‘Carmen Jones’ Actress And Singer Olga James, Dies At 95

Olga James, the singer, actress, and nightclub performer who portrayed the forsaken sweetheart in the Otto Preminger-directed film musical Carmen Jones, has died. She was 95. James died on Jan. 25 at an assisted living facility in Los Angeles. She had complications from a fall that broke her pelvis, as explained to The Hollywood Reporter by her niece, Janet Adderley, who is an actress and acting teacher.

James portrayed the fiancée of Sammy Davis Jr.’s character, a struggling showbiz entertainer, in the 1956-57 Broadway musical Mr. Wonderful. She also had a recurring role as Verna Kincaid, the sister-in-law of Bill Cosby’s high school gym teacher, on The Cosby Show during its 1969-71 run on NBC.

James attended the Julliard School of Music and was a trained opera singer when she was cast as Cindy Lou, who loses her troubled man, Joe, played by Harry Belafonte, to the bewitching Carmen Jones, played by Dorothy Dandridge, in 20th Century Fox’s Carmen Jones, which was filmed in CinemaScope.

James was born in Washington D.C. on Feb. 16, 1929. Her mother was a dancer, and her father was a saxophonist. After her parents separated, she was raised by her grandparents and then admitted to Julliard. After graduating, she performed with an opera company that participated in a music and arts festival in Paris and when she returned to the U.S., she toured with Smart Affairs, an all-Black revue put together by impresario Larry Stelle.

Managed by Abe Saperstein, also the owner of the Harlem Globetrotters, James, who spoke Italian, French and German, sang an aria for Preminger during her Carmen Jones audition at the Alvin Theatre. Afterward, “everybody applauded,” she said in Foster Hirsch’s 2007 book, Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King. 

Carmen Jones turned James into a sought-after nightclub performer who made her first appearance on television, singing at halftime of a Globetrotters-Washington Generals game.

James was married to famed jazz alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley from 1962 until he died in 1975 at age 46. Later she married folk singer and civil rights activist Len Chandler, and they were together from 1990 until he died in 2023 at age 88.

In addition to her niece Janet, survivors include her nephew Nat Adderley Jr., an arranger and pianist; another niece Alison; great nieces Akina, a singer-songwriter, and Alana, a business partner in her mother’s acting schools; great-great nephew William; great-great niece Amelia.