runs a bordello" in the Broadway musical The Boys From Syracuse, a play based on William Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors.

"You can't be boring and do musical comedy," she said of the play. "Everything feels alive here, and that's how I like it. I'm back in my element."

In 1992, she starred as the assistant coach in Ladybugs. Harry served as a guest panelist on the 2000 revival of To Tell the Truth. She also was a semi-regular on the Tom Bergeron version of Hollywood Squares, mainly in 2003-04. Harry appeared on the second season of VH1's Celebrity Fit Club 2 in 2005, where she lost 39 pounds over 100 days. Her achievement marked one of the top weight losses in the history of the show. She lost 19.3% of her body weight, dropping down to 163 pounds and keeping the weight off through exercise and a healthy diet.

In the mid-2000s, she appeared in small theater productions of The Sunshine Boys, Damn Yankees, and A Christmas Carol.

She is currently touring nationally in J.D. Lawrence's The Clean Up Woman.

Work

Theatrography

Filmography

Television

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jackée Harry

• Jackée Harry at the Internet Movie Database
• Jackée Harry at the Internet Broadway Database
• Jackée Harry at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• http://books.google.com/books?id=28ADAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA58&dq=jackee+harry
• http://jackeeharryfans.synthasite.com/bio.php
• http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0366049/