Florence mills Florence Mills (born Florence Winfrey; January 25, 1896 – November 1, 1927),[1] known as the "Queen of Happiness", was an African-Americancabaret singer, dancer, and comedian known for her effervescent stage presence, delicate voice, and winsome, wide-eyed beauty. Life and careerEdit A daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Nellie (Simon) and John Winfrey, she was born Florence Winfrey in 1896 in Washington, D.C.. She began performing as a child, when at the age of six she sang duets with her two older sisters. They eventually formed avaudeville act, calling themselves "The Mills Sisters".[2] The act did well, appearing in theaters up and down the Atlantic seaboard. Florence's sisters eventually quit performing, but Florence stayed with it, determined to pursue a career in show business. In time, she joined Ada Smith, Cora Green, and Carolyn Williams in a group called the "Panama Four," with which she had some success. She then joined a traveling black show known as the Tennessee Ten, where in 1917 she met dance director and acrobatic dancerUlysses "Slow Kid" Thompson (1888–1990), to whom she would be married from 1921 until her death.[3] whom she met in 1917 as the dancing conductor of a black jazz band known as the Tennessee Ten.[4][5] Mills became well known in New York as a result of her role in the successful Broadway musical Shuffle Along (1921) at Daly's 63rd Street Theatre (barely onBroadway), one of the events credited with beginning the Harlem Renaissance, as well as acclaimed reviews in London,Paris, Ostend, Liverpool, and otherEuropean venues. She told the press that despite her years in vaudeville, she credited Shuffle Along with launching her career.[2] After Shuffle Along Lew Leslie, a white promoter, hired Mills and Thompson to appear nightly at the Plantation Club. The revue featured Mills and a wide range of black talent including visiting performers such as Paul Robeson. In 1922, Leslie turned the nightclub acts into a Broadway show called The Plantation Revue. It opened at the Forty-eighth Street Theatre on July 22. English theatrical impresario Charles B. Cochran brought the Plantation company to London, and they appeared at the London Pavilion in spring 1923 in a show he devised called Dover Street to Dixie, with a local all-white cast in the first half and Mills starring with the all-black Plantation cast in the second half.[5][6] In 1924 she headlined at the Palace Theatre, the most prestigious booking in all of vaudeville, and became an international superstar with the hit showLew Leslie's Blackbirds (1926). Among her fans when she toured Europe was the Prince of Wales, who told the press that he had seen Blackbirds 11 times.[7] Many in the black press admired her popularity and saw her as a role model: not only was she a great entertainer but she was also able to serve as "an ambassador of good will from the blacks to the whites... a living example of the potentialities of the Negro of ability when given a chance to make good".[8] Mills was featured in national magazines, Vogue and Vanity Fair and photographed by Bassano's studios andEdward Steichen. She made a signature song from her biggest hit, "I'm a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird"; another of her hit songs was "I'm Cravin' for that Kind of Love".