Jackee Harry

This sassy TV player has been identified with roles one might term as "floozy", or, at the very least, "of progressive morality", but who also proved her mettle in a number of dramatic or serio-comic parts. Jackee Harry has, at various times in her career, used that stage name, as well as merely "Jackee" (pronounced ja-KAY), and early in her career her birth name, Jacqueline Harry. Harry will always be recalled as Sandra Clark, the flirtatious nemesis to Marla Gibbs in the NBC series, "227". Although Harry had already appeared on TV for several seasons on the NBC daytime drama "Another World", "227", in the parlance of Hollywood, 'made her a star.' Neither a subsequent effort to develop a spin-off series with Harry in the lead nor an attempt to slide her into "Designing Women" were successful. Instead, in 1992, she joined "The Royal Family" (after the death of Redd Foxx) as Ruth, Della Reese's wayward sister. The show still didn't click, and the next year Harry was offered the role of the free-spirited mother of one of the separated-at-birth twins on "Sister, Sister". At first, she rejected the role, but the show's executive producer, Suzanne de Passe, talked her into taking it. "Sister, Sister" ran on ABC for two seasons before being canceled. It was picked up by The WB Network, where it ran twice per week, and was given an order for episodes through the 1997-98 season.

Besides playing on sitcoms, Harry has also appeared in TV longforms, particularly the miniseries "The Women of Brewster Place" (ABC, 1989), in which she was Etta Mae, a woman of loose virtue yet strong character. In the more frivolous mold, she was the driving instructor in "Crash Course" (NBC, 1988). She has also provided animated voices for projects like the "Alvin Goes Back to School" special in 1986.

Harry had been a teacher at a Brooklyn high school before breaking into acting in a small role in a play by Richard Wesley. A trained dancer, she won a role in the chorus of the off-Broadway production of "A Broadway Musical", but when the show was moving to the Great White Way, the director, Gower Champion, plucked Harry from the chorus line and gave her a featured part, telling her she had too much going for her to be in the chorus. Harry then performed in "I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It On the Road" for two years at the Public Theatre. More recently, she has frequently performed in "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill," in which she sang the songs of Billie Holiday. Harry's feature work has been limited. She made her debut as a dancer in the "The Cotton Club" (1984) and was Rodney Dangerfield's assistant in "Ladybugs" (1992).