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24-637: Allen died in 1962 at 77 years of age and was interred at the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. The Vivian Beaumont Theater , which is found at Lincoln Center in New York City, New York was open to the public on October 21, 1965. Over the years it has gone through many different managements, became one of the largest not-for-profit theaters, and holds many plays and musicals. It was named in her honor due to her many charitable works. Her society,

48-531: A Little Blackbird" being a plea for racial equality. During her life she broke many racial barriers. After her death, Duke Ellington memorialized Mills in his composition Black Beauty . Fats Waller also memorialized Mills in a song, Bye Bye Florence , recorded in Camden, New Jersey , on November 1, 1927, featuring Bert Howell on vocals with organ by Waller; Florence was recorded with Juanita Stinette Chappell on vocals and Waller on organ. Other songs recorded

72-596: A career in show business. She joined Ada Smith , Cora Green , and Carolyn Williams in the Panama Four, which had some success. She then joined a traveling Black show, the Tennessee Ten, and in 1917 she met the dance director and acrobatic dancer Ulysses "Slow Kid" Thompson (1888–1990), to whom she would be married from 1921 until her death. Mills became well known in New York as a result of her role in

96-527: A dozen other brewing scions and their families. The Woodlawn Conservancy is a 501(c)(3) associated with Woodlawn Cemetery. It began as the Friends of Woodlawn in 1999. It enhances the mission of Woodlawn through fundraising, educational opportunities and outreach with other non-profits. In 2021, over 40 stones were conserved in a joint effort between the Woodlawn Conservancy, the Friends of

120-571: A family mausoleum. Woodlawn was the destination for many human remains disinterred from cemeteries in more densely populated parts of New York City: The fictional cemetery of the Synagogue in Brooklyn in the film Once Upon a Time in America is actually located here, renamed "Riverdale Cemetery". Numerous notable persons have been interred at Woodlawn Cemetery including: Chief Justice of

144-554: A white promoter, hired Mills and Thompson to appear nightly at the Plantation Club. The revue featured Mills and a wide range of Black artists, including visiting performers such as Paul Robeson . In 1922, Leslie turned the nightclub acts into a Broadway show, The Plantation Revue . It opened at the Forty-Eighth Street Theatre on July 22. The English theatrical impresario Charles B. Cochran brought

168-422: Is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery , in the Bronx , New York. Her widower, Ulysses Thompson , a native of Prescott, Arkansas , was a dancer and comedian, having learned his trade in the world of circuses and travelling medicine shows in the early years of the century. He subordinated his career to hers, acting as her manager, promoter, minder and companion. After her death, he continued performing, travelling around

192-834: The Hospital for Joint Diseases in New York City, New York on November 1, 1927. She was 31 years old. Most sources, including black newspapers, such as the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier , and mainstream publications, including the New York Times and the Boston Globe , reported that she died of complications from appendicitis. Her death shocked the music world. The New York Times reported that more than 10,000 people visited

216-644: The Plantation company to London, and they appeared at the London Pavilion in spring 1923 in a show he produced called Dover Street to Dixie. The show featured a local all-white cast in the first half and Mills starring with the all-Black Plantation cast in the second half. In 1924 she headlined at the Palace Theatre , and became an international star with the hit show Lew Leslie's Blackbirds (1926). Among her fans when she toured Europe

240-572: The Rolfing body therapy and noted female biochemist Ida Rolf ; and, businessmen such as shipping magnate Archibald Gracie , cosmetics manufacturer Richard Hudnut , America's first self-made millionaire woman Madam C. J. Walker , department store founder Rowland Hussey Macy , and variety store mogul F. W. Woolworth . A large number of New York brewers (e.g., the Haffens of Haffen Brewing Company ) are interred there on "Brewer's Row", along with

264-495: The Royal Canadian Air Force of World War II . In 2011, Woodlawn Cemetery was designated a National Historic Landmark , since it shows the transition from the rural cemetery popular at the time of its establishment to the more orderly 20th-century cemetery style. As of 2007, plot prices at Woodlawn were reported as $ 200 per square foot, $ 4,800 for a gravesite for two, and up to $ 1.5 million for land to build

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288-577: The Rye African-American Cemetery , World Monuments Fund , and the Jay Heritage Center . The preservation effort was launched to coincide with the new federal Juneteenth celebration. Florence Mills Florence Mills (born Florence Winfrey ; January 25, 1896 – November 1, 1927), billed as the "Queen of Happiness", was an American cabaret singer, dancer, and comedian. Florence Mills (Florence Winfrey)

312-602: The Broadway musical Shuffle Along (1921) at Daly's 63rd Street Theatre (barely on Broadway ), one of the events marking the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance . She received favorable reviews in London , Paris , Ostend , Liverpool , and other European venues. She told the press that despite her years in vaudeville, she credited Shuffle Along with launching her career. After Shuffle Along , Lew Leslie ,

