Trivia: African-American musical superstar Diana Ross may well be a by-product of the almost crippling shyness she has suffered since childhood. Reportedly, it took a lot out of young Ross to work up the courage to sing in her church choir; but once she decided that music was to be her bread and butter, there was no stopping her. With Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson, Ross formed the now-legendary R&B "girl group" the Supremes, which was elevated from a local Detroit attraction to international renown by Motown Records maven Berry Gordy. When Florence Ballard was replaced by Cindy Birdsong in 1967, the group's name was changed to Diana Ross and the Supremes (which it had essentially been all along). Ross struck out on her own in 1969; within 12 months, her popularity was such that she was voted Entertainer of the Year by the NAACP. In 1972, she made her long-anticipated film debut in Lady Sings the Blues, delivering a bravura performance as blues great Billie Holliday. Nominated for an Oscar, Ross lost the statuette to Liza Minnelli, but did take home a Golden Globe Award. Her follow-up attempts at film stardom were major disappointments: Mahogany (1975) was utterly forgettable save for its signature tune "Do You Know Where You're Going To," while The Wiz (1978) suffered from bad casting decisions and an utter lack of a consistent style. Despite her failures on the big screen, Ross continued to excel as a recording artist. She floundered a bit when she left Motown in 1980, but was back on top the following year after signing with RCA. In 1977, Diana won a Tony Award for her starring Broadway revue, and in 1988 she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Diana Ross showed no signs of slowing down in the 1990s: in 1993, she wrote a book titled Secrets of a Sparrow; in 1994, she made her TV-movie acting debut, playing a paranoid schizophrenic in the commendable Out of Darkness; and in 1996, she was center of attention in what was arguably one of the most spectacular Super Bowl half-time shows ever conceived. She would try her hand at acting again in 1999's Double Platinum, acting as executive producer on that project as well.

Trivia: Throughout his long career, internationally acclaimed music superstar Michael Jacksonsporadically made film appearances as an actor, notably in his first starring role in The Wiz (1978), but he was best known for producing cutting-edge feature-film quality music videos such as "Thriller," "Billie Jean," and "Black or White." He also produced films for Disney virtual rides, the first of which was the extremely popular Francis Ford Coppola-directed Captain Eo (1985), which ran at Disney World in Orlando until 1997. Jackson also occasionally composed music and songs for movie soundtracks. He died of cardiac arrest in 2009, a couple of months before his 51st birthday.

Trivia: The daughter of an actress and civil rights activist, African-American entertainer Lena Horne was a chorus girl in Harlem's Cotton Club at the age of 16. One year later, she had her first featured role -- as Quadroon Girl -- in the Broadway play Dance With Your Gods. Lena then went on to work as a dancer and singer for Noble Sissles's orchestra, gaining popularity with both black and white audiences, though in keeping with the racial status quo of the '30s, she was denied entrance to all-white facilities and hotels in most of the cities where she headlined on stage. Following her film in The Duke is Tops (1939), Lena was signed as a specialty performer by MGM Studios. In most of her film appearances, Lena would sing in a sequence separate from the plotline and her white costars, so that her scenes could be edited out when shown in certain Southern theatres. She managed to survive on these terms and even won leading roles in two major-studio feature films, Cabin in the Sky (1943) and Stormy Weather (1943) - both of which had all-black casts. Hollywood's attitude towards African-Americans in the '40s was slightly better than in the '30s, but producers still treaded very slowly and cautiously: Lena was allowed romantic interests in her two starring films, but her leading men were middle-aged comedians and dancers like Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Dooley Wilson, and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, so as not to offend those white viewers who felt threatened by handsome black men. Additionally, Lena was allowed to be sexy but not too sexy, lest she arouse dreams of miscegenation in the minds of impressionable white males; her most erotic scene in Cabin in the Sky, wherein she was discreetly "nude" in a bubble bath (the bubbles providing censor-proof camouflage) was removed from the film, not to be seen in public until shown in the 1994 compilation That's Still Entertainment. Idiotic corporate decisions like this only intensified Lena's mistrust of white men, an attitude drummed into her by her mother; yet privately she managed to find lasting happiness as the wife of white musician Lennie Hayton. Lena's career suffered in the '50s, when she had difficulty securing TV work not only because of her race but also because of her friendship with Paul Robeson, the famed black singer who'd embraced Communism. Eventually talent won out over ideology, and Lena starred on Broadway in Jamaka in 1957, following this personal triumph with numerous media and live performances. Still, Lena and her husband found a more hospitable reception when they travelled to France, a country where a mixed marriage did not automatically result in rude stares and snide newspaper commentary. In 1969, Horne returned to films in Death of a Gunfighter, where thanks to relaxed racial tensions she was able to play the former lover of white sheriff Richard Widmark. Still beautiful and in terrific voice, Horne went strong into the '90s, attaining the rare status of Living Legend. She died in 2010 at the age of 92.

