Often referred to as “the Black Garbo” or “the Colored Garbo,” Nina Mae McKinney was the first black leading women in mainstream Hollywood, with twenty-six appearances to her credit. Nina (pronounced Nine-ah) was born in South Carolina in 1913, and moved to New York while still in her teens, where she worked as a dancer on Broadway. It was while dancing the chorus line of the popular musical Blackbirds of 1928 that McKinney was “discovered” by legendary director King Vidor, who cast her in Hallelujah, his first talking motion picture, and one of mainstream Hollywood’s earliest race films.
McKinney was one of the first black actresses signed to a studio contract, but MGM never really utilized her. She was considered to glamorous and attractive for the servant roles that would go to actresses like Butterfly McQueen or Hattie McDaniel, and there was no way she would be cast opposite a White actor in any kind of romantic context. As a result her career languished, and McKinney was loaned out to other studios, mostly for B-movies and low budget “black cast” pictures like Gang Smashers and The Devil’s Daughter. She also co-starred opposite Paul Robeson in Sanders of the River, where he played an African tribal chief wearing a leopard-skin loincloth, and she played his imperiled wife. McKinney spent much of her career looking for work in America and Europe, where she mostly performed in live cabarets. Her final film performance was an uncredited role in the 1950 film Copper Canyon. Nina Mae McKinney died of a heart attack in 1967 at the age of 54.
To learn more about performers like Nina Mae McKinney, check out my new book Black Film: A History of Black Representation and Participation in the Movies will be released by Ten Speed Press on March 24, 2026. You can pre-order the book here.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/673613/black-film-by-david-f-walker/