336-864: The United States Charles Evans Hughes ; influential New York urban planner and builder Robert Moses ; actress Cicely Tyson , aviation pioneer Harriet Quimby , performer, playwright and producer George M. Cohan ; gangster Bumpy Johnson ; authors Nellie Bly , Countee Cullen , Clarence Day , Damon Runyon , E.L. Doctorow , Herman Melville , and Dorothy Parker ; musicians Irving Berlin , Miles Davis , Felix Pappalardi , Duke Ellington , W. C. Handy , Fritz Kreisler , Pigmeat Markham , King Oliver , and Max Roach ; singers Celia Cruz and Florence Mills ; Film director Otto Preminger ; husband and wife magicians Alexander Herrmann and Adelaide Herrmann ; sportswriter Grantland Rice ; gunfighter and US marshal Bat Masterson ; developer of

360-515: The Vivian Beaumont Society, still encourages others to be involved in the theater. This biographical article about a United States activist is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York) Woodlawn Cemetery is one of the largest cemeteries in New York City and a designated National Historic Landmark . Located south of Woodlawn Heights, Bronx , New York City, it has

384-902: The character of a rural cemetery . Woodlawn Cemetery opened during the Civil War in 1863, in what was then Yonkers , in an area that was annexed to New York City in 1874. It is notable in part as the final resting place of some well-known figures. The Cemetery covers more than 400 acres (160 ha) and is the resting place for more than 300,000 people. Built on rolling hills, its tree-lined roads lead to some unique memorials, some designed by famous American architects: McKim, Mead & White , John Russell Pope , James Gamble Rogers , Cass Gilbert , Carrère and Hastings , Sir Edwin Lutyens , Beatrix Jones Farrand , and John La Farge . The cemetery contains seven Commonwealth war graves – six British and Canadian servicemen of World War I and an airman of

408-514: The crowds. A residential building at 267 Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem 's Sugar Hill neighborhood is named after her. Mills was pictured on a postage stamp issued by the island of Grenada in honor of "The Birth of the Silver Screen". A biography by Bill Egan entitled Florence Mills: Harlem: Jazz Queen was published in 2006, and a children's book, Baby Flo: Florence Mills Lights Up

432-568: The funeral home to pay their respects; thousands attended her funeral, including James Weldon Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , and stars of the stage, vaudeville and dance. Honorary pall bearers including singers Ethel Waters , Cora Green , and Lottie Gee , all of whom had performed with Mills. Dignitaries and political figures of different races sent their condolences. She

456-426: The piano piece Elegaic Blues in tribute, orchestrating it the following year. The rising triplet near the beginning (bar 8) is a quote from the fanfare that opened Blackbirds . The Florence Mills Theatre opened on 8 December 1930 at 3511 South Central Avenue, Los Angeles . The 740-seat theater was commissioned by Sam Kramer. On opening night almost 1,000 people lined the street, with 10 police officers holding back

480-554: The same day include You Live On in Memory and Gone but Not Forgotten—Florence Mills , neither of which were composed by Waller. English composer Constant Lambert - also a friend and champion of Duke Ellington - saw Florence Mills when she performed in Dover Street to Dixie at the London Pavilion in 1923, and again when she visited London a second time in 1926-7 for her show Blackbirds. On her death Lambert immediately wrote

504-587: The world, including appearances in China and Australia, until the late 1930s. He later married Gertrude Curtis , New York's first black woman dentist (1911) and the widow of the lyricist Cecil Mack (born as Richard Cecil McPherson). Thompson outlived both of his wives; he died in 1990, at the age of 101, in Little Rock, Arkansas . Mills is credited with having been a staunch and outspoken supporter of equal rights for African Americans, with her signature song "I'm

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528-648: Was born a daughter of formerly enslaved parents Nellie (Simon) and John Winfrey in 1896 in Washington, D.C. She began performing as a child. At the age of six she sang duets with her two older sisters, Olivia and Maude. They eventually formed a vaudeville act, calling themselves the Mills Sisters. The act did well, appearing in theaters along the Atlantic seaboard. Florence's sisters eventually quit performing, but Florence stayed with it, determined to pursue

552-546: Was featured in Vogue and Vanity Fair and was photographed by Bassano 's studios and Edward Steichen . Her signature song was her biggest hit, "I'm a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird". Another of her hit songs was "I'm Cravin' for that Kind of Love". Exhausted from more than 300 performances of the hit show Blackbirds in London in 1926, she became ill with tuberculosis . She died of infection following an operation at

576-468: Was the then Prince of Wales , Edward, who told the press that he had seen Blackbirds 11 times. Many in the black press admired her popularity and saw her as a role model: not only was she a great entertainer but she was also able to serve as "an ambassador of good will from the blacks to the whites... a living example of the potentialities of the Negro of ability when given a chance to make good". Mills

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