In Remembrance: Ossie Davis

     Ossie Davis, the prominent black actor of stage and screen, also known for his writing and directing ability through the past five decades, has died February 4, 2005 at the age of 87. 

     Raiford Chatman Davis was born to Laura Cooper and Kince Davis on Dec. 18, 1917, in Cogdell, Ga. and enjoyed a childhood growing up in Waycross. He earned the nickname “Ossie” when friends and neighbors misunderstood his mother's dialectal pronunciation of his initials "R.C." Davis was well schooled and possessed a burgeoning interest in theater. He attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he was encouraged to pursue an acting career. Davis was eager to develop his talents and his artistic pursuits led him to New York, studying for some time at Columbia University.  

     Davis' career began in 1939, as a writer and an actor with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem and he had the opportunity to meet a number of influential civil rights activists and writers, including W.E.B. DuBois and Langston Hughes. Davis made his acting debut in the play Joy Exceeding Glory (1941), but Davis knew his attention to theater would quickly change. He joined the United States Army during World War II, serving from 1942 to 1945 as a surgical technician in Liberia tending to both wounded troops and locals, writing and producing shows in his free time.

     Upon his return home from the war Davis focused once more on his acting career. In 1946, Davis made his Broadway debut in Jeb, a play about a returning soldier, opposite actress Ruby Dee. The two soon began carrying on a relationship both on and off stage. In December 1948, on a day off from rehearsals from another play, The Smile of the World, Davis and Dee took a bus to New Jersey to get married. They were married for 50 plus years and were parents to three children.

     Davis made his Hollywood debut in No Way Out (1950), supporting Sidney Poitier (also making his film debut) and wife Ruby Dee in a powerful drama steeped in racial discrimination. Another of Davis’s early films was Grace Kelly’s film debut, Fourteen Hours (1951). He played a cab driver who watches the drama unfold as Richard Basehart’s character threatens to jump to his death off of the ledge of a New York hotel. He also had a small role in 1953’s The Joe Louis Story, starring Coley Wallace. However, 10 years would pass before Davis would be seen on the big screen again in 1963’s Gone Are the Days!, a satire on the historical and psychological significance of segregation. The movie was significant to Davis as it was his adaptation of his own acclaimed play Purlie Victorious, which had enjoyed a successful run from September 1961 to May 1962 on Broadway. Davis would soon appear in other films such as The Cardinal (1963) and The Hill (1965). In Sydney Pollack’s sly Western comedy, The Scalphunters (1968), Davis was a perfect match for Burt Lancaster as the highly educated slave, Joseph Winfield Lee. At the time, his role as Lee was considered one of the best of his career.

     Davis chose to place himself behind the camera as the 70’s began. In 1970, he directed his first feature film, Cotton Comes to Harlem, a fast-moving blaxploitation crime drama about two unorthodox black cops for which he also co-wrote the screenplay and songs. He soon followed with Nice Girl (1972) and the riveting Gordon’s War (1973), which stared Paul Winfield as a Vietnam vet who takes on drug dealers and pimps in his neighborhood. Davis made news headlines in 1976 by directing Countdown at Kusini (co-produced with his wife), the first American feature film to be shot entirely in Africa by black professionals. 

     Director Spike Lee invited Davis to work on a number of his films including Do the Right Thing (1989), a brilliant movie exposing modern racial tensions, Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992), starring Oscar-nominated Denzel Washington in the title role, and Get on The Bus (1996).

     Other films in which Davis appeared include 1985’s Avenging Angel, Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), Grumpy Old Men (1993), I’m Not Rappaport (1996), the cult hit Bubba Ho-Tep (2002), playing President John F. Kennedy to Bruce Campbell’s Elvis, who both battle against a souls stealing mummy, and 2003’s Baadasssss, directed by Mario Van Peebles.

     Davis also performed in many Broadway productions, including Jamaica (1957), Anna Lucasta, The Wisteria Trees, Green Pastures, and the stage version of I'm Not Rappaport. He was also widely acclaimed for his role in A Raisin in the Sun (1959). He also did superior work in several TV shows such as The Defenders from 1963-65, and Evening Shade from 1990-94, and had 3 Emmy-nominated performances in a miniseries including King (1978), and 1997’s Miss Ever’s Boys.

     He and wife Ruby Dee are both highly recognized citizens in the fight for civil and human rights. Davis gave the eulogy at the funeral of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. He was named to the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame with wife in 1989 and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004, along with Elton John, Joan Sutherland, John Williams, Warren Beatty and wife Ruby Dee.

     Davis was currently filming Retirement in Miami, slated for release in 2006.

-John L. Gibbon