Roscoe Lee Browne
Emmy- and Tony-nominated actor Roscoe Lee Browne died of cancer on Wednesday, April 11, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Born on May 2, 1925, in Woodbury, N.J., Browne began acting in the mid-1950s. In 1961, he starred in the English-language version of Jean Genet’s play The Blacks, and two years later he was the Narrator in a Broadway production of Edward Albee’s adaptation of Carson McCullers‘ novella The Ballad of the Sad Cafe.
His numerous film roles include those of a spy in Alfred Hitchcock’s Topaz (1969), a cook in the John Wayne Western The Cowboys (1972), and one of the leads in William Wyler’s last film, the underappreciated social drama The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970).
Browne also put his booming voice to good use by narrating several motion pictures, including the 1995 Oscar-nominated comedy Babe.
On television, he appeared in made-for-TV movies and guested in numerous series, including All in the Family (as a lawyer trapped in an elevator with bigot Archie Bunker), Hart to Hart, The Cosby Show (for which Browne won an Emmy), and Will & Grace.
Browne’s best supporting actor Tony nomination came for his performance in August Wilson’s 1992 Tony-winning play Two Trains Running. Discussing Browne’s work in the play, the New York Times remarked on “the wry perspective of one who believes that human folly knows few bounds and certainly no racial bounds. The performance is wise and slyly life-affirming.”
Off screen, Browne wrote poetry. For three decades, he and his Liberation of L.B. Jones co-star Anthony Zerbe staged a poetry anthology, Behind the Broken Words, that included works by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and William Butler Yeats, plus some of Browne’s own creations.
Roscoe Lee Browne was 81.
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