Halle Berry Got Rid of Her Dorothy Dandridge Dress Because She Thought It Was Haunted
Halle Berry once had the opportunity to portray late actor Dorothy Dandridge in a movie about her life and career. To do so, Berry tried to hold onto one of Dorothy Dandridge’s clothes for inspiration.
But the actor would later have to rid herself of Dandridge’s dress after noticing strange occurrences happening in her home.
How Halle Berry first discovered Dorothy Dandridge
Berry had been a fan of Dorothy Dandridge ever since seeing her in the film Carmen Jones many years ago. The movie introduced a young Berry to a world she was fascinated by, and an actor who she could look up to.
“I never saw an all-black movie before,” Berry once told The Washington Post about Carmen Jones. “I mean I had seen Song of the South and Uncle Remus, but never glamorous and beautiful and sophisticated.”
Seeing Dandridge in that kind of setting left a long-lasting impression on Berry that further fueled her passion for acting.
“That’s when I said not only do I connect with her–I connected to that way of life. That could have been where my fantasy began,” she said.
Years later, Berry would produce a film about Dorothy Dandridge while starring in a film about the actor. But at one point, Berry believed that Dandridge was with her in spirit in a very literal sense.
Halle Berry got rid of her Dorothy Dandridge dress because she was convinced it was haunted
Berry was committed to doing the late actor Dandridge justice in the role. To help motivate her performance, the Oscar-winner kept one of Dandridge’s belongings as a source of strength.
“When I was making my Dorothy Dandridge movie, I know she was with me. I had one of her original dresses, which I kept for inspiration in my den covered in paper and plastic to protect it,” Berry once said according to Contact Music.
But soon Berry began noticing some strange activity going on in her house.
“One night I was at home with a friend drinking tea and we heard all this rustling noise. At first I thought it was just water dripping from the teapot, then I realized it was coming from the room, and the paper on the dress was rattling – all by itself! My friend and I both hauled ass out of there so fast,” Berry recalled.
That wasn’t the only abnormal experience Berry had while holding on to Dandridge’s dress.
“Then other strange things happened in the house while I had that dress. I’d come home and the housekeeper would say she’d heard my vanity chair moving upstairs in my bathroom. And our fridge door would fly open by itself. I’m not kidding,” she said. “When the film was over, I desperately wanted to keep her dress, but it had to go. And then everything was fine.”
Halle Berry dug through every piece of information she could find about Dorothy Dandridge
Holding onto Dandridge’s dress wasn’t all that Berry did to prepare for her role. The Oscar-winner went through a meticulous preparation period where she learned how to sing and dance the way Dandridge could. She also combed through Dandridge’s life, meeting as many people as she could who personally knew her idol.
“I did a lot of interviewing with Sidney Poitier, Diahann Carroll, people that actually knew her. I spent a lot of time with these people, picking their brains, and sort of trying to get to the essence of who she was. And if I could find some common thread that they all said about her, I could use that,” Berry once said on The Hollywood Interview.
Berry would also search through Dandridge’s personal belongings to further aid her performance.
“Her manager, who is still alive, let me go through everything that he had of hers, from personal private letters to all of her clothes, her jewelry he had, her family photo album. It was just about a six-month period before the shoot of finding every piece of information I possibly could,” Berry recalled.
