Blanche Dunn
Blanche Dunn (born April 1911—unknown) was a socialite and actress of the Harlem Renaissance era. Photographs of her taken by Carl Van Vechten are numerous, and the writer and painter Richard Bruce Nugent wrote about her.
![](../I/m/Portrait_of_Blanche_Dunn_LCCN2004662842.jpg)
Photograph by Carl Van Vechten
Life and career
![](../I/m/Portrait_of_Blanche_Dunn_LCCN2004662843.jpg)
Photograph by Carl Van Vechten
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.[1] Writer Richard Bruce Nugent notes that "a party was not a party, a place not a place, without Blanche."[2] She lived for a time in 1940 at Whale Cay in the Bahamas with speed boat racer Joe Carstairs.[3][4] Dunn posed several times for photographer Carl Van Vechten between 1924 and 1941,[1] notably in 1941 for his series Portrait Photographs of Celebrities.[3] She eventually married and moved to Capri.[1] Her date of death is unknown.
References
- Bracks, Lean'tin L.; Smith, Jessie Carney (2014). Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-8108-8542-4.
- Nugent, Bruce (2002). Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent. Duke University Press. p. 220. ISBN 0-8223-2913-1.
- Wintz, Cary D.; Finkelman, Paul (2012). Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. Routledge. pp. 320–321. ISBN 978-1-135-45536-1.
- "Blanche Dunn The Fabulous "It" Girl Of Harlem 1940 (Photography)". Harlem World Magazine. 24 November 2016. Retrieved 16 April 2018.