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Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4494
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, April 14, 2007 - 01:59 pm: | 
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Tony-Nominee Roscoe Lee Browne Dies at 81
by BWW News Desk
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Roscoe Lee Browne - who received a Tony nomination for his work in August Wilson's Two Trains Running - passed away on April 11 in Los Angeles at the age of 81, according to the Associated Press.
Browne, who was born on May 2nd, 1925 in Woodbury, NJ, made his Broadway debut in 1960's The Cool World. He had also been featured in the inaugural season of the New York Shakespeare Festival, in which he performed in Julius Caesar. He also appeared on Broadway in General Seeger, Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, Danton's Death, A Hand is on the Gate, and the Gershwin-scored 1983 musical My One and Only, in which he played Rt. Rev. J.D. Montgomery. He received a Tony nomination for his work as Holloway in 1992's Two Trains Running.
Before becoming an actor, he had taught literature and French at Lincoln University, and was an award-winning track star. As an actor, he was noted for his "rich voice and dignified bearing."
Film and TV work included "Will and Grace," "Law and Order," "The Shield," Babe: Pig in the City and Babe, Judas Kiss, The Mambo Kings, "Falcon Crest," "The Cosby Show" (for which he won an Emmy Award), "Soap," "All in the Family," and many more.
http://www.broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=17459
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Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4495
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, April 14, 2007 - 02:02 pm: |
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WE REMEMBER ROSCOE LEE BROWNE: Distinguished actor dies of cancer at age 81.
April 13, 2007
*Actor Roscoe Lee Browne, known for his rich baritone voice and stately demeanor, has died following a long bout with cancer. He was 81.
An Emmy Award winner and Tony nominee, Browne died early Wednesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, according to Alan Nierob, a spokesman for the family.
While Browne’s career spanned decades and encompassed everything from classic theater to TV cartoons, the actor was also a poet and a former world-class athlete in the sport of track-and-field. Browne won a 1951 world championship in the 800-yard dash.
Born May 2, 1925 in Woodbury, N.J., the son of a Baptist minister graduated from historically black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he later returned to teach comparative literature and French.
He was working as a wine salesman for an import company in 1956 when he decided to become a full-time actor. That year, he starred in the inaugural season of the New York Shakespeare Festival in a production of Julius Caesar.
In 1961, he starred in an English-language version of Jean Genet's play The Blacks. Two years later, he was The Narrator in a Broadway production of The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, a play by Edward Albee from a novella by Carson McCullers. In a front page article on the advances made by blacks in the theater, the New York Times noted that Browne's understudy was white.
He won an Obie Award in 1965 for his role as a rebellious slave in the off-Broadway Benito Cereno.
In movies, he was a spy in the 1969 Alfred Hitchcock feature “Topaz” and a camp cook in 1972's “The Cowboys,” which starred John Wayne. He also provided narration for the 1995 hit movie “Babe.”
On the small screen, he is remembered for his guest turn as a snobbish black lawyer trapped in an elevator with bigot Archie Bunker in an episode of the 1970s TV comedy “All in the Family” and the butler Saunders in the comedy “Soap.” He won an Emmy in 1986 for a guest role as Professor Foster on “The Cosby Show.”
Browne earned a Tony nomination for his 1992 Broadway role in Two Trains Running, one of August Wilson's acclaimed series of plays on the black experience. It won the Tony for best play.
http://www.eurweb.com/story/eur32787.cfm
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