Richard Roundtree, the actor who redefined African American masculinity within the films when he performed the name position in “Shaft,” one of the primary Black motion heroes, died on Tuesday at his house in Los Angeles. He used to be 81.
The purpose used to be pancreatic most cancers, mentioned his supervisor, Patrick McMinn, who mentioned that it have been recognized two months in the past.
“Shaft,” which used to be launched in 1971, used to be a few of the first of the so-called Blaxploitation films, and it made Roundtree a film megastar at 29.
The personality John Shaft is his personal guy, a personal detective who jaywalks with a bit of luck thru transferring Times Square visitors in a good-looking brown leather-based coat with the collar became up; sports activities a strong, darkish mustache someplace between walrus-style and a downturned handlebar; and assists in keeping a pearl-handled revolver within the refrigerator in his Greenwich Village duplex condominium. As Roundtree noticed in a 1972 article in The New York Times, he’s “a Black man who is for once a winner.”
In addition to catapulting Roundtree to status, the film additionally drew consideration to its theme song, performed by Isaac Hayes, which received the 1973 Academy Award for highest unique tune. It described Shaft as “a sex machine to all the chicks,” “a bad mother” and “the cat who won’t cop out when there’s danger all about.” Can you dig it? The director Gordon Parks’s gritty city cinematography served as punctuation.
A fictional product of his unenlightened pre-feminist generation, Shaft used to be residing the Playboy mag reader’s dream, with stunning girls to be had to him as keen, downright thankful, intercourse companions. And he didn’t at all times deal with them with recognize. Some referred to as him, for higher or worse, the Black James Bond.
He performed the position once more in “Shaft’s Big Score!” (1972), which bumped up the chase scenes to incorporate speedboats and helicopters and the horny girls to incorporate unique dancers and different males’s mistresses. Shaft used to be investigating the homicide of a numbers runner, the use of larger weapons and ignoring one criminal’s pleasant recommendation to “keep the hell out of Queens.”
In “Shaft in Africa” (1973), the nature posed as an Indigenous guy to show against the law ring that exploited immigrants being smuggled into Europe. Filmed in large part in Ethiopia, the second one sequel misplaced cash and ended in a CBS sequence that lasted handiest seven weeks.
But the movies had made their have an effect on. As the movie critic Maurice Peterson noticed in Essence mag, “Shaft” used to be “the first picture to show a Black man who leads a life free from racial torment.”
Richard Arnold Roundtree used to be born on July 9, 1942 (some assets say 1937), in New Rochelle, N.Y., the son of John Roundtree and Kathryn (Watkins) Roundtree, who had been known within the 1940 census as a butler and a prepare dinner in the similar family.
At New Rochelle High School, Richard performed at the faculty’s undefeated soccer staff, graduated in 1961 and attended Southern Illinois University on a soccer scholarship. But he dropped out of school in 1963 after he spent a summer season as a fashion with the Ebony Fashion Fair, a touring presentation backed by way of a number one news and tradition mag for Black readers.
He moved again to New York, labored a host of jobs and shortly started his theater occupation, becoming a member of the Negro Ensemble Company. His first position used to be in a 1967 manufacturing of “The Great White Hope,” starring because the early twentieth century’s first Black heavyweight boxing champion. A Broadway manufacturing starring James Earl Jones opened the following 12 months and received 3 primary Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
After “Shaft,” Roundtree made various possible choices in film roles. He used to be within the all-star ensemble forged, with Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner, of the crisis film “Earthquake” (1974). He performed the name position in “Man Friday” (1975), a colourful, beneficiant, in the long run extra civilized spouse to Peter O’Toole’s Seventeenth-century explorer Robinson Crusoe.
In “Inchon” (1981), which Vincent Canby in The New York Times described as having a look like “the most expensive B movie ever made,” he used to be an Army officer at the body of workers of Gen. Douglas MacArthur ((*81*) Olivier) in Korea. He starred with Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds in “City Heat” (1984) and with an enormous flying lizard in “Q” (1982).
On the small display he performed Sam Bennett, the raffish carriage driving force who courted Kizzie (Leslie Uggams) within the acclaimed mini-series “Roots” (1977). The display used to be transformational. “You got a sense of white Americans saying, ‘Damn, that really happened,’ ” Roundtree mentioned in an ABC particular celebrating the display’s twenty fifth anniversary.
Roundtree’s title continues to be related to the Seventies however he used to be simply as busy all over the following 4 many years. He used to be an amoral non-public detective in a five-episode tale arc of “Desperate Housewives” (2004); seemed in 60 episodes of the cleaning soap opera “Generations” (1990); and performed Booker T. Washington within the 1999 tv film “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years.” He used to be a big-city district lawyer within the movie “Seven” (1995) and a strong-willed Mississippi iceman in “Once Upon a Time … When We Were Colored” (1996).
After the 12 months 2000, when he used to be pushing 60, he made appearances in additional than 25 small-screen sequence (he used to be a forged member of or had routine roles in 9 of them — together with “Heroes,” “Being Mary Jane” and “Family Reunion”) and did part a dozen tv films and greater than 20 characteristic motion pictures.
In 2020, he starred as a fishing boat’s gray-bearded captain in “Haunting of the Mary Celeste,” a supernatural maritime film thriller. In 2022, he acted in an episode of “Cherish the Day,” Ava DuVernay’s romantic drama sequence.
Roundtree married Mary Jane Grant in 1963. They had two youngsters prior to divorcing in 1973. In 1980, he married Karen M. Cierna. They had 3 youngsters and divorced in 1998.
Roundtree is survived by way of 4 daughters; Kelli, Nicole, Taylor, Morgan; a son, John; and at least one grandchild.
The Shaft personality, created by way of Ernest Tidyman in a chain of Seventies novels, continued — with Hollywood alterations. Samuel L. Jackson starred as a personality with the similar title, supposedly the primary John Shaft’s nephew, in a 2000 sequel titled “Shaft.”
In 2019, another “Shaft” used to be launched, additionally starring Jackson (now mentioned to be the unique personality’s son) and Jessie T. Usher as his son, J.J. Shaft, an M.I.T.-educated cybersecurity professional. The movie felt one thing like a buddy-cops comedy, however the best thing it did, because the Variety evaluation famous, used to be to take Roundtree, “bald, with a snowy-white beard,” and “turn him into a character who’s hotter, and cooler, than anyone around him” and whose “spirit is spry, and tougher than leather.”
Orlando Mayorquin contributed reporting.