Olga James, an actress and operatic soprano, died on Jan. 25 in Los Angeles. She was 95. Her death was in an assisted living facility and was confirmed by her niece Janet Adderley.
Olga James had performed with an opera company in France and in a popular musical revue in Atlantic City, N.J., when her manager, Abe Saperstein, landed her an audition in 1954 for “Carmen Jones,” the movie version of Oscar Hammerstein II’s hit 1943 Broadway update of Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen.”
Auditioning for the role of Cindy Lou, whose boyfriend, Joe (played by Mr. Belafonte), a soldier headed for flight school, is seduced by Carmen (Dorothy Dandridge), a worker in a parachute factory, Ms. James sang an aria at the Alvin Theater (now the Neil Simon Theater) for Otto Preminger, the film’s imperious director.
“It wasn’t a stretch for me,” she was quoted as saying in “Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King” (2007), by Foster Hirsch. “I was that character, a country-looking girl. I was just a little ingénue.”
She won the role. “Carmen Jones” would be her first movie — and her last.
Of the film’s three lead performers, only Ms. James did her own singing; Mr. Belafonte’s and Ms. Dandridge’s songs were dubbed because they could not sing in an operatic range.
Ms. James won praise for her performance. Writing in The New Pittsburgh Courier, Izzy Rowe said she “creates a name for herself nationally with this one performance.” Mae Tinee of The Chicago Tribune called her portrayal of Cindy Lou “the distillation of simple goodness.”
The show — with music and lyrics by Jerry Bock, Larry Holofcener, and George Weiss — ran for 383 performances. Ms. James soon left for a tour of Europe, where she was lauded for her singing in nightclubs and on television.
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