Hilda Simms; Actress in Title Role of Broadway’s ‘Anna Lucasta’

Hilda Simms, 75, actress best known for performing the title role in Broadway’s “Anna Lucasta.” The play, produced by the American Negro Theater in 1944, moved from Harlem to Broadway as the first mainstream drama with an all-black cast that did not deal with racial issues. Miss Simms portrayed a middle-class woman who became a prostitute and tried to regain respectability. She appeared in the films “The Joe Louis Story” in 1953 and “The Black Widow” in 1954 and was on the television series “The Nurses.” On Sunday in Buffalo, N.Y., of pancreatic cancer.