Florence Mills
| Florence Mills | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Florence Winfrey January 25, 1896 Washington, D.C., United States |
| Died | November 1, 1927 (aged 31) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Other names | Florence Mills |
| Occupation | Singer, dancer, entertainer |
| Years active | 1901–1927 |
| Spouse(s) | Ulysses "Slow Kid" Thompson (m. 1921–27) |
Florence Mills (born Florence Winfrey; January 25, 1896 – November 1, 1927), billed as the "Queen of Happiness", was an African-American cabaret singer, dancer, and comedian known for her effervescent stage presence, delicate voice, and winsome, wide-eyed beauty.
A daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Nellie (Simon) and John Winfrey, she was born Florence Winfrey in 1896 in Washington, D.C. She began performing as a child. At the age of six she sang duets with her two older sisters, Olivia and Maude. They eventually formed a vaudeville act, calling themselves the Mills Sisters. The act did well, appearing in theaters along the Atlantic seaboard. Florence's sisters eventually quit performing, but Florence stayed with it, determined to pursue a career in show business. She joined Ada Smith, Cora Green, and Carolyn Williams in the Panama Four, which had some success. She then joined a traveling black show, the Tennessee Ten, in which in 1917 she met the dance director and acrobatic dancer Ulysses "Slow Kid" Thompson (1888–1990), to whom she would be married from 1921 until her death.
Mills became well known in New York as a result of her role in the successful Broadway musical Shuffle Along (1921) at Daly's 63rd Street Theatre (barely on Broadway), one of the events marking the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance. She received favorable reviews in London, Paris, Ostend, Liverpool, and other European venues. She told the press that despite her years in vaudeville, she credited Shuffle Along with launching her career.
After Shuffle Along, Lew Leslie, a white promoter, hired Mills and Thompson to appear nightly at the Plantation Club. The revue featured Mills and a wide range of black artists, including visiting performers such as Paul Robeson. In 1922, Leslie turned the nightclub acts into a Broadway show, The Plantation Revue. It opened at the Forty-Eighth Street Theatre on July 22. The English theatrical impresario Charles B. Cochran brought the Plantation company to London, and they appeared at the London Pavilion in spring 1923 in a show he produced, Dover Street to Dixie, with a local all-white cast in the first half and Mills starring with the all-black Plantation cast in the second half.
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