“The Voice You Will Always Remember” @joycebryantofficial – Breathtaking beauty, perfect hourglass figure donned in provocative tight, backless dresses oozing classic vintage black glamour, naturally black silver tinted hair, elastic voice, four and a half octave range and commanding stage presence, Jocye Byrant was far from the average performer.
Born on April 11, 1916 in San Francisco, California, the American #jazz singer and actress who achieved fame in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a theater and nightclub performer was called one of the most beautiful black women in the world and became the first dark-skinned African-American woman celebrated by the mass media as a ‘sex-symbol’, earning her the title “The Black Marilyn Monroe.” Raised in San Francisco the oldest of eight children Joyce moved from California to Los Angeles to live with cousins in her late teens.
The star launched her singing career after impromptu singalong in a Los Angeles club in the late ’40s – Bryant’s first public performance, gigs came in and she picked up, earning a reputation gaining national & international acclaim as a jazz singer, earning as much as 3,500 dollars a gig and 150,000 dollars a year in the early ’50s.
Bryant achieved her signature mane many thanks to radiator paint, doused on her hair not wanting to be upstaged by Josephine Baker after learning they would be sharing the stage.
Joyce, dubbed one of the world’s most beautiful women regularly featured in Afrocentric magazines like Jet. A Life magazine layout in 1953.
As an actress, she was known for Terry and the Pirates (1940), The Iron Claw (1941) and Across the Plains (1939). An active voice against racism Joyce broke grounds as the first Black performer in several high profile venues, including Miami Beach Hotel and Casino Royal
#JoyceByrant, 92 although retired from the spotlight is alive and doing great.
#blackhistory#oldhollywood#classic#vintage#glamorous#icon#fashionandstyle#marilynmonroe#jocyebyrant#blackhistory#sexsymbol
