Roscoe Lee Browne 1925–2007

Actor, director, writer

Roscoe Lee Browne's rich and soothing baritone was instantly recognizable to many film and television viewers who did not know his name. The award-winning stage, film, and television actor was perhaps best known for his narration of the 1995 hit film Babe. Browne turned to acting after winning several international track competitions, making his stage debut with Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival in 1956. In films and on television Browne's urbane style and acerbic wit helped transform the image of black actors. On stage he earned critical acclaim for his performances in the plays of Derek Walcott and August Wilson. His voice work was heard in numerous recorded books, documentaries, animated films, and TV shows.

Left Academia for the Stage

The son of a Baptist minister, Roscoe Lee Browne was born on May 2, 1925, in Woodbury, New Jersey. During his youth in Woodbury he was both a promising athlete and a voracious reader. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, Browne ran track for the historically black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, graduating in 1946. He continued his studies at Middlebury College in Vermont, at Columbia University, and at the University of Florence, Italy, before returning to Lincoln as an instructor of French and comparative literature. He appeared headed for a career in academia.

Although Browne was a track champion, winning the 1949 Amateur Athletic Union 1,000-yard title and two American indoor championships running for the New York Pioneer Club, it was not until 1951 that he garnered acclaim as an international track star. That year in Paris he set a world record in the 800-yard dash and won the world championship. The following year he had just won the 880-yard run at the Millrose Games in New York when an injury ended his athletic career. Browne parlayed his track victories into a job as a wine and liquor sales representative, first for Columbia National and then for Schenley Import Corporation. However, he became disillusioned with selling liquor to Harlem bars.

One night at dinner with friends in 1956 Browne announced that he had decided to pursue an acting career. As reported in the Washington Post, his friend, the opera singer Leontyne Price, warned him, “They'll have you bearing torches,” in reference to the limited roles available to black actors. Browne's previous experience included a television appearance in the Hallmark Hall of Fame production “Green Pastures” in 1952, but at age thirty-six he had no training as an actor. Joseph Papp, however, was determined to include black actors in his newly formed New York Shakespeare Festival Company. The day after his dinner announcement Browne auditioned for the role of Soothsayer in Julius Caesar. He was hired, and during the Festival's inaugural season Browne also played Pindarus in Julius Caesar and appeared in The Taming of the Shrew. In 1957 Browne played Aaron in Titus Andronicus and toured New York State as Balthazar in Romeo and Juliet. The following season he understudied as Othello. In all Browne spent seven seasons with the Shakespeare Festival, playing the role of the Fool in King Lear in 1962. He also performed in Shakespeare productions for CBC Radio.

In a 1989 interview Browne told Janice Arkatov of the Los Angeles Times: “I remember when I chose acting I thought, ‘This is it—for the time being.’ I didn't think I was finished yet. I still don't. I keep thinking about what I should be doing [next]. I might be a writer.”

Debuted on Broadway

Browne made his Broadway debut in 1960 in A Cool World. It closed after one day. Although he appeared in a number of other unsuccessful Broadway productions during the 1960s, in 1963 he played the narrator—with a white understudy—in Edward Albee's The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. In 1961 Browne played the lead with James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett Jr., and Cicely Tyson in the original off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's The Blacks, about the devastations wrought by colonialism. It ran for more than 1,400 performances. In 1965 Browne won an Obie Award for his performance as the slave Babu in Robert Lowell's adaptation of Herman Melville's Benito Cereno. Browne also starred in the television version, a project that increased his fame through exposure to a national audience.

In 1966 Browne wrote, directed, and costarred in A Hand Is on the Gate: An Evening of Negro Poetry and Folk Music, with Tyson and Jones, earning two Tony nominations. Three years later in Los Angeles Browne teamed up with actor Anthony Zerbe in Behind the Broken Words for an evening of dramatic readings and poetry, including some of Browne's own poems. Browne and Zerbe performed their spoken-word program over the following three decades.

At a Glance …

Born May 2, 1925, in Woodbury, NJ; died April 11, 2007, in Los Angeles, CA; son of Sylvanus Browne and Lovie Lee. Military Service: U.S. Army, World War II. Education: Lincoln University, BA, 1946; studied at Middlebury College, Columbia University, University of Florence.

