Norma Jean Darden

speaker

93 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 4 Aug

Norma Jean Darden’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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The Moth · All Dressed Up: The Moth Radio Hour · 4 Aug 2026 podcast

Once I was too dark for a part, then I was too light for a part, too tall for a part, too thin for a part, not thin enough, so I was having a hard time getting cast.

And they told me, try modeling, come through the back door.

So I was trying that, and then people were telling me in the 60s, well, we would love to use black models, but the southern people wouldn't buy our products, so we can't do it.

I thought that was such a phony argument, but couldn't do anything about it.

And then one of the models from my father's fashion show, Audrey Smalls, got this idea that we would picket Harper's Bazaar.

So we went down with our little placards, and we marched in front of there, and there were only six of us, but we created quite a stir.

And they came down, they told us that that wasn't necessary, and that the magazine was changing, and sure enough, they hired a black model, but it wasn't us.

So we felt like we were opening doors, but we weren't getting anywhere.

And I guess that's why we called ourselves the Little Pioneers.

Then along came an agency called Black Beauty.

And Black Beauty made a big imprint.

They got Life Magazine to do a cover with Naomi Sims.

We were inside, and suddenly we were the rage of the town.

Along came the black designers like Stephen Burroughs and John Haggins and Scott Berry, and we were suddenly the end girls.

We were everywhere.

So along came Eleanor Lambert who got this idea to take American fashion to Paris.

So she hired all the black models to represent some of the American designers, and the French people got everybody to represent them.

And off we went to Paris, and the French took two hours on their rehearsals, and they had Nureyev leaping into the balcony,

and they had Grace Kelly as the MC and Josephine Baker, our favorite artist, as the singer.

And we came in and it was freezing cold and they didn't have any food for us and we were there all day and this was the one day of rehearsals and we had Kay Thompson who'd written Eloise as a choreographer and she gave up on us.

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