Blanche Dunn

Blanche Dunn (born April 1911, date of death unknown) was an American socialite and actress of the Harlem Renaissance era. Photographs of her taken by Carl Van Vechten are numerous, and the writer and painter Richard Bruce Nugent wrote about her.

Blanche Dunn (1941).
Photograph by Carl Van Vechten
Blanche Dunn (1941).
Photograph by Carl Van Vechten

Life and career

Blanche Dunn was born in Jamaica in 1911 and arrived in New York City in 1926. She had a role in the Broadway show Blackbirds of 1930 and the film The Emperor Jones (1933). She became a mainstay of the Harlem social scene, attending parties, galas, and Broadway opening nights.[1] Writer Richard Bruce Nugent notes that "a party was not a party, a place not a place, without Blanche."[2] She lived for a time in 1940 at Whale Cay in the Bahamas with speed boat racer Joe Carstairs.[3][4] Dunn posed several times for photographer Carl Van Vechten between 1924 and 1941,[1] notably in 1941 for his series Portrait Photographs of Celebrities.[3] She eventually married and moved to Capri, Italy.[1]

References
  1. Bracks, Lean'tin L.; Smith, Jessie Carney (2014). Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-8108-8542-4.
  2. Nugent, Bruce (2002). Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent. Duke University Press. p. 220. ISBN 0-8223-2913-1.
  3. Wintz, Cary D.; Finkelman, Paul (2012). Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. Routledge. pp. 320–321. ISBN 978-1-135-45536-1.
  4. "Blanche Dunn The Fabulous "It" Girl Of Harlem 1940 (Photography)". Harlem World Magazine. 24 November 2016. Retrieved 16 April 2018.


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