Trivia: A Tony-winning actor recognized for his role as the Cowardly Lion in The Wiz, Ted Ross' career was ironically kick-started when, at age 18, he went on an amateur-night contest with a striking rendition of "Under the Rainbow." Born in Zanesville, OH, Ross' family moved to Dayton when he was seven years old. Working as an emcee shortly before he entered the Air Force in the 1950s, the emerging talent continued to develop his skills upon discharge with appearances in The Bingo Long Traveling All Stars & Motor Kings (1976) and the filmed version of The Wiz (1978). Gaining increasing exposure as Bitterman in Arthur (1981) as well as the sequel, Ross was also active in television with roles in The Jeffersons, The Cosby Show, and A Different World. Suffering a debilitating stroke in 1998, Ross resided in a nursing home before ultimately passing away in early September 2002. He was 68.

Trivia: Born Mabel Washington, this black character actress appeared onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: As a Tony-nominated Broadway star, a former background singer for Harry Belafonte, an Emmy-nominated television actress, and a supporting player in numerous feature films, it is safe to say that Theresa Merritt had a mighty respectable career, despite the fact that she never quite made it to full-fledged stardom. The African-American performer launched her career with a starring role in Billy Rose's musical Carmen (1943). In 1985, she returned to Broadway to play the title role in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and won a Tony nomination. She made her feature film debut in They Might Be Giants (1971) and continued to occasionally appear in films through the mid-'90s. On television, Merritt earned Emmy kudos for her special All About Miss Merritt and for appearing in the PBS miniseries Concealed Enemies.

Trivia: Thelma Carpenter is best known as a jazz singer and a Broadway performer, but she has also acted in a handful of feature films, beginning with The Devil's Daughter (1972). Her best-known film role was that of Miss One in Sidney Lumet's overblown musical The Wiz (1978). The Brooklyn-born Carpenter began her career singing on radio station WNYC when she was 11. As a teen, Carpenter sang at Kelly's Stable on 52nd Street. She made her first recording with Teddy Wilson's band in 1939. Before taking her first Broadway bow opposite Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in the musical Memphis Bound (1944), Carpenter sang with Coleman Hawkins and the Count Basie Orchestra as well as occasionally appearing with Duke Ellington. Her career on-stage would include 100 shows and last through the '60s. Carpenter has also worked on television in such series as The Cosby Show and Love Boat. Shortly before her death in 1997, she appeared in the CBS sitcom Cosby. Carpenter died of a massive heart attack at age 75.

