Ena Hartman, a pioneering Black actress who had a regular role opposite Burt Reynolds on the 1970-71 ABC cop show Dan August, has died. She was 93.
Hartman died April 16 of natural causes at her home in Van Nuys, her goddaughter Lorraine Foxworth told The Hollywood Reporter.
Hartman also is known for her starring turn as the tough girl Carmen Simms alongside Tom Selleck, Don Marshall, Roger E. Mosley, Phyllis Davis and Marta Kristen in the cult prison-set film Terminal Island (1973), written and directed by Stephanie Rothman.
She assisted Lee J. Cobb’s character in the spy spoof Our Man Flint (1966), starring James Coburn; played a party guest in Games (1967), starring James Caan, Simone Signoret and Katharine Ross; and was a flight attendant in Airport (1970).
And in firsts for NBC in 1968, she appeared on the inaugural episode of Adam-12 and in the telefilm Prescription Murder, which starred Peter Falk in his initial outing as Columbo.
In one of the rare regular TV roles given to Black actresses back then, Hartman stood out as the smart, no-nonsense police dispatcher Katy Grant on Dan August, which starred Reynolds as the titular cop investigating homicides in his hometown of Santa Luisa, California.
However, the series, which also featured Richard Anderson and Norman Fell, lasted just one season and 26 episodes.
From left: Ned Romero, Richard Anderson, Burt Reynolds, Norman Fell and Ena Hartman from ABC’s ‘Dan August.’
Courtesy Everett Collection
Earlier, Hartman had a chance to hit it big when famed actress-singer Dorothy Dandridge picked her to play her in a planned biopic that was to star Sidney Poitier as well. Poitier, though, decided in the final stages to pass on the film, and it was never made.
(Hartman did get to be Poitier’s guest at the 1964 Academy Awards when he became the first Black man to win the Oscar for best actor.)
Later, she was said to be in the running to play Lieutenant Uhura on NBC’s Star Trek and one of the nuns in Elvis Presley’s Change of Habit (1969), but she lost out to Nichelle Nichols and Barbara McNair, respectively. (She would appear on the first-season Trek episode “The Corbomite Maneuver.”)
The daughter of sharecroppers, Gerthaline Henry was born on April 1, 1932, in Moscow, Arkansas. Raised by her grandparents, she moved to Buffalo, New York, when she was 13 to live with her mother.
She dropped out of high school to open a restaurant and would earn enough money to go to New York City, where she would adopt a stage name, become a top model in town and study drama with Josh Shelley and A Raisin in the Sun director Lloyd Richards.
Hartman participated in an NBC-sponsored talent competition for young actors and actresses, and that got her a talent contract from the network — said to be the first such deal for any Black actor. (Ebony magazine in 1962 reported that the “grooming” contract was for five years at $12,000 a year. “It’s the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said.)
In 1964, she made her onscreen debuts on an episode of Bonanza and in the sequel feature The New Interns. And after NBC, she signed a contract with Universal and was named honorary mayor of Universal City in 1968.
Hartman also showed up on such series as Profiles in Courage, The Farmer’s Daughter, Tarzan, Ironside, It Takes a Thief, Dragnet 1967, The Name of the Game, The Outsider, Ironside and, for her final onscreen credit, a 1975 episode of Police Story.
In addition to her goddaughter, survivors include her son, Doug, and daughter-in-law, Kimberly.
