Jonelle Allen
Jonelle Allen | |
---|---|
Born | |
Occupation(s) | Actress, singer, dancer |
Years active | 1970–present |
Jonelle Allen is an American actress, singer, and dancer.
Born in New York City, Allen grew up in Harlem's Sugar Hill in a neighborhood that included Duke Ellington, Sonny Rollins, and Johnny Hodges, and NAACP founder Walter White. She made her Broadway debut at the age of six in The Wisteria Trees, Joshua Logan's Americanized adaptation of The Cherry Orchard starring Helen Hayes. As a child, she also made regular appearances on a local children's television series, The Merry Mailman, hosted by Ray Heatherton.
Allen returned to Broadway for a revival of Finian's Rainbow. She was in the cast of the original off-Broadway production of Hair at Joseph Papp's Public Theater and also appeared in George M! before receiving critical acclaim and a Tony Award nomination for Two Gentlemen of Verona, which earned her New York Drama Critics' Circle, Drama Desk, Theatre World, and Outer Critics Circle Awards for her performance. Despite her success, it proved to be her last Broadway appearance to date.
Allen's film credits include Cotton Comes to Harlem, The Hotel New Hampshire, and The River Niger, for which she won an NAACP Image Award. Other television appearances include Barney Miller, The Love Boat, All in the Family, Trapper John, M.D., Hill Street Blues, Cagney and Lacey, ER, and Girlfriends. She played a lesbian prison inmate in the 1975 television movie Cage Without a Key, which starred Susan Dey.
Her most notable roles are Grace, the entrepreneurial cafe owner in the old west, that she played for seven years on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, as well as the flamboyant and outspoken Doreen Jackson on the NBC soap opera, Generations and Lucinda Cavender, the vampire witch in the horror comedy film The Midnight Hour. Before her role of Doreen on Generations, Jonelle played ambitious salesgirl turned boutique manager Stacey Russell, on the short-lived primetime soap, Berrenger's.
Allen appeared as the legendary Harlem Jazz Queen Florence Mills in Harlem Renaissance at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Ms. Allen is currently heading up the New Works//Staged Reading Projects at Saddleback College, and is also writing and directing new shows which Ms. Allen calls "plays with music' which have been presented at Saddleback, notably an adaptation of Dickens Christmas Carol and The Journey both with composer, David Jayden Anthony. This year, Ms. Allen has a film The Divorce by Donald B. Welch, being released on Amazon, and this summer, Ms. Allen will be starring in Hello Dolly at Saddlebacks CLO. Later this year, Ms. Allen will be starring in Donald B. Welch's Secret Garden, and doing an updated version of her Florence Mills one woman show, which Ms. Allen is writing with her collaborators, Stevi Meredith and David Jayden Anthony.
Filmography
Year | Film | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1970 | Cotton Comes to Harlem | Secretary | |
1970 | The Cross and the Switchblade | Bishop Deb | |
1972 | Come Back, Charleston Blue | Carol | |
1974 | Wide World Mystery | Eva | Episode: 'Legacy of Blood' |
1974 | Police Woman | Laurette Blake/Maxine | Played Laurette in the 1974 episode 'The End Game' & played Maxine in the 1975 episode 'Above & Beyond' |
1975 | Cage Without a Key | Tommy | |
1975 | Foster and Laurie | Jacqueline Foster | |
1975 | Barney Miller | Officer Turner | Episode: 'Hot Dogs' |
1975 | Police Story | Mary Sue/Merrily Goodwin | Played Mary Sue in the episode 'The Execution' & played Merrily in the episode 'The Company Man' |
1976 | The American Woman: Portraits of Courage | Rosa Parks | |
1976 | The River Niger | Ann Vanderguild | |
1976 | Joe Forrester | Episode: 'The Boy Next Door' | |
1978 | What's Happening!! | Love-is-Life | Episode: 'Rerun Sees the Light" |
1978 | The Love Boat | Andrea Martin | Episode: 'Gopher the Rebel/Cabin Fever/Pacific Princess Overture' |
1978 | All in the Family | Marabel | Episode: 'Archie's Other Wife' |
1979 | The White Shadow | Shelley | Episode: 'Airball' |
1979 | Vampire | Brandy | |
1980 | Brave New World | Fanny Crowne | |
1980 | Palmerstown, U.S.A. | Bessie Freeman | Appeared in 11 episodes, 1980–1981 |
1982 | Victims | Maydene Jariott | |
1982 | Trapper John, M.D. | Episode: 'Medicine Man' | |
1983 | Cagney & Lacey | Elizabeth Carter/Claudia Petrie | Played Elizabeth in the 1983 episode 'Open & Shut Case' & played Claudia in the 1984 episode 'A Killer's Dozen' |
1984 | Hill Street Blues | Linda Talbot | Episode: 'The Count of Monty Tasco' |
1984 | The Hotel New Hampshire | Sabrina | |
1985 | Berrenger's | Stacey Russell | |
1985 | The Midnight Hour | Lucinda Cavender | |
1986 | The Penalty Phase | Susan Jansen | |
1987 | The Hitchhiker | Sunny | Episode: 'Made for Each Other' |
1987 | Werewolf | Episode: 'Big Daddy' | |
1989 | Generations | Doreen Jackson | |
1992 | The Royal Family | Nina Martin | Episode: 'The Big Stink'. Episode was never aired. |
1992 | Grave Secrets: The Legacy of Hilltop Drive | Madeline Garrick | |
1993 | Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman | Grace | Appeared in 106 episodes, 1993–1998 |
1997 | The Eddie Files | Eddie's Music Teacher | Episode: 'Patterns: The Big Concert' |
1998 | Next Time | Evelyn | |
1999 | Blues for Red | Dora | |
1999 | Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: The Movie | Grace | |
1999 | Twice in a Lifetime | Dr. Grace Grant-Heistings, M.D./Nurse Daisy Bradford | Episode: 'Healing Touch' |
2000 | ER | Debbie Marlin | Episodes: 'Foreign Affairs' & 'Rescue Me' |
2001 | Flossin | Viola | |
2002 | Strong Medicine | Connie | Episode: 'Stages' |
2003 | Mr. Barrington | Mother Anne | |
2005 | As Seen on TV | Shauna | |
2007 | Girlfriends | Eleanor | Episode: 'Operation Does She Yield' |
2008 | Float | Madge | |
2014 | "The Divorce" | Thelma | |
2016 | American Crime Story | Mom Darden |
External links
- Jonelle Allen at IMDb
- Jonelle Allen at the Internet Broadway Database
- Please use a more specific IOBDB template. See the template documentation for available templates.
- Jonelle Allen at AllMovie
- Official website
- Lortel Archives listing
- Review: Harlem Renaissance
- American soap opera actresses
- African-American female singers
- African-American female dancers
- Actresses from New York City
- People from Manhattan
- Living people
- American female dancers
- African-American actresses
- American television actresses
- American film actresses
- American musical theatre actresses
- American stage actresses