The Roscoe Lee Browne Pseudo-Centennial

If some reputable sources (The New York Times, the Associated Press, Variety, the U.S. Congress, et al.) are to be credited today would be the 100th birthday of Roscoe Lee Browne. However, Browne himself, and the Social Security Administration confirmed 1922 to have been the actual year.

Browne was an actor I grew up admiring in the ’70s. Because of his great classical chops, a terrific voice, precise diction, a certain poise and sleekness of manner, I always assumed that he was from the West Indies, and he was indeed often cast as characters from the islands or former British colonies in Africa. Browne was actually from Woodbury, New Jersey, he was simply part of that generation of black actors (like James Earl Jones, Ossie Davis, et al) who sought objective excellence at the highest levels, taking a traditional path to doing so. Like Paul Robeson before them, they read as “classical”. They embody an ideal aesthetic as opposed to one that “points a mirror”, the latter a strategy we tend to identify with “the Method”. Sadly, fewer than few go the classical route any more, fearing I guess, the stigma of being thought affected. Even the British actors from RADA all talk like they have mouths full of marbles. It’s nice to have realism in your repertoire for those occasions when you are expected to play characters who speak like that. But I have come across uncountable occasions, usually in period pieces, when this mush-mouth approach is glaringly wrong. This is a digression but it speaks to why I so dearly loved the artistry of Roscoe Lee Browne, with his dignity and evenness and aura of wisdom. Before Morgan Freeman became Hollywood’s go-to stand in for The Creator, Roscoe Lee Browne would have been the guy for that job (appropriate, too, for the son of a Baptist minister).

Browne was a graduate of historically black Lincoln University (about an hour west of Philadelphia), with postgrad studies at Columbia and the University of Florence. He served in Italy during World War 2. He taught French, English and comparative literature at the college level after school, when not making money as a wine importer. He was every inch the cultured guy he seemed on screen.

In 1956 Browne took a huge risk by abandoning his day job and working full time as a Shakespearean actor at Joe Papp’s Public Theatre. He never left the theatre entirely, but his period of greatest immersion on the stage was that first decade, before success as a screen performer began to compete for his time. Some of the other early stuff Browne was involved with beyond the Shakespeare roles included the seminal 1961 off-Broadway production of Genet’sThe Blacks, an offscreen role in the film version of Jack Gelber’s The Connection (1961, how could you mistake that voice?), understudying for Ossie Davis in his Broadway vehicle Purlie Victorious (1961), productions of Brecht on Brecht and Threepenny Opera (1962-63), the narrator on the original production of Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1963), the 1965 Broadway revival of Danton’s Death, and A Hand is on the Gate (1966), a Broadway production he devised and directed which featured himself, James Earl Jones, Moses Gunn, and Cicely Tyson et al. Later he would be known for touring the country giving poetry readings, and for starring in the original Broadway production of August Wilson’s Two Trains Running(1992).

Browne was first widely seen by Americans on the tv comedy show That Was the Week That Was, where his fine speech was subtly sent up in his role as a mock newscaster. At the same time, he made his way on the big screen in a series of notable film projects: the gimmicky but then topical Black Like Me (1964), The Comedians (1967, the Graham Greene one with Burton and Taylor, not the Genet one), Jules Dassin’sUptight (1968), Hitchcock’sTopaz (1968), the title role in William Wyler’s last film The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970), The Cowboys (1970) with John Wayne, Cisco Pike (1972), Disney’s The World’s Greatest Athlete (1973), Superfly T.N.T. (1973), and in the Sidney Poitier-Bill Cosby team-up Uptown Saturday Night (1974) opposite Paula Kelly. Mid-decade he dipped his toe in sci-fi, with a memorable voice over role in Logan’s Run (1976). Though his colleague James Earl Jones got a somewhat more high-profile voice over role in the Star Wars series as Darth Vader, Browne got to narrate the 1977 record album The Story of Star Wars.

Meanwhile starting in the early ’70s he was ubiquitous in guest starring roles on television shows like Sanford and Son, All in the Family, Good Times, Barney Miller(which won him an Emmy), Bonanza(shades of The Cowboys), The Streets of San Francisco,Starsky and Hutch, and Maude. He was also a regular on McCoy with Tony Curtis. The height of his TV fame probably occurred with his casting on Soap from 1980 to 1981 as Saunders, the Butler character who replaced Benson (Robert Guilliame) when the latter got his own spinoff series. Browne appeared on Benson, too, though as another character. He won a second Emmy for a guest starring role on The Cosby Show in the recurring character Barnabus Foster, appearing in the same role on the spinoff A Different World. He also played a recurring character on Falcon Crest, and did guest shots on Law and Order, ER, and numerous other shows in later years.

Some later films included Legal Eagles (1986), Jumpin’ Jack Flash (1986), Oliver & Company (1988), The Mambo Kings (1992), Naked in New York (1993) and of course Babe (1995) and Babe: Pig in the City (1998) as the Narrator.

One of Browne’s last credits was an episode of Will & Grace, which is an apt pivot point to mention of his sexual identity. Multiple sources describe him as a gay man, though he never came out during his lifetime. The biggest clue is her performance in Uptight, one of the few occasions when he played a character that revealed something of that side of his nature. One of his co-workers on that film Ji-Tu Cumbuka recounted being on the receiving end of unwanted attentions by Browne. The account verges on the homophobic, but on the other hand, it does sound like Browne was being a pest! Read it on Wyatt O’Brian Evans’ website here.

Whatever his birth year, Roscoe Lee Browne passed away in 2007.