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GL ALUMNA RUBY DEE DEAD AT 91

Ruby Dee jpi

Legendary actress Ruby Dee has passed away at 91. The star of film, television and theater was one of the first African-American actresses to appear on soaps, joining GUIDING LIGHT in 1967. Her GL character, Nurse Martha Frazier (played first by Cicely Tyson), was the first major black character in daytime drama, introduced by the show's then-head writer, Agnes Nixon. (Nixon told Digest in 2011 that P&G's skittishness over depicting friendships between the show's black and white characters inspired her to create the groundbreaking story that launched ONE LIFE TO LIVE, the story of Ellen Holly's Carla Gray passing for white.) Dee's husband, Ossie Davis, died in 2005.

 

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