Comments on: Lost Ones: Donyale Luna

By: Cino

Cino — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 03:43:21 +0000

Clearly, she was mixed. Back in those days…mixed and did not know anything about her background. This was not unusual among Mixed Americans of older generations.

We looked exotic, different than other Black and White Americans and because of the extreme racism from both races….Mixed people kept to themselves.

This child should have been taught to love who she was and told the facts of her racial background. To be mixed is a beautiful thing..just as being Black, White, Asian…or any other shade of the human race.

Donyale Luna was a beautiful flower of the human race. She was far bigger than a stupid term “race.”

No one can challenge her supreme beauty and gentelness. RIP angel.

By: rich

rich — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:51:02 +0000

She’s mesmerising in ‘Rock n Roll Circus’.

Such a young age to die- rest in peace, lovely luna.

By: Britasia

Britasia — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:10:11 +0000

thanks for posting so much info about a beautiul and inspirational black woman.

By: Dany

Dany — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:13:07 +0000

Wow!I never was crazy about my name, or how it was spelled anyway. When I expressed this to my mother some 30 years ago, she told me that my name holds special meaning! She told me that I was named after someone that she went to High School with and how although Donyale Luna was a few years older, she admired her style and grace!! She also showed me a newspaper article in the 70’s about this woman. I just started seaching for information about her, and now I am honored to know that I was named after someone who made great stides for african american women although that was not her goal!!!!

By: Dossier Journal » Naomi Sims 1948 – 2009: The world’s first black supermodel

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:30:55 +0000

[...] like Adrienne Fidelin, Dorothea Towles Church and Donyale Luna may have paved the way, but Halston called her the first black supermodel. She posed with Andy [...]

By: Wee

Wee — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 14:43:35 +0000

Gee, it is too clear who you are…
Seems still can’t forget about your ex-wife, it is really a shame. Mr Gee! LOL

By: don strachan

don strachan — Sun, 17 May 2009 04:16:47 +0000

For a book I am writing about Donyale, I would love to contact Karen Miller and Carla. Is there a way to do this?

By: Mandown

Mandown — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:50:39 +0000

This is an interesting article purely for the fact that this woman’s attitude to her racial identity is exactly the same of so many many black women today. These are the ones who are completely devoid of any self pride in being black. They’ll say things like their great grandmother was 1/2 Arabic just so it mitigates being black. It sickens me. These types of blacks are still seen as “negroes” by white people, yet they wanna deny being black in any way possible. Fuck them, I say. They’re not worth dealing with, especially by black women who are proud of their blackness.

This woman was beautiful but she shouldn’t be celebrated by black women at all. Her mentality is what years of slavery did to the mindsets of people and it should not be followed. Why glorify Ms Luna if she hated being black?

By: SoFrolushes

SoFrolushes — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:43:07 +0000

never heard of her before but the comments yrs later on this blog have made an interesting read

By: don strachan

don strachan — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:44:45 +0000

I dated Donyale for some months in 1963/64, before she became famous. This winter I finally wrote it up, and then as a lark I googled her, and found this site, along with so many more! I knew she had hit the big time (we got together twice in Beverly Hills in 1967), but had no idea how big she was in Europe, or that she is still regarded as an icon today. It has been a very emotional experience for me.
I (a whitey) want to comment on her denial of her roots. Two incidents come to mind. Once I took her to eat at the Famous Italian Cafe on Woodward, where I worked. The next night when I came to work, I thought the staff would be impressed. When I asked one of the waitresses how she liked Donyale, she called me aside and said, “We don’t like them coming in here.”
“She’s not Negro,” I said. “She’s Polynesian.” (Donyale had told me that, and I believed her.)
“It doesn’t matter,” said the waitress. “We don’t like them coming in.”
Another time I brought her over to my slum apartment near Wayne State University. It was late at night and the outside door was locked. I roused the manager to let us in.
The next morning he called me aside. “We don’t allow them in here,” he said.
“She’s not Negro,” I said. “She’s Polynesian.”
“Don’t matter,” he said. “We don’t allow them in.” Yep, almost identical words.
A week or two later, she came unannounced one night to visit me. The manager wouldn’t let her in.
This was 1964. The Civil Rights movement was just getting underway in the South, and it hadn’t reached Detroit yet. Donyale was not a trailblazer. I used to think she lied to me about things in her life, and eventually decided that she couldn’t separate fantasy from reality. Now I can see that she dealt with the painful aspects of her life by making up more comforting stories and proclaiming them to be true.
You figure, she was probably 6 feet tall by the age of 12, and skinny as a rail, and endured a lot of humiliation about her looks before becoming so exotically beautiful. I think she did whatever she could do to avoid further humiliationsâ€”like being turned away from her boyfriend’s apartment building.
As for continuing the charade once she was famousâ€”she had a very fragile personality. I haven’t seen any documentation for the allegation that her father was “abusive” (physically? emotionally? sexually?) and she never mentioned her family to me, but in retrospect I feel sure that *something* pretty serious happened to her in her childhood that she never recovered from.
I’d like to know more about the drug allegations. To say she was a druggie and support it with her quote about what she had gotten from LSD shows a real ignorance of drugs: LSD enhanced the lives of most people who took it in the Sixties and Seventies. She had red lines in her eyes when I saw her in Beverly Hills, but she could have just been tired. On the other hand, she was running with the cultural high-rollers, where drugs were everywhere. The obituary from the Detroit paper said she died of “undisclosed causes,” which I suspected meant drugs. Now all the websites say it was an overdose. Only one says it was accidental. Does anyone know more about this?