Toni Vaz, stuntwoman who started the NAACP Image Awards, dies at 101

By Harrison Smith / The Washington Post

Toni Vaz, a pioneering stuntwoman and actress who created the NAACP Image Awards, promoting the work of Black artists and entertainers after growing fed up with studios and television networks that treated people of color as a punchline or an afterthought, died Oct. 4 at a retirement home in Los Angeles. She was 101.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said her great-niece Cheryl Abbott.

A daughter of Caribbean immigrants from Barbados, Ms. Vaz started out as a model, posing for photo magazines in New York before moving to Hollywood to further her career. Beginning with uncredited roles in movies like “Tarzan, the Ape Man” (1959), in which she appeared opposite a roaring lion, she worked on more than 50 films and television shows, always as an extra or stuntwoman.

Dangling from a helicopter, falling out a window or flying down the road in a runaway car, she doubled for stars including Cicely Tyson on TV’s “Mission: Impossible” and appeared in disaster movies including “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972) and “The Towering Inferno” (1974), as well as dramas such as “Anna Lucasta” (1958) and “Lady Sings the Blues” (1972).

“Her temperament was always calm and relaxed,” Ms. Abbott said in a phone interview, recalling how Ms. Vaz kept her cool even when filmmakers failed to adequately prepare her - or even obtain her consent — for a stunt. For one early movie appearance, she was instructed to “lean back on the railing,” then suddenly found herself plummeting two stories, landing on a mattress that she hadn’t realized was there. She was slightly injured in the fall, Abbott said, although there were no doctors on set to treat her: “They said, ‘Here, take a shot of whiskey, you’ll be fine.’ ”

Ms. Vaz was one of only a few Black stuntwomen working in Hollywood at the time, and she was part of a generation of Black stunt performers who fought for respect, recognition and fair pay, after years in which White stuntmen would often wear wigs and dark makeup to perform in Black roles.

Eddie Smith, a co-founder of the Black Stuntmen’s Association, noted in a 1967 interview that because he and other Black stunt performers were unable to gain entrance into the all-White stunt organization, they were paid far less than their peers. He cited Ms. Vaz’s experience in the 1966 film “The Singing Nun,” in which she doubled for Juanita Moore and “was called upon to do a hazardous jeep-driving scene” with a White stuntwoman.

“Miss Vaz was paid $40,” Mr. Smith told syndicated columnist Walter Burrell, “while the White stuntwoman received $350 — because she qualified for a stunt check.”

While looking for screen work, Ms. Vaz said she often found herself pigeonholed in roles that were marginal or demeaning, playing to White stereotypes of African American life. “The jobs Black people got were playing maids, hookers, Aunt Jemimas,” she told the Hollywood Reporter in 2019. “That upset me.”

Ms. Vaz joined the NAACP’s newly formed Beverly Hills/Hollywood branch, which was looking for ways to raise money when, in 1967, she proposed an award ceremony to spotlight and elevate the work of Black entertainers. She went on to spearhead the inaugural NAACP Image Awards, held that August in the Beverly Hilton’s International Ballroom, where awards were handed out for shows including “I Spy,” which starred Bill Cosby in a rare leading role for a Black actor on TV.

“I called it the Image Awards because I wanted a better image for the people who worked in the industry,” she told the Crisis, the NAACP’s magazine, in 2021. “I wanted to put this award show together to thank the producers for giving good roles to people of color.”

The show became an annual, nationally televised event, often described as the “Black Oscars” or the “Black Emmys,” and broadened its scope to hand out awards for music and literature as well as movies and TV. In March, Queen Latifah hosted the latest awards ceremony, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Ms. Vaz was frequently left out of historical accounts of the show, just as she was left out of the credits of movies in which she appeared as a stunt performer. Stories about the inaugural Image Awards tended to highlight the involvement of entertainers such as Sammy Davis Jr. and Maggie Hathaway, omitting the name of Ms. Vaz, who said she secured sponsors and funding for the event in addition to coming up with the concept.

After years spent seeking recognition, writing letters to NAACP officials and Hollywood A-listers, Ms. Vaz began to gain attention in the 2000s. “I was going to write a book called ‘Stolen Dreams,’ ” she told the Crisis, “but I don’t have to write that anymore.” She is now widely credited as the Image Awards’ creator and was honored at the 2021 ceremony with a Founder’s Award, presented by actress Yvette Nicole Brown.

“At a time when there were severely limited roles available to Black talent in Hollywood, a determined actress saw an opportunity to showcase our work and change the perception of African Americans in the entertainment industry,” Ms. Brown said in a video introducing Ms. Vaz. “That’s when the NAACP Image Awards was born.”

The show “gave us a platform,” Ms. Brown continued, “to see each other the way we see ourselves.”

The youngest of four children, she was born Adella Elitha Antonia Thomas in Manhattan on Dec. 11, 1922. Her parents separated when she was young; according to Ms. Abbott, Ms. Vaz’s father was killed while working as a police officer in Barbados. Her mother managed the home and — while insisting her children focus on church, school and family — refused to let a young Ms. Vaz watch movies.

By 1948, Ms. Vaz was working with the Brandford modeling agency in New York. The agency specialized in Black models and brought her assignments posing for melodramatic magazine articles, for which she was photographed in the guise of a killer, a fighter and a prostitute. She moved west after three years, working as a background actress before transitioning to stunts.

Ms. Vaz lived in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles, at a retirement community operated by the Motion Picture & Television Fund, the industry’s health and social services charity. She was twice married and divorced, to François Vaz and Wayne Ono, and leaves no immediate survivors.

Next year, she will be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“I was very lucky,” she told the Crisis, looking back on her career. “Minorities didn’t have big roles then. But now, you can be anything you want to be. You have more minorities working in acting than when I began.”