Shirley Jo Finney

An American actress and theater director, Shirley Jo Finney was born in Merced, California, and raised mostly in Sacramento. She graduated from Sacramento State College in 1971 with a theater degree, and in 1973 took a master's degree in theater arts at the University of California, Los Angeles, before starting her acting career. On screen she took the part of Wilma Rudolph in Wilma, a 1977 television film, and she kept acting into the 1990s. As a director she staged eight productions with The Fountain Theatre and also worked at the Mark Taper Forum, the Kennedy Center and the Humana Festival. Her work drew notice from the NAACP, the Ovation Awards and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle. In 2008 a Broadway revival she was attached to direct fell apart when the money ran out. She directed plays nationwide, her final credit a 2023 staging of Clyde's in Houston, and she died in 2023.