Sheila Guyse, talented singer and actress

Sheila Guyse by Herb Boyd, Amsterdam News We first heard of Sheila Guyse in Donald Bogle’s review of “Miracle in Harlem”& in his book “Blacks in American Films and Television” (1988).& Guyse, in Bogle’s view, was among the actors and actresses “primed for the integrationist movement” that rose in the 1950s. “Turning up in the ‘Miracle in Harlem’& (1948),” she was “one of the Post-War new-style Black leading ladies—well-mannered, clean-scrubbed, and a bit pampered…”& Two other notable films preceded that one, “Boy! What a Girl!”& (1946) and “Sepia Cinderella” (1947), co-starring with singer Billy Daniels. & But before she became Sheila Guyse, she was born Etta Drucille Guyse on July 14, 1925, in Forest, Mississippi. In 1945, she moved with her parents to New York City. She was twenty when she began working at a dime store on 125th Street, across the street from the Apollo Theater. Proximity to the entertainment palace, particularly its Amateur Night, influenced her decision to be a contestant. Her outcome at the theater is not known but shortly thereafter she made her nightclub debut at Club Zombie in Detroit.& & Guyse was also featured in the “Harlem Follies of 1949” and the television adaptation of...