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Olga James Dead: ‘Carmen Jones’ Actress, Singer Was 95

She also starred on Broadway alongside Sammy Davis Jr. in ‘Mr. Wonderful’ and was married to famed musicians Cannonball Adderley and Len Chandler.

Olga James, the singer, actress and nightclub performer who portrayed the jilted sweetheart of Harry Belafonte ’s character in the landmark Otto Preminger-directed film musical Carmen Jones, has died. James had attended the Juilliard School of Music and was a trained opera singer when she was cast as the heartbroken Cindy Lou, who loses her troubled man, Joe (Belafonte), to the bewitching title character (Dorothy Dandridge) in 20th Century Fox’s Carmen Jones(1954), filmed in CinemaScope. After graduation, she performed with an opera company that participated in a music and arts festival in Paris and toured with Smart Affairs, a top-notch all-Black revue put together by impresario Larry Steele, when she returned to the States.

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