Billie Allen

Billie Allen was an actress best known for helping to integrate black performers on network television. She made frequent appearances on The Phil Silvers Show in the 1950s and in commercials in the 1960s, as well as on and off Broadway, throughout her career.

The Phil Silvers Show was a CBS comedy starring Silvers as Sgt. Ernie Bilko, a con man who runs the motor pool at a small Kansas U.S. Army Camp. Allen appeared as WAC Cpl. Billie, a member of the Women’s Army Corps.

Her other television appearances included roles on Play of the Week, The Edge of Night, Route 66, Mr. Broadway, The Doctors and the Nurses, Law & Order and Car 54, Where are You? She also had parts in the telefilms The Vernon Johns Story and The Prosecuters. 

Additionally, she appeared in the films Souls of Sin; Black Like Me; Losing Ground; Winter Kills, with Jeff Bridges, John Huston and Anthony Perkins; and the 1978 classic The Wiz, starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and Richard Pryor. Allen played one of Aunt Em’s party guests in the film’s opening sequence.

Allen’s theater performances included A Raisin in the Sun; Critic’s Choice, with Henry Fonda; Blues for Mr. Charlie; and Jackie Mason’s A Teaspoon Every Four Hours, among many others. In 1973, along with actor Morgan Freeman and others, Allen was a founder of the Frank Silvera Writers Workshop in Harlem.

In the mid-1940s she moved to New York City, where she got her start as a ballerina. She also studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, and became an in-demand actress for commercials, including spots in ads for Pampers diapers and Tide detergent.

Allen died December 29, 2015, in New York City. She was 90.