Jonelle Allen

Film and television roles beckoned for her. Jonelle filmed Cotton Comes to Harlem which starred Godfrey Cambridge, Redd Roxx, and was directed by Ossie Davis. She shot a segue, Come Back Charleston Blue.

 

She won an NAACP Image Award for her role in The River Niger with Lou Gossett, James Earl Jones, and Cicely Tyson. She filmed Hotel New Hampshire with Jodie Foster and Rob Lowe for director Tony Richardson who had directed her earlier in Shakespeare’s As You Like It at the Long Beach Theatre.

 

Come Back Charleston Blue 

Jonelle Allen
with Raymond St. Jacques and Godfrey Cambridge

1972 Press Photo                                                                                                               Jonelle Allen Peter Deanada                                                                                         Come Back Charleston Blue

Peter De Anda dances with Jonelle Allen in a scene from the film ‘Come Back Charleston Blue‘, 1972. (Photo by Warner Brothers/Getty Images)

 

  Jonelle starred off-Broadway in the musical version of Irwin Shaw’s Bury the Dead right after filming Come Back Charleston Blue. New York Times reviewer Walter Kerr saw her performance and was moved to award her the dream of every actor, “a love letter review.” It was soon thereafter that Joseph Papp called her for Two Gentlemen of Verona. Originally planned as one of the New York Shakespeare Festival productions in Central Park, it was giving a rock score at the suggestion of director Mel Shapiro to help give the modern adaptation of the play the proper contemporary flavor. She was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical and won The Drama Desk Award, Drama Critics Award, Outer Circle Award, Theatre World Award. 

 

Jonelle Allen sings “Junk Man” 1982 TV salute to Frank Loesser

Jonelle Allen sings “If I Were a Bell” from “Guys and Dolls”

1982 TV salute to Frank Loesser. 

Jonelle Allen sings the Betty Hutton hit “Rumble, Rumble, Rumble” in this 1982 TV salute to Frank Loesser.
Jonelle Allen sings the Betty Hutton hit “Rumble, Rumble, Rumble” in this 1982 TV salute to Frank Loesser.

iforcolor

ARCHIVIST, EDUCATOR, HISTORIAN, and ARTiST
Dale Shields is a professor of theatre, director, and actor (Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and Regional).
Research Accomplishments:
The 2017 winner of The Kennedy Center/Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teacher Award®, 2017 and 2015 Tony® award nominee for the Excellence in Theatre Education Award, and the winner of the 2017 AUDELCO/"VIV" Special Achievement Award. In 2020 He was also awarded The Actors Fund / Encore Award

On the web, he is the archivist and historian of Iforcolor.org and Black Theatre/African American Voices [Facebook] (theatre, music, and art). He has taught classes and workshops at SUNY Potsdam, Susquehanna University, Denison University, Randolph-Macon College, Macalester College, The College of Wooster, Ohio University, Wayne State University, and the Joseph Papp Public Theatre (New York Shakespeare Festival).

Education
B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees from Ohio University.