In No Strings, Richard Rodgers' otherwise forgettable Broadway musical of seven seasons ago, Diahann Carroll was cast as a Negro girl from Harlem who struck it rich as a high-fashion model in Paris. For plausibility's sake, it had to be Paris. Nobody would have believed the story if it had been set in Manhattan, least of all Diahann herself.
Actress Carroll had tried to make a go of modeling in the 1950s, but failed miserably. Fashion-magazine editors shied away from using Negro models for fear of offending readers and advertisers. When Diahann was...
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