Actor Graham Brown is pictured on his actor composite photos from the 1960s.
Born Robert Elwood Brown in Harlem on October 24, 1924, Mr. Brown was an actor whose career spanned more than five decades. A World War II veteran, he began acting in Army shows before enrolling in college at Howard University where he was a member of the Howard University Players theater group and graduated in 1949.
In Mr. Brown's personal collection of photographs, papers and other historically and culturally relevant ephemera, in the Harlem office, for donation to a major institution on behalf of his family. In his collection is a personal letter to Mr. Brown from Harold Jackman, a prominent Harlem Renaissance figure. Mr. Brown's Howard Players member card, programs from their plays and a photo of them in Norway at the home of the Norwegian ambassador, surrounding him at his piano in 1949. There are many pages of his writing, attempts at poems, short stories, English homework and drafts of articles he wrote for Howard's school newspaper, "The Hilltop" and copies of actual newspapers. There are Columbia University bursar's receipts from 1952 - he briefly attended graduate school there - and show programs, posters, tickets, letters and photos from much of his life and career.
Mr. Brown was a member of the Negro Ensemble Company, where he worked with actors such as Roxie Roker, his Howard classmate in "The River Niger," Laurence Fishburne and Esther Rolle. He was also in several productions of the Greenwich Mews Theater, a theater famous for it's integrated productions in the 1950s and a member of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. In the 1960s and 1970s, he made several appearances on Broadway (Gore Vidal's "Weekend") and with Joseph's Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival, including "The Black Picture Show" in 1975. His film credits included "Malcolm X," "Clockers," "Sanford & Son," and "Law & Order." Mr. Brown died on December 13, 2011 aged 87.
No comments:
Post a Comment