Louis Gossett Jr., the first black man to win an Oscar for supporting actor, dies at 87

Louis Gossett Jr., the first black man to win a supporting actor Oscar and an Emmy for his role in the seminal television miniseries “Roots,” has died. He is 87 years old.

Gossett’s cousin, Neil L. Gossett, told The Associated Press that the actor died Thursday night in Santa Monica, California. The cause of death has not yet been revealed.

Gossett’s cousin remembers a man who traveled with Nelson Mandela and was also a great joker, a relative who faced and fought racism with dignity and humor.

“Never mind the awards, never mind the glitz and glamor, the Rolls Royce and the big house in Malibu. It’s about the humanity of the people he represents,” his cousin said.

Louis Gossett has always considered his early career to be a reverse Cinderella story, with success taking hold from an early age and propelling him forward, culminating in an Academy Award for “An Officer and a Gentleman.”

While he was on the basketball team due to injury, he earned his first acting credit in a Brooklyn High School production of “You Can’t Take It with You.”

“I was mesmerized—and so was my audience,” he wrote in his 2010 memoir, Actors and Gentlemen.

His English teacher urged him to go to Manhattan and try to “take the leap.” In 1953, at age 16, he landed the role and made his Broadway debut.

“I knew too little to be nervous,” Gossett wrote. “Looking back now, I should have been scared to death when I walked on that stage, but I wasn’t.”

Gossett received basketball and drama scholarships from New York University. Soon he was acting and singing on television shows hosted by David Suskind, Ed Sullivan, the Red Buttons, Merv Griffin, Jack Paar and Steve Allen .

Gossett became friends with James Dean and studied acting with Marilyn Monroe, Martin Landau and Steve McQueen in a branch of the Actors Studio taught by Frank Silvera.

In 1959, Gossett received critical acclaim for her role in the Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun, alongside Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, and Diana Sands.

In 1964, Sammy Davis Jr. became a Broadway star, replacing Billy Daniels in “The Golden Boy.”

In 1961, Gossett went to Hollywood for the first time to film the film version of “A Raisin in the Sun.” That trip left him with painful memories of staying in a cockroach-infested motel, one of the few places where black people were allowed.

In 1968, he returned to Hollywood with a major role in NBC’s first television movie, “The Nightmare Partner,” starring Melvin Douglas, Anne Baxter, and Patrick O’Neal.

This time, Gossett booked a hotel at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and Universal Studios rented him a convertible. After picking up his car, he drove back to the hotel and was stopped by a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department who ordered him to turn off the radio and open the roof of his car before letting him go.

Within minutes, he was stopped by eight deputies, who held him against the car and told him to open the trunk while he called the rental car company before letting him go.

“While I understood that I had no choice but to endure this abuse, it was a horrific way to be treated and a humiliating feeling,” Gossett wrote in his memoir. “I realized this was happening because I’m black and I’ve been showing off a fancy car — in their mind, I had no right to drive.”

After dinner at the hotel, he went for a walk and was stopped a block away by a police officer who told him he was violating a law prohibiting walking in residential Beverly Hills after 9 p.m. Two other officers arrived. , Gossett said he was placed in a lock. tree and handcuffed for three hours. He was eventually released when the original police car returned.

“Now that I’m confronting racism, it’s an ugly sight,” he wrote. “But it won’t destroy me.”

In the late 1990s, Gossett said he was pulled over by police on the Pacific Coast Highway while driving his restored 1986 Rolls-Royce Corniche II. The officer told him he looked like the man they were looking for, but the officer recognized Gossett and left.

He founded the End Racism Foundation to help create a world where racism does not exist.

Gossett has guest-starred in shows such as Bonanza, The Rockford Files, Modern Squad, MacLeod, and starred alongside Richard Pryor in The Partridge Family. memorable.

In August 1969, Gossett was attending a party with members of the Mamas and the Papas when they were invited to the home of actress Sharon Tate. He went home first to take a shower and change clothes. As he prepares to leave, he sees a news report on television about Tate’s murder. That night, she and others were killed by Charles Manson’s associates.

“I had to have a reason to escape this bullet,” he wrote.

Louis Cameron Gossett was born on May 27, 1936 in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York. His father, Louis Sr., was a porter, and his mother, Helen, was a nurse. nurse. He later added Jr. to his name in honor of his father.

Gossett rose to prominence on the small screen as Fiddler in the groundbreaking 1977 miniseries Roots, which portrayed the atrocities of slavery on television. The cast includes Ben Vereen, LeVar Burton, and John Amos.

In 1983, Gossett became the third black man to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He won the award for his role as a Marine training instructor in “An Officer and a Gentleman” opposite Richard Gere and Debra Winger. He also won a Golden Globe Award for the same role.

“More than anything, it was a huge affirmation of my status as a black actor,” he wrote in his memoir.

“The Oscars allowed me to choose great roles in films like ‘The Enemy,’ ‘Sadat,’ and ‘Iron Eagle,'” Gossett said in Dave Karger’s 2024 book “50 Oscar Nights.” The book says.

He said his statue was being stored in a warehouse.

“I’m going to donate it to the library so I don’t have to stare at it,” he says in the book. “I need to get away from it.”

Gossett has appeared in TV movies such as “The Satchel Paige Story,” “The Back Staircase,” “The Josephine Baker Story,” for which she won another Golden Globe, and “The White House Revisited.” source”.

But he said winning an Oscar didn’t change the fact that all of his roles were supporting ones.

He plays a stubborn patriarch in the 2023 remake of The Color Purple.

After winning the Oscar, Gossett struggled with alcohol and cocaine addiction for years. He went to rehab, where he was diagnosed with toxic mold syndrome, which he attributed to his Malibu house.

In 2010, Gossett announced that he had prostate cancer, which he said was in its early stages. In 2020, he was hospitalized with COVID-19.

He is also survived by sons Satie and Sharron; Sadie, a producer and director from his second marriage to Sharon, a chef, adopted the 7-year-old after seeing him on a children’s program in Desperate Situations. His cousin is actor Robert Gossett.

Gossett’s first marriage to Heidi Glasco was annulled. His second marriage, to Christina Mangosing, was divorced in 1975, and his third, to actress Cyndi James-Reese, was divorced in 1992.