Throwback. Madame Sul-Te-Wan. Pioneer Black Actress. Horror Movie Matron.

Madame Sul-Te-Wan


Born Nellie Crawford in Louisville, Kentucky, Madame Sul-Te-Wan (March 7, 1873 – February 1, 1959), the child of freed slaves. She is a lesser known old Hollywood actress who earned the distinction of being the first black contract player in Hollywood. She was a character actor of sorts with a career filled with both stereotypical and non-stereotypical roles.

Her first role was an uncredited one, as the only actual black actor to appear in D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. Sul-Te-Wan was heavily criticized by organizations such as the NAACP for accepting a role in such a deeply offensive film. Throughout her career she appeared in many “mammy” roles, but her most well-known characters were voodoo priestesses and witches in horror films in the 1930’s and 1940’s. While still stereotypical, these roles allowed Madame Sul-Te-Wan to craft a persona as a woman of mystery. Actress Lillian Gish, often referred to as The First Lady of American Cinema, once said of Sul-Te-Wan, “We never did discover the origin of her name. No one was bold enough to ask.”


(Madame Sul-Te-Wan played a voodoo priestess in the 1941 film “King of the Zombies”.)

Later in her career, Madame Sul-Te-Wan played a less stereotypical role alongside Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, and Diahann Carroll in the 1954 all-black cast film Carmen Jones.

Madame Sul-Te-Wan passed away in 1959 at the age of 1985 after suffering a stroke. In 1986, she was posthumously inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.