Frances Foster

Frances Helen Foster (née Brown; June 11, 1924 – June 17, 1997) was an American film, television and stage actress. In addition to being an actress, Foster was also an award–winning stage director and a founding member of the Negro Ensemble Company. Moreover, in 1955, she became the first African American to appear in a nationally broadcast television commercial.

Foster was born in Yonkers, New York, the daughter of George H. Brown, a postal worker, and Helen E. Lloyd. From 1949 through 1952, she studied acting at American Theatre Wing in Manhattan; three years later, she made her stage debut as Dolly May in The Wisteria Trees at the City Center Theater. That same year, several black-owned papers reported that Foster had, on Procter & Gamble's behalf, gained the distinction of being the first African American to appear in a nationally aired television commercial. Many years later, in the days following her death, the New York Amsterdam News noted that Foster took great pride in being the one who had broken that barrier.

A founding member of the Negro Ensemble Company, Foster remained with the troupe from 1967 to 1986 and appeared in over 25 of its productions, winning an Obie Award in 1985 for sustained excellence of performance. She was also a recipient of two AUDELCO Awards, one as an actress and the other as a director for work at the New Federal Theatre in Manhattan. In 1978, she received the best actress award for Do Lord Remember Me, and the best director award in 1983 for Hospice. She also appeared in several films, including Malcolm X, Crooklyn, and Clockers, as well as the recurring role of Vera on the soap opera Guiding Light from 1985-94. She's also known from one of the most infamous episodes of Good Times, as Gertie Vinson, a neighbor of the Evans family who was forced to eat dog food in the episode "The Dinner Party".

Foster was married at least three times. In 1941 she married Robert Standfield Foster, with whom she had one child, a son. In June 1961, she married actor Roy Glenn.[10] From 1983 until her own death, she was married to Morton Goldsen, acquiring three stepchildren from his previous marriage in the process.

On June 17, 1997, at age 73, Foster died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Fair Oaks Hospital in Fairfax, Virginia. She was survived by her husband, her son Terrell Robert Foster, her three stepchildren and a sister, Beverly Tate. In lieu of flowers being sent, Foster left instructions that donations be made in her name to Hale House in New York City, as well as Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.[11] On September 15 a memorial service was conducted in Harlem at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.[12] Foster's remains are interred at the Pine Lawn Cemetery in Farmingdale, Long Island, New York.