Actress and producer Rosetta LeNoire, who was directed by Orson Welles in a landmark, all-black version of “Macbeth” in the 1930s and received the National Medal of Arts in 1999, has died. She was 90.
Known to television audiences for her long-running role as Grandma Winslow in the comedy series “Family Matters,” Ms. LeNoire died Sunday in Teaneck, N.J., said publicist Cynthia Snyder.
In 1968, Ms. LeNoire founded New York’s Amas Repertory Theatre, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing musicals and new talent. The company produced such popular shows as “Bojangles” and the Tony-nominated “Bubbling Brown Sugar.”
“I produce musicals. Music is one avenue where no one seems to have any discriminatory attitudes,” Ms. LeNoire once said. “Theater techniques are a marvelous implement to bring people of all races, colors and creeds together.”
The New York native took music lessons from legendary jazzman Eubie Blake. By 15, she was a chorus girl working with her godfather, dancing great Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.
She made her Broadway debut in “The Hot Mikado” in 1939 and went on to appear in such shows as “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “The Sunshine Boys” and “Lost In The Stars.”
Ms. LeNoire also co-starred in the film version of “Anna Lucasta” with Sammy Davis Jr. and Eartha Kitt.
She played Grandma Winslow on “Family Matters,” a sitcom about a middle-class black family in Chicago, from 1989 to 1997.
