Roscoe Lee Browne

Roscoe Lee Browne (May 2, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American actor and director. He resisted playing stereotypically black roles, instead performing in several productions with New York City's Shakespeare Festival Theater, Leland Hayward's satirical NBC series That Was the Week That Was, and a poetry performance tour of the United States in addition to his work in television and film. He is perhaps best known for his role as Saunders in Soap (1980-81).

In 1976, Browne was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Comedy or Drama Series for his work on ABC's Barney Miller. In 1986, he won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Performer in a Comedy Series for his work on NBC's The Cosby Show. In 1992, he received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance as "Holloway" in August Wilson's Two Trains Running.

In 1995, he received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program for his performance as The Kingpin in Spider-Man.

Browne was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1977 and posthumously inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2008.

Born in Woodbury, New Jersey, Browne was the fourth son of Baptist minister Sylvanus S. Browne and his wife Lovie (née Lovie Lee Usher). He graduated from Woodbury Junior-Senior High School in 1939. Browne attended historically black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1946, his college career being interrupted by his wartime service.

During World War II, Browne served in Italy with the United States Army's 92nd Infantry Division and organized the Division's track and field team. After the war, he undertook postgraduate work under the GI Bill at Middlebury College, Columbia University, and the University of Florence. A middle-distance runner, he won two Amateur Athletic Union 1,000-yard national indoor championships.

He occasionally returned to Lincoln University between 1946–52 to teach English, French, and comparative literature. Upon leaving academia, he earned a living for several years selling wine for Schenley Import Corporation. In 1956, he left his job with Schenley to become a full-time professional actor.

In 1950 and 1951 he toured Europe (as a half-miler) with a USA Track and Field team.

Acting

Despite the apprehensions of his friends, in the summer of 1956, Browne managed to land the roles of The Soothsayer and Pindarus in Julius Caesar, and one of Petruchio's servants in "The Taming of the Shrew" directed by Stuart Vaughan and produced by Joseph Papp for New York City's first Shakespeare in the Park. More work with the NY Shakespeare Festival Theater followed. Browne voiced an offscreen part as camera operator J.J. Burden in The Connection (1961), his first movie role. In The Cowboys (1972), in a role as a camp cook, he led a group of young cowhands avenging the death of John Wayne's character in the movie.

Browne was much in demand for narration and voice-over parts in film and on commercial sound recordings. In 1977, Browne narrated a record album, The Story of Star Wars, which presented an abridged version of the events depicted in the first released film using the dialogue and sound effects. The recording was produced by George Lucas and Alan Livingston.

Browne was determined not to accept the stereotypical roles routinely offered to African-American actors. He also wanted to do more than act and narrate. In 1966, he wrote and made his directorial stage debut with A Hand Is On The Gate, starring Cicely Tyson, James Earl Jones, and Moses Gunn. A lifelong bachelor who coveted his privacy in the turbulent decades of the civil rights revolution, Browne avoided participation in public protests, preferring instead to be "more effective on stage with metaphor...than in the streets with an editorial".

His stage success brought him to the attention of producer Leland Hayward, and in 1964 he began a regular stint as a cast member on Hayward's satirical NBC-TV series That Was the Week That Was. Starting in the late 1960s, Browne was a frequent guest star on TV in both comedy and dramatic shows such as Mannix, All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, Sanford and Son, A Different World and dozens of others. In 1980, he guest-starred in an episode of Benson with Robert Guillaume. Later that year, he joined the regular cast of Benson's parent show Soap where he played Saunders, the erudite butler who replaces Benson. Browne appeared as Professor Foster on The Cosby Show in 1986, winning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series.

He and fellow actor Anthony Zerbe toured the United States with their poetry performance piece Behind the Broken Words. It included readings of poetry, some of it written by Browne, as well as performances of comedy and dramatic works.

Browne found additional success performing in the plays of August Wilson, both on Broadway and at the Pittsburgh Public Theater. He was described as having "a baritone voice like a sable coat", speaking the King's English with a strong mid-Atlantic accent. To someone who once said Browne sounded "too white", he replied, "I'm sorry, I once had a white maid." Four years before his death, Browne narrated a series of WPA slave narratives in the HBO film, Unchained Memories (2003).

Directing

Browne's directorial credits include a piece called An Evening of Negro Poetry and Folk Music at the Delacorte Theatre and the Public Theatre in New York City in 1966. It was also produced as A Hand Is on the Gate at the Longacre Theatre in New York City in 1966. The production was revived at the Afro-American Studio in New York City, running from 1976 to 1977.

Some year-of-birth records, including the Social Security Death Index, report Browne born on May 2, 1922, while other sources claim that Browne's date of birth was three years later, on May 2, 1925. Those sources include The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Variety, the Associated Press and several others, including a Congressional Resolution.

In an undated videotaped interview with Camille Cosby for the National Visionary Leadership Project (NVLP), Browne said: "I was born, Camille, so they say, May 2, 1922, in Woodbury, New Jersey."

Browne died of stomach cancer at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in the morning of April 11, 2007, aged 84. He never married and had no children.

He was remembered for his contributions in a New York Times encomium by Frank Crohn of the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society:

We mourn the loss of our long-time Trustee and faithful friend. He was always to be counted upon to be supportive of the aims and purposes of the Society. He filled our lives with the soft sound of poetry as only he could recite it. Now the stage is empty and the lights are low.

