Norma Donaldson

Norma Donaldson was an American actress and singer who started out as a nightclub performer in 1949, singing in venues around New York City and touring with Harry Belafonte and Lena Horne. She turned to acting in the late 1960s and during the 1970s took parts in Blaxploitation movies, among them Gloria Roberts in Across 110th Street and Honey in Willie Dynamite (1974). Her Broadway work began in 1975, and she became best known for playing Miss Adelaide, a chorus line dancer, opposite Robert Guillaume in the 1976 all-black revival of Guys and Dolls. The two of them shared a stage again in Purlie and in No Place to Be Somebody. On television she was a regular as Dr. Paulina Ravelle on General Hospital from 1987 to 1989, then from 1990 played Lillie Belle Barber on the CBS soap The Young and the Restless until her death in 1994.