Career: Lincoln University, PA, instructor of French and comparative literature, 1949-52; film and television actor and narrator, 1952-2007; stage actor, 1956-2003; New York Shakespeare Festival, actor, 1956-58, 1962-63, 1965, 1967; A Hand Is on the Gate: An Evening of Negro Poetry and Folk Music, author, director, actor, 1966, 1976-77; Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven, CT, company member, 1966-67; Pittsburgh Playhouse, PA, company member, 1966-67; Playhouse in the Park, Cincinnati, OH, company member, 1966-67; spoken-word recording artist, 1967-2003; New Theatre for Now, Los Angeles, CA, company member, 1969-70; Behind the Broken Words, author, performer, 1969-2002; American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco, CA, company member, 1988-89.

Selected memberships: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Actors Equity Association; KPFK Los Angeles, Pacifica Radio, trustee; Los Angeles Free Public Theatre, trustee; Millay Colony for the Arts, trustee.

Selected awards: Obie Award for best actor, for Benito Cereno, 1965; Los Angeles Drama Critics, Best Actor Award, for The Dream on Monkey Mountain, 1970; Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, 1977; Emmy Award, outstanding guest performer in a comedy series, for “The Card Game” episode of The Cosby Show, 1986; Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, for Joe Turner's Come and Gone, 1989.

In 1971 Browne played James Baldwin in a dramatization of Baldwin's dialogue with Margaret Mead, “A Rap on Race.” His performance as Makak in the 1971 premiere of Walcott's Dream on Monkey Mountain won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Best Actor Award. Browne told Arkatov about playing Bynum, an elder statesman probably born into slavery, in Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone: “Whether one knows it or not, one does have race memories. If the character has to experience pain, [those memories] make the pain easily available.”

Browne returned to Broadway in 1983 in the smash musical My One and Only, singing “Kicking the Clouds Away.” His last Broadway performance was as Holloway in Wilson's Two Trains Running in 1992, which garnered him a Tony nomination for best actor. In 1997 Browne starred as both Oedipus and the narrator in the touring production of Gospel at Colonus.

Became a Screen Actor

For most his career Browne moved back and forth between the stage, film, and television. His first screen role was in Shirley Clarke's acclaimed film The Connection in 1961. By the end of the decade he was appearing regularly in films. In William Wyler's last film, The Liberation of L. B. Jones, Browne played the title role of a mortician who confronts racism with dignity and authority. According to his biography on the IMDb Web site, when a director told Browne that he sounded “white,” Browne quipped: “We had a white maid.” When a critic complained that as the camp cook in The Cowboys Browne “spoke too well to be believable,” Browne replied: “I think if I had said ‘Yassuh, boss’ to John Wayne then the critic would have taken a shine to me.” In that classic film Browne's character overcame the racism of a group of teenage cowboys to become their role model. One of his best screen roles was as the hypocritical congressman in Sidney Poitier's Uptown Saturday Night. Many first heard Browne's voice when he narrated The Story of “Star Wars,” a recording made to promote the 1977 movie and now a collector's item.

From 1962 on Browne made numerous guest appearances in television series. In a famous episode of All in the Family, Browne portrayed a snobbish black lawyer trapped in an elevator with the bigot Archie Bunker. He costarred in the 1975 NBC series McCoy. Between 1979 and 1981 Browne played Saunders the butler in the comedy series Soap. He had a recurring role as Dr. Barnabas Foster on The Cosby Show and A Different World, and his performance on the former garnered him a 1986 Emmy and an NAACP Image Award. In 1986 Browne was also nominated for an Emmy for outstanding single performance as a supporting actor in a series, for an episode of Barney Miller. In 1989 he was nominated for a Soap Opera Digest Award as outstanding primetime villain in Falcon Crest. He was also nominated for Emmys for his roles in Falcon Crest and Spider-Man. Browne played Frederick Douglass in Steve Allen's history talk show Meeting of the Minds on PBS and appeared in such popular network series as ER, The Shield, and Will & Grace. In 2000 Browne played Polonius in Campbell Scott's Hamlet for the Odyssey TV Network.

Browne was also well known for his spoken-word performances. He narrated numerous documentaries and animated films and television programs. In 2003 he was a reader for the acclaimed HBO documentary Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives. Browne performed as a speaker in symphonic works with the Boston Pops, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. He recorded numerous audio books, and his recording of love poems, Murmurs of Love, received critical acclaim. In the last years of his life Browne's voice was heard on radio and television commercials.

Browne never married. He died on April 11, 2007, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, following a long battle with cancer. His last works were the narrations for Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties and Epic Movie. A memorial service was held at the Church of St. Charles Borromeo in New York City. Actor Laurence Fishburne organized a memorial at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. The Roscoe Lee Browne Scholarship Fund assisted African-American students of theater, literature, and French and established an annual residency in poetry at the Millay Colony for the Arts in New York.

