The Independent (14/Apr/2007) - Obituary: Roscoe Lee Browne
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- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, John Williams, New York City, New York, Roscoe Lee Browne, San Francisco, California, Topaz (1969)
Obituary: Roscoe Lee Browne
In an acting career that spanned six decades and embraced everything from Shakespeare to Muppet Treasure Island, the versatile Roscoe Lee Browne will be remembered for many performances, but especially his beautiful work as the narrator of the 1995 film Babe, based on Dick King-Smith's book The Sheep-Pig, and its sequel Babe: Pig in the City (1998), in which he used his deep, rich voice to memorable effect.
It was that same voice that 20 years earlier had narrated The Story of Star Wars, an LP to promote the 1977 film, now a collector's item, which also featured dialogue, sound effects and John Williams's soundtrack music; some sources erroneously credit James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, as the narrator. Browne once recalled that, early in his career, a director told him that he sounded "white", to which the actor responded, "We had a white maid."
The son of a Baptist minister, Roscoe Lee was born in Woodbury, New Jersey in 1925. He graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, later returning to teach literature and French. He was also an international track star, winning the 880-yard run in the 1952 Mill-rose Games in New York. He was selling wine for an import company when, in 1956, he became a full-time actor.
He began his career in the inaugural season of the New York Shakespeare Festival, in Julius Caesar. It was directed by Joseph Papp, whose policy of casting black actors in racially mixed productions enabled, for the first time, a generation of black actors to play Shakespearian roles on the professional stage. Papp's 1962 staging of King Lear, for example, starred Frank Silvera as the King, with Browne as his wistful Fool. In 1965 Browne played Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida, his seventh appearance with the company in 10 years. In 1984 Errol Hill observed in Shakespeare in Sable: a history of black Shakespearean actors, while most of his parts were secondary, at least he was serving an apprenticeship in Shakespeare that would one day make him the superlative craftsman that he is.
Another theatrical breakthrough came with the off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's controversial drama The Blacks (1961). The cast also included Maya Angelou, Godfrey Cambridge and James Earl Jones who, in Voices and Silences, his 1993 autobiography, remembered Browne as "an intellectual, a master of poetry, a remarkable person all round."
On Broadway Browne directed and co-starred in the musical A Hand is on the Gate (1966). In 1992 he was nominated for a Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his appearance in August Wilson's Two Trains Running.
By the mid-1960s Browne had started working in films and television, and he soon commanded respect in the film world for a succession of memorable character roles. At first these included independent productions like Shirley Clarke's acclaimed The Connection (1962) but Hollywood soon beckoned with roles in Peter Glenville's The Comedians (1967), as the garrulous gossip columnist Petit Pierre, Jules Dassin's Up Tight! (1968), as Clarence, the gay police informant, Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz (1969), as the florist who doubles as an espionage agent, and William Wyler's The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970).
For his portrayal of the mortician L.B. Jones, Edward Mapp singled out Browne for praise in Blacks in American Films (1973), describing his performance as "skilful" and "multi-faceted." A co-starring role with John Wayne in the western The Cowboys (1972) was met with criticism, for Browne spoke too well in his role as the cook. In The Washington Post Browne reacted:
When a critic makes that remark, I think, if I had said "Yassuh, boss" to John Wayne, then the critic would have taken a shine to me.
Thereafter Browne jumped from one film genre to another, including blaxploitation (Superfly T.N.T., 1973), comedy (Uptown Saturday Night, 1974), and science fiction (Logan's Run, 1976). On television he became a familiar face with appearances in popular shows including The Invaders (1968), Bonanza (1972), Sanford and Son (1972), All in the Family (1972, as a snobbish lawyer trapped in an elevator with bigot Archie Bunker), The Streets of San Francisco (1973), Good Times (1974), Planet of the Apes (1974), Starsky and Hutch (1977), King (1978), Benson (1980), Hart to Hart (1980), Falcon Crest (1988), ER (1999), Law and Order (2003) and Will and Grace (2004). For his guest appearance in The Cosby Show in 1986 Browne won an Emmy.
Following his narration of the two Babe films, Browne recently narrated Garfield: a tale of two kitties (2006) and Epic Movie (2007). He also wrote poetry, some of which he performed in Behind the Broken Words, an anthology staged off-Broadway with Anthony Zerbe in 1981. In addition to his Tony nomination and Emmy award, in 1965 Browne won an Obie for his role as a rebellious slave in the play Benito Cereno.
Roscoe Lee Browne, actor: born Wood-bury, New Jersey 2 May 1925; died Los Angeles 11 April 2007
