Bubbling Brown Sugar

Rosetta LeNoire was born on August 8, 1911. She was an African American actress and producer. From New York City, her birth name was Rosetta Burton. She came from a family with connections in the growing artistic scene of the Harlem Renaissance. As a teen, LeNoire took piano lessons from the legendary composer Eubie Blake. She first performed professionally in 1926 as a dancer in a revue with her uncle, Bill Bojangles Robinson, and in 1936 played the First Witch in a production of MACBETH. She reached Broadway in 1939 alongside her uncle in THE HOT MIKADO and later toured with the show. She was in the original Broadway cast of Philip Yordan's ANNA LUCASTA — which was turned from all black to all white for the 1949 film version. LeNoire, however, reprised her stage role in the all-black 1958 remake, co-starring with Eartha Kitt and Sammy Davis Jr. In the 1950s, LeNoire worked with the Corning Glass Theatre, and she last performed on Broadway as Rheba in YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU. As a theatrical producer, in 1968, she founded the AMAS (Spanish for "you love") Repertory Theatre Company and has since produced, created and occasionally appeared in a host of productions, including the original 1980 version of MAMA, I WANT TO SING, which later toured the country. In 1976, she established the Eubie Blake Children's Theatre and LeNoire has since spent much of her time performing in school, youth centers, and even shelters. While she did some experimental TV work in the 40s and appeared as Noah's Wife in the 1957 Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Green Pastures (NBC), LeNoire did not see her TV career become solid until the late '60s, when she joined the cast of the ABC soap opera A World Apart. During the '70s she appeared in The Guiding Light (1971), Another World (1971-73),Ryan's Hope (1975) and Calucci's Department (1973). Beginning in 1981, LeNoire made several guest appearances on Gimme a Break as Nell Carter's contentious mother, becoming a regular in 1986. She followed this with work on Family Matters (1989 – 97 and 1997 – 98). She also used much of her income to support her theatrical producing. LeNoire has also appeared in a number of TV movies and films, The Father Clements Story (NBC, 1987), The Sunshine Boys (1975),Daniel (1983), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), and The Brother From Another Planet (1984). Ms. LeNoire died in 2002.

Loften Mitchell was an African-American playwright, librettist, and author. Mr. Mitchell was born in 1919 in Columbus, NC, and went to high school in the Bronx. He studied at City College of New York and graduated from Talladega College in Alabama. He studied playwriting with John Gassner at Columbia University. In 1958-59 he won the a Guggenheim Award for "creative writing in the drama." He received a Tony Award nomination for the book of the 1976 revue BUBBLING BROWN SUGAR. Mr. Mitchell was part of a groundswell of writers who contributed to the black American theatre movement in the 1960s. He chronicled the work of his colleagues by penning Black Drama, The Story of the American Negro in the Theatre, in 1967, and Voices of the Black Theatre. Beyond BUBBLING BROWN SUGAR, Mr. Mitchell wrote A LAND BEYOND THE RIVER (1957), perhaps his best known work, about a Southern desegregationist pastor. It was seen at the Greenwich Mews Theatre and then on tour. His playwriting debut came in 1946, with BLOOD IN THE NIGHT, at the 115th Street Library in New York. THE BANCROFT DYNASTY and THE CELLAR followed, both for the Harlem Showcase. The book for an Off-Broadway musical, BALLAD FOR BIMSHIRE (1963), followed. It was later revised and presented at the Karamu Theatre in Cleveland in 1964. Mr. Mitchell passed away at the age of 82 in 2001.