JIM BROWN
(17 February 1936 - 18 May 2023)
Jim Brown was an American football player who became a civil rights activist and an actor. He made his mark as one of the greatest running backs, playing for the Cleveland Browns in the National Football League between 1957 and 1965. He built up an astonishing collection of major records but retired from football at the peak of his career to take up acting and was subsequently cast in over fifty productions. His first appearance on film was in the 1964 Western Rio Conchos, with Richard Boone, and he went on to appear in many high-profile movies.
James Nathanial Brown was born in St Simons Island in Georgia to the professional boxer Swinton Brown and his wife Theresa. He was educated at Manhasset Secondary School in New York, excelling in football, baseball, basketball, lacrosse and running. Although Syracuse University did not welcome black athletes, Brown became the sole African-American in their football team in 1953. Facing racial abuse from both students and staff, Brown still broke all sorts of sporting records. After four years in the US Army Reserve, he went professional, beginning with the 1957 National Football League draft and was in the League for nine years, and was the first NFL player to run for over 10,000 yards.
Retiring at the age of thirty, Jim Brown worked in the UK on Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen with a starry cast headed by Lee Marvin. Also for MGM, he made The Split, a heist drama with Gene Hackman and Donald Sutherland, and then worked with them again on Riot, a prison thriller. He also did Ice Station Zebra with Rock Hudson and Ernest Borgnine, after which he emerged as “the first black action star.” At Fox he appeared in 100 Rifles, Tom Gries’ Western in which Brown had sex scenes with Raquel Welch. These were shot on day one, which unsettled them as inter-racial love scenes were rare on film.
In ...tick...tick...tick.. Brown was controversially cast as an African-American man elected to be a sheriff in a small Southern town. El Condor was John Guillermin’s 1970 Western with Lee Van Cleef and Patrick O'Neal. He also made some blaxploitation movies – Slaughter and Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off, as well as a parody of the genre, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. Brown was with Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Running Man, with Fred Williamson and Richard Roundtree in Original Gangstas, and in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! he demonstrated his comic talent. He was also on television in movies and in series such as The A-Team, T.J. Hooker, Knight Rider, CHiPs and Police Story.
From early on in his career, Jim Brown had taken part in civil rights issues and encouraged other black athletes to get involved. He and other members of the Cleveland Browns helped Muhammad Ali in his fight for civil rights. In 1966 Brown founded the Negro Industrial Economic Union in aid of black minority businessmen, and as the Black Economic Union it received grants from the Ford Foundation. Later on, Brown founded the Amer-I-Can Foundation to help gang members and prisoners avoid violence by teaching them a trade. Until the end of his life he continued to support racial issues.
Jim Brown married Sue Jones in 1959 and they divorced in 1972 after having three children. He then became engaged to Diane Stanley, an 18-year-old student, although they did not marry. With his second wife Monique he has two children. His legacy will be that he was not only a great athlete, breaking all manner of sporting records, but also a very important actor for the black community, a community that he served throughout his life. He was played by Aldis Hodge in Regina King’s Oscar-nominated One Night in Miami...
MICHAEL DARVELL