For some Dorothy Dandridge represented an unfulfilled promise. For others she was a sign of power of drive and ambition to break down barriers. For others she was a doomed beauty, struggling heroically against personal demons and the fundamental racism if the industry.

“Her own personal demons came out of everything the industry was at that time. I mean there’s no putting those things aside. Her personal life and her personal demons in terms of the negative things that occurred in her personal life are not really that desperate from who she was.” - actor Brock Peters

Mainstream media and Hollywood would forget Dorothy Dandridge within a relatively short period of time, wiping her from its historical record. Later, part of her compelling legend was the very fact that she had been forgotten—-except by black America, which would pass her story on, one generation after another. For Blacks in Hollywood, especially actresses at the close of one century and the opening if another—-Janet Jackson, Angela Bassett, Lela Rochon, Vanessa Williams, Whitney Houston, Jasmine Guy, and Halle Berry—-Dorothy Dandridge’s story would resonate. As the great tragic African American actress of twentieth-century cinema, she became a potent mythic goddess, every bit as haunting and significant a symbol as Marilyn Monroe would be for the mainstream community.