This Day In History: October 29th
Singer and actress Melba Moore stepped onto the entertainment scene during the late 1960s and evolved into an award-winning talent. Thirty years later, fellow actresses Tracee Ellis Ross and Gabrielle Union made their debuts. Each of these actresses shares another commonality besides being a leading lady. All three women were born on October 29!
Melba Moore was born on October 29, 1945, into a musically inclined family. Her father was Teddy Hill, big band leader and manager of Minton’s Playhouse, while her mother, Bonnie Davis, was an R&B singer. Despite being surrounded by musicians, Moore felt that she possessed the ability to succeed as a performer, too. She made her debut in the classic Hair on Broadway in 1969. She then starred as ‘Lutiebelle’ in Purlie, which earned her a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Moore also decided to grace fans with her talents as a singer. During the 1980s and 90s she recorded hits such as “Lean On Me,” “Love’s Comin’ At Ya” and “A Little Bit More,” which was a no.1 duet with Freddie Jackson. Melba Moore is a three-time Grammy-nominated artist, and her rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was named an ‘American Aural Treasure’ by the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.
Another product of a musical family is Tracee Ellis Ross who was born on October 29, 1972, in Los Angeles, California. Her mother is legendary Motown singer Diana Ross and her father is music manager Robert Ellis Silberstein. She attended Brown University and earned a bachelor’s degree in theater arts in 1994. After college, she started her career in the fashion industry as a magazine editor and eventually transitioned into modeling before making her entertainment debut.
She landed small acting roles during the late 1990s before receiving her big break with a leading role in the hit series Girlfriends (2000). She starred as Joan Clayton in the series for nearly a decade. After the show was canceled, Ross secured another leading role first in Reed Between the Lines (2011) and then in the ABC sitcom, Black-ish (2014). Tracee Ellis Ross is an Emmy nominated actress and a Golden Globe recipient.
Fellow actress Gabrielle Union was born on the same exact day as Tracee Ellis Ross on October 29, 1972, in Omaha, Nebraska. Union attended college at the University of Nebraska but eventually made her way to UCLA. She earned an internship at a modeling agency and after completing it, she was asked to join the agency as a client. She obliged and found herself landing a role in the series Saved by the Bell (1989). Her big break came with her lead role in the cheerleading film Bring It On (2000).
Over the course of her acting career, Union has appeared in films such as Deliver Us from Eva (2003), Bad Boys II (2003), Daddy’s Little Girls (2007), Cadillac Records (2008), Think Like a Man (2012) and Think Like a Man Too (2014). She even secured a leading role in the BET series Being Mary Jane in 2013. Gabrielle Union has been nominated for a variety of awards and has also been the recipient of the NAACP Image award.