Film

Television

• The Taming of the Shrew, New York Shakespeare Festival, East River Park Amphitheater, New York City, 1956.
• Soothsayer and Pindarus, Julius Caesar, New York Shakespeare Festival, East River Park Amphitheater, 1956.
• Aaron, Titus Andronicus, New York Shakespeare Festival, Theatre of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church, New York City, 1957.
• Balthazar, Romeo and Juliet, New York Shakespeare Festival, New York City, 1957.
• Cothurnus, Aria da Capo, Theatre Marquee, New York City, 1958.
• Understudy for title role, Othello, New York Shakespeare Festival, Belvedere Lake Theatre, New York City, 1958.
• Royal Baron, The Cool World, Eugene O'Neill Theatre, New York City, 1960.
• Understudy for title role, Purlie Victorious, Cort Theatre, New York City, 1961.
• Archibald Wellington, The Blacks: A Clown Show, St. Mark's Playhouse, New York City, 1961–62.
• Corporal, General Seeger, Lyceum Theatre, New York City, 1962.
• Deacon Sitter Morris, Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright, Booth Theatre, New York City, 1962–63.
• Fool, King Lear, New York Shakespeare Festival, Delacorte Theatre, Public Theatre, New York City, 1962.
• Brecht on Brecht (revue), Theatre de Lys, now Lucille Lortel Theatre, New York City, 1962, then Arena Stage, Washington, DC, performed as a staged reading at Sheridan Square Playhouse, New York City, and at Delacorte Theatre, Public Theatre, all 1963.
• Autolycus, The Winter's Tale, New York Shakespeare Festival, Delacorte Theatre, Public Theatre, 1963.
• Narrator, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, Martin Beck Theatre, New York City, 1963.
• Street singer, The Threepenny Opera, Arena Stage, 1963.
• Babu, Benito Cereno, American Place Theatre, New York City, beginning 1963, later produced as part of a double-bill titled The Old Glory, Theatre of St. Clement's Church, New York City, 1964.
• Hell Is Other People (readings), Theatre at Carnegie Hall, New York City, 1964.
• Male lead, The Empty Room, Village South Theatre, New York City, 1964.
• St. Just, Danton's Death, Vivian Beaumont Theatre, Lincoln Center, New York City, 1965.
• Ulysses, Troilus and Cressida, New York Shakespeare Festival, Delacorte Theatre, Public Theatre, 1965.
• Beyond the Fringe, Goodspeed Opera House, East Haddam, CT, 1966.
• Babu, Benito Cereno, Playhouse in the Park, Cincinnati, OH, 1966.
• The gardener, Sodom and Gomorrah, Playhouse in the Park, 1966.
• Mendoza, Man and Superman, Playhouse in the Park, 1966.
• Sheridan Whiteside, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven, CT, 1966.
• An Evening of Negro Poetry and Folk Music, Delacorte Theatre, Public Theatre, 1966; produced as A Hand Is on the Gate, Longacre Theatre, New York City, 1966; revived at Afro-American Studio, New York City, 1976–77.
• Mosca, Volpone, New York Shakespeare Festival, Mobile Theatre, New York City, 1967.
• Makak, The Dream on Monkey Mountain, Center Theatre Group, Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, 1970, then St. Mark's Playhouse, 1971.
• A Rap on Race, New Theatre for Now, Los Angeles, 1971–72.
• As You Like It, Pilgrimage Theatre, Los Angeles, 1973.
• Ephraim Cabot, Desire Under the Elms, The Marshall Migatz Memorial Season, Academy Festival Theatre, Lake Forest, Illinois, 1974.
• Behind the Broken Words (poetry reading), With Anthony Zerbe. Washington Theatre Club, Washington, DC, 1974, revived at American Place Theatre, 1981, and Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Denver, CO, 2002.
• Babu, Benito Cereno, American Place Theatre, 1976.
• Albert Perez Jordan, Remembrance, New York Shakespeare Festival, Other Stage, Public Theatre, New York City, 1979.
• Pantomime, Goodman Theatre, Chicago, 1981–82.
• Right Reverend J. D. Montgomery, My One and Only, St. James Theatre, New York City, 1983–84.
• M. Noirtier, The Count of Monte Cristo, Eisenhower Theatre, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DC, 1985.
• Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Los Angeles, 1989, then Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Pittsburgh, PA, 1989–90.
• Holloway, Two Trains Running, Eisenhower Theatre, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 1991, then Walter Kerr Theatre, New York City, 1992.
• House of Flowers, as Roscoe Lee Brown. City Center Encores!, City Center Theatre, New York City, 2003.

Recordings

Narrated the Nativity Story on a Christmas card and cassette tape alongside Glenda Hayes who sung "Silent Night".

Radio appearances

• Native villager, The Endless Road, CBS Radio Workshop, CBS, 1956.
• Performer of Shakespearean roles for CBC Radio.

Writings

• An Evening of Negro Poetry and Folk Music (readings), Delacorte Theatre, Public Theatre, 1966, produced as A Hand Is on the Gate, Longacre Theatre, New York City, 1966, revived at Afro-American Studio, New York City, 1976–77.
• Behind the Broken Words (poetry reading), Washington Theatre Club, Washington, DC, 1974, revived at American Place Theatre, New York City, 1981, and Denver Center for the Performing Arts, 2002.