Dorothy Van Engle

Dorothy Van Engle (August 14, 1910 – May 10, 2004) was an American actress who performed throughout the 1930s. She starred in Oscar Micheaux films, including Murder in Harlem and Swing. Beautiful and sophisticated, she wore fashionable "updos" in her films. Cast as the main female lead in the 1935 film Murder in Harlem, Engle acted as a strong female character who actually solved the private eye's cases rather than the male lead. The film's subject matter and original source events were criticized, however, along with Engle and the other actress's acting in the film, as if their lines were being delivered with an "air of artificiality". In 1938's Swing, she played the role of an assistant producer to the black male lead who played a producer character and it was her role that was responsible for making the critical show idea that allowed the male lead to be successful in the film. Ohio State University's professor of film studies, J. Ronald Green, described her as one of the few primary women actors cast by Micheaux and she frequently played intelligent and strong-minded characters that acted as a "proto-feminist role" for women at the time. Green further stated that it was these race films that were the sole source of positive representation of black Americans in media during the early half of the 20th century.