Most of these women are women of color comng from a variety of different ethnic backgrounds.
Rita Moreno
Rita Moreno born Rosa Dolores Alverio is a Puerto Rican American actress and singer with a career that spanned for over 70 years and had broken new ground for Latinos in the entertainment industry throughout her career. She is best known for her role as Anita in West Side Story.
Apasra Hongsakula
Daughter of Group Captain Perm and Kayoon Hongsakula, Apasra Hongsakula is a Thai Model and beauty queen who won the title of Miss Universe 1965. She was the first woman from Thailand to win the title of Miss Universe and is currently 69 years old.
Joyce "The Bronze Blond Bombshhell" Bryant
Joyce Bryant often times dubbed “the bronze blonde bombshell” was an African American singer and Actress who achieved fame during the late 1940s and early 1950s as a theater and nightclub performer. She has been regarded to as the most beautiful black woman at the time wearing tight mermaid like dresses. She is currently 87 years old.
Dolores Del Rio
Dolores del Rio was a Mexican and American film stage and television actress. She was the first Mexican movie star with international appeal and one of the most important Hollywood figures during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and 50s. She died April 11, 1983.
Donyale Luna
Donyale Luna was an American model and actress and the first black model to appear on the cover of vogue. Although facing deep prejudice, Luna became one of the first black models to attain superstar status in Europe, and photographed by the photographer David Bailey, famed for his images of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Luna was regarded to as the "reincarnation of Nefertiti" by Salvador Dali. She died of drug overdose at 32 years old.
Akiko Kojima
Japanese actress Akiko Kojima was also a model and beauty queen crowned Miss Universe in 1959. "Kojima was a 22-year-old model from Tokyo, Japan when she bested four other finalists from Norway, the USA, England, and Brazil for the 1959 Miss Universe crown in Long Beach, California".
Dorothy Dandridge
Dorothy Jean Dandridge was an African American film and theatre actress, singer and dancer. Dandridge is most notably best known for being the first African-American actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1954 film Carmen Jones. She also performed in venues such as the famous Cotton Club and Apollo Theater.
She faced segregation and racism but she also confronted early on the segregation and racism of the entertainment industry. She may have been allowed on stage, but in some venues she couldn't eat in the restaurant or use certain facilities because of the color of her skin. She died September 8, 1965.
Josephine Baker
"Josephine Baker was an American-born French dancer, jazz and pop music singer, and actress, who came to be known in various circles as the 'Black Pearl,' 'Bronze Venus', 'Jazz Cleopatra', and even the 'Creole Goddess'". Baker is known for various different things such as her famous Banana Dance but also as a civil rights activist as well. "She adopted 12 children in all, creating what she referred to as her “rainbow tribe” and her “experiment in brotherhood.” She often invited people to the estate to see these children, to demonstrate that people of different races could in fact live together harmoniously."
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