Veteran Toni Vaz passed away at the age of 101 on October 4, a representative for the Motion Picture & Television Fund confirmed. The actor cum stunt performer, who pioneered the NAACP Image Awards, departed at the Motion Picture Fund campus in Woodland Hills, Deadline reported. The cause of death remains unclear.
Vaz was never allowed to watch TV growing up in NYC, as her mother forbade it. Then a young girl, she headed straight to Hollywood when she turned 18, back in the 1950s. She tried her hand at acting, bagging roles like an extra in Joseph M. Newman’s Tarzan, the Ape Man for MGM, as well as Arnold Laven’s Anna Lucasta, and Henry Koster’s The Singing Nun.
Toni Vaz founded the NAACP Image Awards for Black men and women to get recognized on a national level
Not long after, Toni Vaz discovered an affinity for stunt work, rendering pioneering work as the first Black woman to do so. She stepped in for legendary Cicely Tyson on Mission: Impossible, a TV series, as well as for actresses Eartha Kitt and Juanita Moore.
According to Deadline, her career soon started taking off, taking her around the globe and garnering her over 50 screen credits and about 20,000 hours of rendition. Per the outlet, Vaz said during a 2006 tribute to the Black Stuntmen’s Association by the Las Vegas City Council:
"Before they formed this great stuntmen association, I did a lot of the work. … And we had very little pay for it. But today we’re doing much better.”
As such, unhappy with the recognition her people got at the time, Toni Vaz decided to lend her talents to the NAACP’s new Hollywood branch, at the Beverly Hills headquarters. It was then that she proposed the idea of an award show that would shed light on all the unnoticed fellow Black talent in Hollywood.
The first NAACP Image Awards was held on February 4, 1967, in the International Ballroom at the Beverly Hilton. She said to Hollywood Reporter in March 2019,
"In those days, the jobs black people got were playing maids, hookers, Aunt Jemimas. That upset me. We can play attorneys and doctors. So I thought, why don’t we change that image?”
Vaz continued, recalling the inaugural awards ceremony and the Immie Girls, models she booked to work for the award show:
"And all the Immie Girls had different nationalities, and they were dressed in their outfits. The mayor came. It was amazing."
Notably, Toni Vaz flew by unnoticed for years, as several others were credited for her groundbreaking idea, such as Maggie Hathaway and Davis Jr. By the turn of the millennium, however, Vaz got what she was owed when she was awarded her very own Image Award statuette as a token and has since been credited properly. She told the outlet of how she spent years trying to get what she deserved, saying,
"I had a list of all of the people I used to write certified letters to, and nobody would ever answer me. Never. Every time I used to see that show, for years, it used to bother me inside But I feel good. I feel good now.”
At the 50th anniversary Image Awards, Anthony Anderson introduced Toni Vaz by saying:
"We have a remarkable woman to thank for it all. … [Vaz] was saddened by the quality of roles given to Black actors. So she took action. She joined the NAACP’s Hollywood branch and helped to develop an idea for an awards show that would feature us in best way possible. She and other fought to change our image, and thus the NAACP Image Award were born.”
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Per the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, Toni Vaz is slated to posthumously earn a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2025.
According to Deadline, she is survived by her nephew, Errol Reed; a niece, Janice Powell-Bowen; and others in her extended family.
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