Novella Christine Nelson was a major American artist of theater, film and music, having worked on and off Broadway and in major Hollywood films, as well as independent works, for 50 years. She is perhaps best known to American audiences for work in Denzel Washington’s “Antwone Fisher Story,” Chris Rock’s “Head of State,” Spike Lee’s “Clockers” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Cotton Club.” In theater she is known for performances in the Capote/Arlen musical “House of Flowers,” Horton Foote’s “The Old Friends,” August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean” and Athol Fugard’s “Boesman and Lena.”
Nelson was born Dec. 17, 1938, in Brooklyn, N.Y., the third child of Evelyn Hines Nelson and James Alexander Nelson. Her mother was an executive secretary at Women’s Wear Daily and her father, a taxi driver and a pastor, and elder in their Hebrew Israelite congregation. Nelson had two older brothers, Nathaniel “Sonny,” and James “Deepy.” She attended P. S. 25, and Eastern District High School. She attended Brooklyn College, graduating in 1959 as the first in her family to complete college.
Initially intending to major in biochemistry, during her sophomore year she signed up for Speech I, only to discover it was a theater class. The professor cast her as Berenice in “The Member of the Wedding.” After spending the summer working on the play, she returned her junior year and changed her major to theater. She went on study at the American Academy of the Dramatic Arts.
In 1961, she booked her first professional acting job in the Broadway musical “Kwamina” and was fired a week and a half later. It was a pivotal moment in her life in that she had to decide if she should continue in the theater. The show bombed and closed after 32 performances. She decided they were wrong for firing her, and she picked up where she left off. Her early stage roles included the off-Broadway production of “Horseman, Pass By” and the revival of the Truman Capote/Harold Arlen musical “House of Flowers,” which led in 1967 to a role as Pearl Bailey’s standby in “Hello Dolly” at the St. James Theater.
On Broadway, Nelson created the role of Missy in the original Broadway production of the musical “Purlie” (1970), and appeared in “Caesar and Cleopatra,” with Rex Harrison and Elizabeth Ashley (1977), and in Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes,” with Elizabeth Taylor (1981). Other New York performances include Simon McBurney’s production of Brecht’s “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” at the National Actors Theatre with Al Pacino (2002), and Horton Foote’s “The Old Friends,” at the Signature Theatre (2013).
Nelson performed at regional theaters throughout the United States. She is closely associated with productions at Hartford Stage (“Gem of the Ocean,” “Digging Eleven,” “Oedipus,” “Camino Real”), The Guthrie (“People’s Temple”), American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., (“Oedipus”), Yale Repertory Theatre (“Boesman and Lena”), Seattle Repertory Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Alliance Theater in Atlanta, Houston’s Alley Stage and Baltimore’s Center Stage. Her London stage performances include “The Big White Fog” at the Almeida Theater and an acclaimed “A Raisin in the Sun” at the Lyric Hammersmith and the Young Vic theatres.
From the beginning of her career, Nelson worked not only as an actor but also as a singer and director. She sang nightly at Hilly’s in 1967, and at Upstairs at the Downstairs. By 1969 she was a headliner at the Village Vanguard. Her sold-out and extended runs at the fashionable Reno Sweeney nightclub are legendary, as is her performance with Bill Withers at Town Hall. A sensation outside of New York as well, Nelson performed at the Cellar Door in Washington, D.C., the Colony in Provincetown, Mass., and the Hungry I in San Francisco.
Nelson is closely associated with the dynamic impresario Ellis Haizlip, the producer of “Soul!” for WNET in New York and nationally for PBS (1967-73). “Soul!” was a televised manifestation of the Black Arts Movement and Nelson was the iconographic face of “Soul!.” She performed on the pioneering series as an actor, a musician and a spoken word artist. Haizlip also featured her as a headliner in a Lincoln Center concert with Labelle and Donny Hathaway.
With year after year of glowing reviews of her stage and cabaret performances in The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Essence, Jet, Newsweek and The Washington Post, Nelson was acknowledged as a performer of enormous talent, intelligence and complex emotional power. When offered an opportunity for a major recording contract, she made the decision that she could not sign if she had no control over the music and the message. She released her self-titled, and only, album herself in 1970.
Her directing work, which made her one of the very few Black women directors hired consistently in New York, began at the New York Shakespeare Festival, working with the Public Theater’s founder/ producer Joe Papp from 1971 to 1976, as consultant to the producer. There she directed, produced and brought Black theater artists to the stage. Her production of Sonia Sanchez’s “Sister Son/Ji,” with Gloria Foster, is considered a landmark. Other works directed by Nelson include “La Femme Noire” by Edgar White, “Dash” by John Thorburn Hall, “Bailey’s Café” by Gloria Naylor, and she resurrecting the long, lost Langston Hughes/Zora Neale Hurston script “Mule Bone” on Broadway. She also directed at the Negro Ensemble Company and Lincoln Center Theater, and she had long ties with Woodie King Jr.’s New Federal Theatre.
Nelson’s long career in film began in 1978, with Paul Mazursky’s “An Unmarried Woman.” Some of her proudest accomplishments on the screen were working with Lars Von Trier on “Dear Wendy,” and Denzel Washington on “Antwone Fisher,” in addition to Chris Rock’s “Head of State,” Spike Lee’s “Clockers,” Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Cotton Club,” Peter Weir’s “Green Card,” Taylor Hackford’s “The Devil’s Advocate,” Jonathan Glazer’s “Birth” and Emily Hubley’s “The Toe Tactic.” But her contributions to independent and experimental projects brought her great joy and also helped her collaborators realize their visions. Some of these important independent projects include Yvonne Rainer’s “Privilege,” Noa Ain’s chamber opera, “Trio,” St. Clair Bourne’s “Langston Hughes: The Dream Keeper” and her performance as Oney Judge in “The President’s House,” a five-channel video installation by Louis Massiah. She also has had a rich career on series television, with recurring roles on “One Life to Live,” “As the World Turns” and “The Starter Wife,” and guest star roles on “Sex and the City,” “Oz,” “Law and Order” and “The West Wing.”
In recent years, she was honored by the NAACP (Image Award1993), the National Black Theater Festival (Living Legend Award 2003) and the New Federal Theater (2016). Even though Nelson was in declining health, she continued to work. In August 2016, she performed a featured role in Lynne Ramsey’s yet to be released film, “You Were Never Really Here.” Earlier this month, she reflected that in many ways the role of Aunt Esther in August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean” was a role that now most resonated with her spirit, “I think I had just begun to fully understand the character, this woman tasked with protecting her people in exile.”
Nelson’s life story is also a story of deep love and care for family, treasuring friendships and commitment to community. In 1977, she became a mother with the birth of her daughter Alesa. No matter the demands of work or the lure of celebrity acclaim, her focus remained raising and nurturing her beloved daughter, caring for the elders in her family and maintaining an active relationship with her faith community. Alesa Blanchard-Nelson remains Nelson’s greatest pride.
Services were held Friday, Sept. 8, 2017, at the Ninth Tabernacle, 85-87 Fountain Ave., Brooklyn.
The interment followed immediately thereafter
at Pinelawn Cemetery, Farmingdale, NY.