Browne's Los Angeles Times obituary quoted Poitier, who observed: “He was one of the most remarkable presences on stage, on film, on television…. This is the only person I know who could recite, without anything written in front of him, hundreds of poems…. [He] would perform, he would read, he would discuss, he would analyze poetry. He was a remarkable person in that regard, in addition to being a consummate actor.”

Selected works

Films

The Connection, 1962.

Topaz, 1969.

The Liberation of L. B. Jones, 1970.

Ra, 1971.

The Cowboys, 1972.

Uptown Saturday Night, 1974.

Legal Eagles, 1986.

Oliver & Company, 1988.

The Mambo Kings, 1992.

Babe, 1995.

Babe: Pig in the City, 1998.

One Shot: The Life and Work of Teenis Harris, 2001.

Treasure Planet, 2002.

Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, 2006.

Epic Movie, 2007.

Television

“Green Pastures,” Hallmark Hall of Fame (also known as Hallmark Television Theatre), 1952.

“Benito Cereno,” Festival of the Arts (also known as NET Playhouse), 1965.

History of the Negro People, 1965.

Swing Out, Sweet Land, 1970.

McCoy, 1975-76.

Miss Winslow and Son, 1979.

Soap, 1980-81.

“For Us, the Living: The Story of Medgar Evers,” American Playhouse, 1983.

Falcon Crest, 1988.

Gordon Parks: Moments Without Proper Names, 1988.

Spider-Man, 1995-99.

(Narrator) Galapagos: Beyond Darwin, 1996.

“Redd Foxx: Say It Like It Is,” Biography, 2000.

The Tulsa Lynching of 1921: A Hidden Story, 2000.

Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives, 2003.

Happy Birthday Oscar Wilde, 2004.

Tales of a Fly on the Wall, 2004.

July '64, 2006.

Recordings

Enjoyment of Poetry: Memorial Program for Claude McKay, Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature, 1967.

Poems, by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature, 1968.

The Story of “Star Wars,” 1978.

Caribbean, Random House Audio, 1989.

Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story, Listening Library, 1989.

Audio Bible, World Bible Publishing, 1991.

(With Joe Morton) The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Simon & Schuster Audio, 1992.

Kwanzaa Folktales, by Gordon Lewis, Warner Audio, 1994.

The Complete Sonnets of William Shakespeare: With “A Lover's Complaint” and Selected Songs, Dove Books Audio, 1996.

The Poetry of Robert Frost, Dove Books Audio, 1996, New Millennium Audio, 2001.

Masterpieces of Modern Short Fiction, Audio Literature, 1998.

The Haunting of Hill House, New Star Media, 1999.

Murmurs of Love, Creative Records, 1999.

The Bible: Old Testament, King James Version, Audio Literature, 2001.

The Poetry of Walt Whitman, New Millennium Audio, 2001.

KJV on Cassette: New Testament, Nelson Bibles, 2003.

Sources

Books

“Roscoe Lee Browne,” in Contemporary Theatre, Film, and Television, Vol. 73, Thomson Gale, 2007.

Periodicals

Guardian (London), June 20, 2007, p. 37.

Hollywood Reporter, April 12, 2007, p. 4.

Independent (London), April 14, 2007.

Los Angeles Times, May 9, 1989, p. 1; April 12, 2007, p. B7.

New York Times, April 12, 2007, p. C15.

San Francisco Chronicle, November 24, 2003, p. D2.

Sentinel (Los Angeles), February 19, 1999, p. B7.

Variety, April 16, 2007, p. 88.

Washington Post, April 13, 2007, p. B7.

Online

“Actor Roscoe Lee Brown Dies at 81 in Los Angeles,” International Herald Tribune, http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/11/america/NA-GENUS-Obit-Roscoe-Lee-Browne.php (accessed October 24, 2007).

“Roscoe Lee Brown,” Hollywood.com,http://www.hollywood.com/celebrity/Roscoe_Lee_Browne/199377#fullBio (accessed October 24, 2007).

“Roscoe Lee Browne,” Internet Movie Database,http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001975/ (accessed October 24, 2007).

“Roscoe Lee Browne Biography,” The History Makers, http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=1319&category=EntertainmentMakers (accessed October 24, 2007).

“Roscoe Lee Browne Biography (1925-),” Film Reference,http://www.filmreference.com/film/82/Roscoe-Lee-Browne.html (accessed October 24, 2007).

—Margaret Alic