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:
“So why do people keep on watching? The answer, by now, should be perfectly obvious: we love television because television brings us a world in which television does not exist. In fact, deep in their hearts, this is what the spuds crave most: a rich, new, participatory life.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Perhaps our eyes are merely a blank film which is taken from us after our deaths to be developed elsewhere and screened as our life story in some infernal cinema or despatched as microfilm into the sidereal void.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)