Danitra Vance

Her season (1985-86) was the last one with Dick Ebersol at the helm. Lorne Michaels returned and cleaned house of the entire cast, save for Jon Lovitz. By the way, the other cast members dismissed were Robert Downey Jr, Joan Cusack, Randy Quaid, Anthony Michael Hall, and Damon Wayans.

No, r1. Ebersol's last season was 1984-85. Michaels was back on the job for 1985-86. And Vance was the only one who exited that season who did so of her own choosing. She was fed up with the stereotyping Michaels was doing with the parts assigned to her.

Danitra Vance was a brilliant social satire comic. Her That Black Girl character and Cabrini Green were pure genius. A black, female LESBIAN comic with social conscious was totally NOT what the Lorne Michael comedy crapattoir was about.

She died from lack of health care due to breast cancer.

There was no one else like her.

God bless her.

She was tremendous.....the right person at the wrong time (that horrible season of SNL).

This was one of the things she did outside of SNL.

Lorne Michaels owns all her SNL footage; he aught to release it.

What is Lorne's deal anyway?

Most of her stuff is cut from the episodes on Hulu.

Wow.

Lorne can really hold a grudge.

I think they fired everyone that year except Jon Lovitz, Nora Dunn and Dennis Miller.

So delighted to see this thread, OP. She was a brilliant comedienne and died way too young of breast cancer. I knew her and worked with her in a few small theaters. We were all so thrilled for Danitra when she got the SNL gig. At the time her survival job was spraying perfume on people in Bloomingdale's.

It was so disappointing when the SNL assholes didn't know what to do with her. To really see her at her magnificent best you needed to see her live act with the Mello White Boys. She was amazingly versatile playing different characters. She had a big following and was even a clue in the New York Times crossword puzzle. lol

All her friends still miss her terribly and we still do bits from her routines. We really lost a great talent and wonderful woman.

Lorne didn't know what he had.

She was to appear in a new play at Circle Rep in 1991 called WALKING THE DEAD, but quit during rehearsal alongside Brooke Smith and another actor named Barry Sherman. I believe they were having trouble with the director.

The three were replaced.

Ive always heard good things about her but I never got a chance to see some of work. Off to youtube I go.

Danitra was great, but pitifully misused, as was Terry Sweeney.

SNL can't write for black comedians for shit now, and they sure couldn't then.

That Black Girl and Cabrini Green Harlem Watts Jackson was the funniest and most mainstream of her characters.

My friends and I would always quote her and Terry's Nancy Reagan.

r4 That is from a play called "The Colored Museum".

[quote] A black, female LESBIAN comic with social conscious

Oh, [italic]dear.[/italic]

An Oh, dear 4 years in the making.

Lorne is rumored to be a huge homophobe and doesn’t like to hire openly gay people. Allegedly he claimed that he didn’t know that Kate McKinnon was a lesbian...had he known, he would not have hired her.

Thank you, R4. I had never seen that before.

What's depressing is that the YouTube commenters were complaining that it was unfunny; they didn't realize that it wasn't supposed to be a comedy skit. Anyone with the slightest exposure to art would quickly figure out that the piece was satire.

Lorne is like Jann Wenner......open minded or so they thought in the 70s, but revealing their true conservative underlayers as the years went on.

In their eyes, tolerating the 'mos and having "the blacks" around to party with is QUITE different than having them perform on the show, make decision, write, etc.

Lorne is a cunt. Full stop.

An early Cabrini Green sketch.

Rough around the edges but you can see the spark. It reminded many of us, I think, of Whoopi Goldberg's one woman show, which was amazing. (Yes, there was a time that Whoopi was amazing.)

Danitra acted as if being Vivian Vance's granddaughter got her special privileges. It was simply too much for Lorne. He's always hated Vivian Vance ever since he learned his father had an affair with her.

R18 I don't think Lorne is a homophobe. Also, I don't see how him or his SNL lieutenants could have missed that Kate was a lesbian.

There have been two openly gay males on the show [Terry Sweeney (1985) and John Milhiser (2012)]. Sweeney said in an interview that Lorne was supportive of him being an out cast member.

Alec Baldwin has also stated that there have been plenty of gay cast members but they were not out.

There have also been several out gays working behind the scenes at SNL including writers Julio Torres and Chris Kelly. Each of them now have their own shows and Lorne exec produces for both of them.

Jaboukie Young-White didn't make the cut for SNL but he was given his big break on The Tonight Show which Lorne exec produces. These appearances led to Jaboukie landing a permanent spot on The Daily Show.

Loved her as That Black Girl, and it was a such a great idea to have Daman play Donald...

Lorne also executive produced The Kids In The Hall, one of the gayest shows ever