Biography
Jonelle Allen is an American actress, singer, and dancer.
Born in New York City, Allen grew up in Harlem’s Sugar Hill in a neighborhood that included Duke Ellington, Sonny Rollins, and Johnny Hodges, and NAACP founder Walter White. She made her Broadway debut at the age of six in The Wisteria Trees, Joshua Logan’s Americanized adaptation of The Cherry Orchard starring Helen Hayes. As a child, she also made regular appearances on a local children’s television series, The Merry Mailman, hosted by Ray Heatherton.
Her television appearances include Match Game, Barney Miller, The Love Boat, All in the Family, Trapper John, M.D., Hill Street Blues, Cagney and Lacey, ER, and Girlfriends. She played a lesbian prison inmate in the 1975 television movie Cage Without a Key, which starred Susan Dey.
Her most notable roles are Grace, the entrepreneurial cafe owner in the old west, that she played for seven years on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, as well as the flamboyant and outspoken Doreen Jackson on the NBC soap opera, Generations and Lucinda Cavender, the vampire witch in the horror comedy film The Midnight Hour. Before her role of Doreen on Generations, Jonelle played ambitious salesgirl turned boutique manager Stacey Russell, on the short-lived primetime soap, Berrenger’s.
