Television and Film Career
In 1969, she began a transition into acting work which would eventually lead to her greatest fame. Her first attempt at television stardom was a 1969 eponymously titled variety series, which was canceled after one season.
In 1970, Reese became the first black woman to guest host The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. She appeared in several TV movies and miniseries, was a regular on Chico and the Man, and played the mother of B. A. Baracus in The A-Team episode "Lease with an Option to Die".
In 1991, she starred opposite Redd Foxx in his final sitcom, The Royal Family, but his death halted production of the series for several months. Reese also did voice-over for the late-1980s animated series A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.
In 1989, she starred alongside Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, and Arsenio Hall in the theatrical release movie Harlem Nights, in which she performed a fight scene with Eddie Murphy.
Reese appeared as a panelist on several episodes of the popular television game show Match Game
Read more about this topic: Della Reese
Famous quotes containing the words television, film and/or career:
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
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“His education lay like a film of white oil on the black lake of his barbarian consciousness. For this reason, the things he said were hardly interesting at all. Only what he was.”
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—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)