Cash, Rosalind 1938–1995

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Rosalind Cash 1938–1995

Actress

Rosalind Cash was one of the figures who best exemplified the new independence of African American film and television performers in the 1970s. “I’m not good at playing stereotypes,” she said in the Los Angeles Times. “I don’t ingratiate myself to the powers-that-be as some nice, Negro, colored, abiding person. You cannot depend on me to be that Negro that you have come to know and love, that you’re used to.” Yet her film career suffered from the lack of roles available for strong African American female performers. Many observers felt that she died without having her talents fully tapped, but in later life she became a familiar face on network television.

Cash was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on December 31, 1938. As a young woman, she took off with only #20 in her pocket to seek her fame and fortune in New York City. At first things were difficult: “I had a cold-water one-room apartment in Harlem sharing a kitchen I didn’t dare use because of the rats,” she told The Guardian. But Cash attended the City College of New York, and managed to ferret out the first stirrings of independent black theater in the city. She made her stage debut in 1958 in a production at the Harlem YMCA, performing in a play by Langsten Hughes called Soul Gone Home.

Sang in Nightclubs

Soon Cash had landed a small role in the mainstream musical Fioretto! at the New York City Center. But she still faced long years of supporting herself with jobs that paid little over the minimum wage; she worked in various positions as a store clerk, data-entry operator, hospital aide, and waitress. She also sang in nightclubs from time to time, although, she later once said (according to the Los Angeles Times) that she was only acting as if she could sing. Various other stage roles came her way, and she appeared on Broadway in The Wayward Stork in 1966.

In 1968 she landed a role in Washington, D.C., in a production of The Great White Hope, a play about the career of African American boxer Jack Johnson. The part was a choice one, but at the same time an even better opportunity opened up: a slot with the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC), a pioneering organization devoted to presenting plays by black writers and furthering the careers of black actors and theater personnel. Cash pulled out of the Washington production, having to turn over two weeks’ salary to the theater

At a Glance…

Born on December 31, 1938, in Atlantic City, NJ; died of cancer on October 31, 1995 in Los Angeles, CA. Education: Studied acting in New York in late 1950s and 1960s.

Career: Actress. Stage debut in Langston Hughes’s Soul Gone Home, 1958; Broadway debut in The Wayward Stork, 1966; joined Negro Ensemble Company, 1968; film debut in Klute, 1971; starring role in The Omega Man, 1971; frequent film appearances, early 1970s; starred in television version of signature stage role. Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, 1975; appeared in television film Sister, Sister, written by Maya Angelou, 1982; recurring role on television soap opera General Hospital early 1990..

Awards: Phoenix Award, Black American Cinema Society, 1987; inducted into Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, 1992.

involved, so that she could return to New York and join the NEC. She was one of the company’s founding members.

Cash emerged as a star of the company, appearing in several productions her first year, including a play called Kongi’s Harvest by the South African writer Wole Soyinka. The following year she played the lead in a production of Lonne Elder’s Ceremonies of Dark Old Men, one of the most-performed African American theatrical works of the day. Cash would reprise the role in a 1975 television version of the play. She continued to appear with the NEC through the 1970s, and also landed high-profile roles with other theatrical organizations; in 1973 she took on the role of Goneril in Shakespeare’s King Lear in a New York Shakespeare Festival production. That role, too, she would later play on national television.

Starred Opposite Charlton Heston

Hollywood had its eye on the talented young actress, however, and the focus of Cash’s efforts gradually shifted in that direction. After a small part in 1971’s Klute, she broke through with the female lead role in the science-fiction action thriller The Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston. The role, in one of the first Hollywood action films to feature a black lead character, was one that several leading black actresses of the day had set their sights on. Cash not only won the role, but blew audiences away with her powerful performance. “Her first appearance in the film is unforgettable,” noted writer Stephen Bourne in The Independent. “Strong and aggressive, she looked ready to steal the film form under Heston’s nose…” The second half of the film, unfortunately, toned down Cash’s character. Still, she was named to the annual Top Ten Stars of Tomorrow list compiled by the industry firm Quigley Publications, the first African American named since the list had been created in 1941.

For several years, other lead roles came Cash’s way. In the black-oriented murder mystery Melinda (1972), she had, in the words of film historian Donald Bogle, “her best role of this period as a woman on the edge, holding on for dear life, struggling to keep a relationship with a man who hardly seemed her equal.” She also landed roles in mainstream hits like The New Centurions (1972) and Uptown Saturday Night (1974), but these came at a price. Cash was cast as a good-natured prostitute; the role did not appeal to her, but like other serious African American actresses of the 1970s, she found that parts suited to her talents were very hard to come by.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Cash turned her attention to television, winning guest slots on such series as “Starsky and Hutch,” “Police Woman,” “Ko-jak,” and “Hill Street Blues.” In 1977 she appeared opposite O.J. Simpson in the made-for-television movie A Killing Affair, in which Simpson played a police officer who has an affair with a white co-worker. She chose her film roles carefully, appearing mostly in projects that she found significant. In Wrong Is Right (1982), she played the first black woman to become U.S. Vice President. That year she was also featured in Sister, Sister, a film written by poet Maya Angelou that drew on her full range as an actress perhaps more than any other; she co-starred with Diahann Carroll and Irene Cara in a story of the reunion of three adult sisters. Sister, Sister earned Cash a nomination for an NAACP Image Award, as did Go Tell It On the Mountain (1986), based on a novel by James Baldwin.

Landed Ongoing Soap Opera Role

Cash gradually gained greater recognition in the late 1980s and early 1990s, winning induction into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1992. Television work continued to come steadily, with appearances on The Cosby Show, thirtysomething, and other series. The one-time cold-water-flat-dweller finally found lucrative steady employment with a recurring role on the venerable daytime soap opera General Hospital, on which she played the matriarch of an extended African American family.

In middle age, Cash was respected by her peers and seemed content with her maverick’s achievements. “Maybe I’ve handled it all wrong, but I’ve gotten what I wanted to get out of it,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “That’s a sense of being true to myself. I came to a point where I said I know there are things I am not going to do for money.” Sharing a suburban Los Angeles home with a multimedia artist, Cash cultivated a wide variety of hobbies, including painting, writing poetry, playing the guitar, and gardening. Tragically, she was stricken with cancer in 1995, and died on October 31st of that year.