Gertrude Hadley Jeannette (November 28, 1914[1] – April 4, 2018) was an American playwright and film and stage actress.

[4][3] In the 1960s and 1970s she appeared in Broadway productions such as The Long Dream, Nobody Loves an Albatross, The Amen Corner, The Skin of Our Teeth and Vieux Carré.

Willis Lawrence Hadley, her father, taught on a Native American reservation near Spiro, Oklahoma.

The family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas during the Great Depression, and she enrolled at the segregated Dunbar High School.

[3] In 1949, she was present at the Peekskill Riots, when the Ku Klux Klan attempted to lynch Paul Robeson.

Acting was part of the curriculum, and because of that, she studied along with notable actors such as Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis.

Among them were The Long Dream (1960), Nobody Loves an Albatross (1963), The Amen Corner (1965), The Skin of Our Teeth (1975) and Vieux Carré (1977).

[5] Jeannette was one of several prominent African American theater directors featured in the 13 minute documentary Drama Mamas: Black Women Theatre Directors In the Spotlight and Remembered, which was shown at the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival in Brooklyn, New York in March 2006.