ROBERT GUILLAUME

(30 November 1927 - 24 October 2017)

The actor Robert Guillaume has died aged 89 from prostate cancer. He was the first African-American actor to win a Primetime Emmy Award for lead actor in a comedy series (Benson, 1985) and for best supporting actor in a comedy series (Soap, 1979). In both series he made the part of the feisty butler Benson entirely his own. His career began in the theatre, where a production of Carousel in Cleveland led him to New York (in 1961). Among the musicals he was in were Porgy and Bess, Golden Boy, Purlie, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris and an all-black version of Guys and Dolls. Guillaume entered television in 1966 and then worked mostly for the box, appearing in Marcus Welby M.D., Sanford and Son, All in the Family and Good Times, before Soap came along for fifty episodes. He also worked on The Love Boat and North and South, before Benson occupied him from 1979 to 1986. In 1989 he had The Robert Guillaume Show for twelve weeks playing an African-American man in a romantic relationship with a Caucasian woman. His TV movies include Driving Miss Daisy with Joan Plowright. Guillaume’s first film was Super Fly T.N.T in 1973, then Neil Simon’s Seems Like Old Times in 1980, and Prince Jack in 1984, playing Martin Luther King. Then came Wanted: Dead or Alive, They Still Call Me Bruce, John G. Avildsen’s Lean on Me with Morgan Freeman, Death Warrant with Jean-Claude Van Damme, The Meteor Man written and directed by and starring Robert Townsend, and Spy Hard with Leslie Nielsen. One of his last films was Tim Burton’s Big Fish in 2003. He was the voice of Rafiki in Disney’s The Lion King and won a Grammy for the audiobook version. Robert Guillaume was married twice, first to Marlene Scott and then Donna Brown. He fathered five children.

MICHAEL DARVELL