Blanche Dunn (born April 1911, date of death unknown) was an American socialite and actress of the

Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the t ...

era. Photographs of her taken by Carl Van Vechten are numerous, and the writer and painter

Richard Bruce Nugent Richard Bruce Nugent (July 2, 1906 – May 27, 1987), aka Richard Bruce and Bruce Nugent, was a gay writer and painter in the Harlem Renaissance. Despite being a part of a group of many gay Harlem artists, Nugent was among only a few who wer ...

wrote about her.

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. Writer

notes that "a party was not a party, a place not a place, without Blanche." She lived for a time in 1940 at Whale Cay in the Bahamas with speed boat racer Joe Carstairs. Dunn posed several times for photographer Carl Van Vechten between 1924 and 1941, notably in 1941 for his series ''Portrait Photographs of Celebrities''. She eventually married and moved to Capri, Italy.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dunn, Blanche 1911 births Year of death missing Jamaican emigrants to the United States American socialites 20th-century American actresses