LOUIS GOSSETT JR.
(27 May 1936 – 29 March 2024)
Hard to believe, but Louis Gossett Jr was the first black man to win the Oscar for best supporting actor, laying the path for Denzel Washington, Cuba Gooding Jr, Morgan Freeman, Mahershala Ali and Daniel Kaluuya. The role that established him on film was the brutal, uncompromising drill sergeant Emil Foley in An Officer and a Gentleman, a massive hit that was in equal measure hard-hitting and gushingly romantic. That was 1982, but five years earlier he had picked up an Emmy for lead actor in the Alex Haley miniseries Roots (1977), in which he played Fiddler, the slave who teaches Kunta Kinte English.
In spite of his high profile in the cinema, Gossett Jr was originally a renowned stage performer, whose work on Broadway attracted the attention of Taylor Hackford, director of An Officer and a Gentleman. Although he had suffered from polio as a boy, Louis Gossett was offered an athletic scholarship but turned it down having got the acting bug after a sports injury turned his head to theatrical matters. And, in spite of no training, he landed the role of Spencer Scott in Take a Giant Step on Broadway – and received glowing notices. The year was 1953 and he was still only 17. Six years later he played George Murchison in the original Broadway run of A Raisin in the Sun and repeated his performance in Daniel Petrie’s 1961 film, with Sidney Poitier. Other notable stage credits included the Langston Hughes adaptation Tambourines to Glory, the musical Golden Boy with Sammy Davis Jr, and The Zulu and the Zayda, another musical, before appearing in Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights (directed by Poitier) and Murderous Angels, in which he played the Congolese politician Patrice Lumumba.
His screen credits were not as laudable, although he remained in demand right up to his turn as Ol’ Mister in Blitz Bazawule’s The Color Purple, and he still has a number of films awaiting release.
On screen, high-profile projects included The Landlord (1970), Skin Game (a comedy Western with James Garner), Travels with My Aunt, The Laughing Policeman, The Deep and The Choirboys (1977). After his Oscar, his film roles hardly improved and for Jaws 3D (1983) he was actually nominated Worst Supporting Actor at the Razzies. However, eight years later he won the Golden Globe for his supporting turn in the HBO TV movie The Josephine Baker Story (1991). Over the years, he accumulated nine Emmy nominations and three Golden Globe nominations – and a Golden Globe for An Officer and a Gentleman. But he cited his favourite role as the Egyptian president he played in the 1983 TV movie Sadat.
He was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1992, was married and divorced three times and died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at the age of 87.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
