Calvin Lockhart

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Calvin Lockhart , born in Bert Cooper (born October 18, 1934 in Nassau , Bahamas ; † March 29, 2007 ibid) was a Bahamas-born American actor in stage and film, a semi-star of the US Blaxploitation cinema late 1960s and early 1970s.

Live and act

Bert Cooper grew up in his native Nassau and decided at the age of 19 to move to New York City to study engineering. Instead, he quickly became interested in acting and joined the theater company of the YMCA . He learned his theoretical craft from the famous German acting teacher Uta Hagen . At the beginning of 1960, Cooper, who was now called Calvin Lockhart, came to Broadway and made his professional debut there in February of the same year in the Robert Rossen- directed play The Cool World at the Eugene O'Neill Theater. The piece was a huge flop and was canceled after only two performances. Months later, Lockhart took on the delicate role of a black sailor impregnating a white girl from Billy Dee Williams in A Taste of Honey - an extremely daring scene arrangement at the time when the US was still de facto racially segregated.

The following year Lockhart could be seen starring in his first film, an obscure Italian production called Palms, the Sea and Proud Roosters , set in the Caribbean. Lockhart then left the American continent and moved to Europe. After a tiny appearance in the Cleopatra movie with Elizabeth Taylor , he settled in London, where he stayed until the end of the decade. Lockhart initially received an invitation to participate in the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and played small roles in individual episodes of British television series. From 1967 he was also regularly cast with supporting roles in British films. With his role as a nightclub owner in Joanna , the contemporary image of Swinging London in the late 1960s , the black actor once again became the vehicle for a deliberate breach of racial taboos: Lockhart's character had a love scene with the white leading actress.

Calvin Lockhart's career took off when he returned to the United States in 1969 to star in When Night Gets In Manhattan , the first major blaxploitation crime thriller - films (mostly from the metropolitan police, gangster, and pimp milieu) made by blacks for blacks shot, from a primarily black angle - to take on the third leading role alongside genre stars Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques . He played the seedy Reverend Deke O'Malley in this film, directed by the famous colored actor Ossie Davis . The great success of this flick, as a result of which other blaxploitation classics such as the Shaft film series were thrown on the market, brought Lockhart further role offers as an attractive gangster and opaque type, who put him on the side of black stars until the mid-1970s the industry such as Sidney Poitier , Harry Belafonte and Bill Cosby .

In addition, Lockhart was also seen in completely different subjects, for example at the side of Marcello Mastroianni in the British comedy Leo, the Last and Mae West's in the cinematic curiosity Myra Breckinridge - man or woman? . As early as the second half of the 1970s, the blaxploitation boom subsided noticeably, and from then on Lockhart was seen much less often in the cinema. The man from the Bahamas hardly received anything worthwhile from television, and he played a continuous role in the hit series The Denver Clan . The actor then disappeared completely from the public eye and returned to the Bahamas. There the 72-year-old was offered a role in a film again immediately before his death; However, the premiere of Rain , so the title, did not live to see Calvin Lockhart , who died of a stroke .

Filmography

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lockhart on the Internet Broadway Data Base

literature

  • Ephraim Katz : The Film Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. Revised by Fred Klein and Ronald Dean Nolen. New York 2001, p. 837
  • Obituary in The Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2007

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Lockhart, Calvin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cooper, Bert (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bahamian-American film actor
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Nassau , Bahamas
DATE OF DEATH March 29, 2007
Place of death Nassau , Bahamas