Trivia: African-American comedian Richard Pryor grew up bombarded by mixed messages. Pryor's grandmother owned a string of brothels, his mother prostituted herself, and his father was a pimp. Still, they raised Richard to be honest, polite, and religious. Living in one of the worst slums in Peoria, IL, Pryor found that he could best defend himself by getting gang members to laugh at instead of pummeling him. This led to his reputation as a disruptive class clown, although at least one understanding teacher allowed Pryor one minute per week to "cut up" so long as he behaved himself the rest of the time. At age 14, he became involved in amateur dramatics at Peoria's Carver Community Center, which polished his stage presence. In 1963, Pryor headed to New York to seek work as a standup comic; after small gigs in the black nightclub circuit, he was advised to pattern himself after Bill Cosby -- that is, to be what white audiences perceived as "nonthreatening." For the next five years, the young comic flourished in clubs and on TV variety shows, making his film bow in The Busy Body (1967). But the suppression of Pryor's black pride and anger by the white power structure frustrated him. One night, sometime between 1969 and 1971, he "lost it" while performing a gig in Las Vegas; he either walked off-stage without a word or he obscenely proclaimed that he was sick of it. Over the next few years, Pryor found himself banned from many nightclubs, allegedly due to offending the mob-connected powers-that-be, and lost many of his so-called friends who'd been sponging off of him. Broke, Pryor went underground in Berkeley, CA, in the early '70s; when he re-emerged, he was a road-company Cosby no more. His act, replete with colorful epithets, painfully accurate character studies of street types, and hilarious (and, to some, frightening) hostility over black-white inequities, struck just the right note with audiences of the committed '70s. Record company executives, concerned that Pryor's humor would appeal only to blacks, were amazed at how well his first post-Berkeley album, That Nigger's Crazy!, sold with young white consumers. As for Hollywood, Pryor made a key early appearance in the Diana Ross vehicle Lady Sings the Blues. But ultra-reactionary Tinseltown wasn't quite attuned to Pryor's liberal use of obscenities or his racial posturing. Pryor had been commissioned to write and star in a Mel Brooks-directed Western-comedy about a black sheriff, but Brooks replaced Pryor with the less-threatening Cleavon Little; Pryor nonetheless retained a credit as one of five writers on the picture, alongside such luminaries as Andrew Bergman. When Pryor appeared onscreen in The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings and Silver Streak (both 1976), it was as a supporting actor. But Pryor's popularity built momentum, and by the end of the '70s he became the highest-paid starring comedian in films, with long-range contracts ensuring him work well into the next decade - when such efforts as Stir Crazy, Bustin' Loose, and The Toy helped to both clean up the foul-mouthed comic's somewhat raunchy public image, and endear him to a whole new generation of fans. His comedy albums -- and later, videocassettes -- sold out as quickly as they were recorded. The only entertainment arena still too timid for Pryor was network television -- his 1977 NBC variety series has become legendary for the staggering amount of network interference and censorship imposed upon it.By the early '80s, Pryor was on top of the entertainment world. Then came a near-fatal catastrophe when he accidentally set himself afire while freebasing cocaine. Upon recovery, he joked liberally (and self-deprecatively) about his brush with death, but, otherwise, he appeared to change; his comedy became more introspective, more rambling, more tiresome, and occasionally (as in the 1983 standup effort Richard Pryor: Here and Now) drew vicious heckling and catcalls from obnoxious audiences. His cinematic decline began with a thinly-disguised film autobiography, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986), which Pryor starred in and directed; it met with critical scorn. Pryor's films declined in popularity, the audiences grew more hostile at the concerts, and Pryor deteriorated physically. Doctors diagnosed him with multiple sclerosis in the late '80s, and, by 1990, it became painfully obvious to everyone that he was a very sick man, although his industry friends and supporters made great effort to celebrate his accomplishments and buoy his spirits. The twin 1989 releases Harlem Nights and See No Evil, Hear No Evil (the latter of which re-teamed Pryor with fellow Silver Streak alums Arthur Hiller and Gene Wilder) failed to reignite Pryor's popularity or draw back his fanbase.Pryor's ill-fated attempt to resuscitate his stand-up act at L.A.'s Comedy Store in 1992 proved disastrous; unable to stand, Pryor was forced to deliver his monologues from an easy chair; he aborted his planned tour soon after. He appeared in television and films only sporadically in his final decade, save a rare cameo in David Lynch's 1997 Lost Highway. These dark omens foretold a sad end to a shimmering career; the world lost Pryor soon after. On December 12, 2005, the comedian - only 65 years old -- died of a heart attack in a Los Angeles hospital. But he left a peerless legacy behind as a stand-up comic and black actor.

Trivia: Choreographer, dancer and actor Carlton Johnson frequently worked on television variety shows including The Carol Burnett Show, and The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show. He also appeared in big-screen musicals such as Sweet Charity. He was a choreographer in two films It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and the Blues Brothers. He also taught many performers to dance and helped them stage their dance routines.

Trivia: Began professional stage career in 1952 at a nightclub in Greenwich Village. Originated the role of Ronnie in the 1964 Broadway musical Golden Boy. Made film debut in the 1966 drama A Man Called Adam. Was a cast member on the 1969 CBS variety program The Leslie Uggams Show. Starting in 1970, appeared on the NBC comedy series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In for two seasons. Appeared alongside mentor Sammy Davis Jr. in the 1975 variety program Sammy and Company. Played Nathan Bookman on the CBS comedy Good Times; appeared on the show from 1977 to the end of the series.