Dorothy Dandridge’s Photograph
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Thus, Dandridge’s photo allows us to vacillate on this continuum between the
there-and-then and the here-and-now as we seek to foreground an individual
backgrounded by time and history.
More recently Carol Mavor, drawing upon the previous scholars in the
same vein, argues that not only is death connected to photography because it seizes
a moment in time but death or the '‘morbid sense of mortality” can be read in a
photograph (Mavor 49). Mavor explores how death is captured in photographs
through sleep and the positioning of the body. Thus, Mavor’s reading gives further
significance to the representation of death in Dandridge’s photograph.
An examination of the death of Dandridge as constructed in this photo
must of course take into account Dandridge’s alleged suicide and the circumstances
surrounding her death. These underlie the discursiveness of this photo and call for
a recapitulation of the story of her death. Some four months prior to her death,
Dandridge left a note outlining her will. Reprinted in the New York Times, it read.
In the case of death - to whomever [sic] discovers it - don’t
remove anything 1 have on - scarf, gown, or other....Cremate me
right away - if I have anything, money, furniture give to my
mother Ruby Dandridge. She will know what to do. Dorothy
Dandridge (“Forty-four Word Handwritten Will o f Miss
Dandridge Filed” 58).
That Dandridge outlined her will only a few months prior to her death, and
considering that she had been diagnosed as suicidal gives credence to the view that
she may have had premonitions and even a predilection toward her own death. Her
death is still shrouded in mystery because of the multiple theories that persist
regarding how she died. When Dandridge was found dead in her apartment (8
September 1965), conflicting reports circulated: she died from an injury, or her
death was caused by murder, suicide, or drug intoxication. Following Dandridge’s
death, the Los Angeles Coroner’s office, allegedly under pressure to release a report
on her death, produced a preliminary finding suggesting that because she had
suffered a broken bone in her foot resulting from an injury sustained in a gym
several days prior to her death, fragments of the bone infiltrated her blood stream
and may have caused her death (“A Fracture Fatal to Miss Dandridge” 27). In an
amendment to her death certificate, authorities later revealed that Dandridge’s cause
of death was from acute drug intoxication from the ingestion of Trofranil, an anti
depressant that apparently had been prescribed for her because of her severe bouts
with depression (Death Certificate). Her friends insisted that Dandridge was
murdered, they refused to believe that suicide was the cause of her death (Robinson
72). Thus, the complexity of Dandridge’s death itself enhances the symbolism of
her photo.