Ossie Davis

Photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1951

When Davis wanted to pursue a career in acting, he ran into the usual roadblocks that black people suffered at that time as they generally could only portray stereotypical characters such as Stepin Fetchit. Instead, he tried to follow the example of Sidney Poitier and play more distinguished characters. When he found it necessary to play a Pullman porter or a butler, he played those characters realistically, not as a caricature.

In 1961 he wrote and starred in the Broadway play Purlie Victorious a farce satirizing the confederate south. Davis portrayed the title character Purlie Victorious Judson, and acting opposite Ruby Dee and Alan Alda. The film was adapted into a film titled Gone Are the Days! was released in 1963. The Broadway cast reprised their roles for the film. Howard Taubman for The New York Times wrote of the play, "It is marvelously exhilarating to hear the Negro speak for himself, especially when he does so in the fullness of his native gusto and the enveloping heartiness of his overflowing laughter."[10]

In addition to acting, Davis, along with Melvin Van Peebles and Gordon Parks, was one of the notable black directors of his generation: he directed movies such as Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Black Girl (1972) and Gordon's War (1973). Along with Bill Cosby and Poitier, Davis was one of a handful of black actors able to find commercial success while avoiding stereotypical roles prior to 1970, which also included a significant roles in the Otto Preminger directed drama The Cardinal (1963) and the Sidney Lumet prison drama The Hill (1965). He acted in the musical drama A Man Called Adam (1966) acting alongside Sammy Davis Jr., Louis Armstrong, and Cicely Tyson. He played Joseph Lee in the Sydney Pollack directed western drama The Scalphunters acting alongside Burt Lancaster and Shelley Winters. For his performance he received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. Critic Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times praised Davis' performance in the film writing, "Davis, as an educated slave, is gradually initiated into the brutal realities of frontier life. [He] emerges as a genuine comic talent in a very demanding role (actually the lead, although Lancaster gets top billing). His character changes from an Uncle Tom to a rough-and-ready cowboy before your very eyes."[11]

During this time he acted in the western comedy Sam Whiskey with Burt Reynolds and Angie Dickinson, the drama Slaves starring Dionne Warwick, and the action comedy Hot Stuck with Dom DeLuise and Suzanne Pleshette. Davis starred with Cosby and Poitier in the 1975 film Let's Do It Again. Davis, however, never had the tremendous commercial or critical success that either of them enjoyed. As a playwright, Davis wrote Paul Robeson: All-American, which is frequently performed in theatre programs for young audiences.

In 1976, Davis appeared on Muhammad Ali's novelty album for children, The Adventures of Ali and His Gang vs. Mr. Tooth Decay.[12] Davis found recognition late in his life by working in several of director Spike Lee's films, including School Daze (1988), Do The Right Thing (1989), Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1991), Get on the Bus (1996), and She Hate Me (2004) For the final moments of Malcolm X, Davis, in voiceover, recited the actual eulogy that he wrote and delivered at Malcolm's funeral 27 years earlier. He also found work as a commercial voice-over artist and served as the narrator of the early-1990s CBS sitcom Evening Shade, starring Burt Reynolds, where he also played one of the residents of a small southern town. Davis and Reynolds had also worked together on Reynolds' previous TV series, B.L. Stryker (1989-1990), aired as part of the ABC Mystery Movie series.

Davis in 2000

Davis also appeared in several popular 1990s films, including the studio comedies Grumpy Old Men (1993) starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and Cop and a Half (1993) with Burt Reynolds, as well as the John Grisham drama film The Client (1994) starring Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones. He reunited with Spike Lee acting in the film Get on the Bus (1996) and appeared his HBO documentary 4 Little Girls (1997) which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. In 1998 he acted in the Eddie Murphy led comedy film Dr. Dolittle. In 1999, he appeared as a theater caretaker in the Trans-Siberian Orchestra film The Ghosts of Christmas Eve, which was released on DVD two years later. For many years, he hosted the annual National Memorial Day Concert from Washington, D.C.

In 1994, Davis played Judge Richard Farris in the Stephen King miniseries The Stand. From 1995 to 1996 he played Judge Harry Roosevelt in the CBS legal drama The Client (reprising his role from the 1994 film). Davis played Erasmus Jones in Promised Land from 1996 to 1998. The series was a spinoff from Touched by an Angel where he played multiple characters from 1996 to 2000. He played Mr. Evers in the HBO film Miss Evers' Boys (1997) starring Laurence Fishburne and Alfre Woodard. The film won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie. That same year he acted in the Showtime television film 12 Angry Men (1997) playing Juror #2. He acted in an ensemble cast acting alongside Courtney B. Vance, George C. Scott, James Gandolfini, Jack Nicholson, and Hume Cronyn. He voiced Anansi the spider on the PBS children's television series Sesame Street in its animation segments. He also narrated the HBO Storybook Musicals adaptation of The Red Shoes aired on February 7, 1990. In 2000, he voiced the role of Yar in Disney's live-action animated film Dinosaur.

From 1999 to 2000 he played Mr. Parker in the NBC crime drama Third Watch. He also took roles in Deacons for Defense and JAG both in 2003. Davis's last role was a several episode guest role on the Showtime drama series The L Word, as a father struggling with the acceptance of his daughter Bette (Jennifer Beals) parenting a child with her lesbian partner. In his final episodes, his character took ill and died. His wife Ruby Dee was present during the filming of his own death scene. That episode, which aired shortly after Davis's own death, aired with a dedication to the actor.[13] After Davis's death, actor Dennis Haysbert portrayed him in the 2015 film Experimenter.

In 1948, Davis married actress Ruby Dee, whom he had met on the set of Robert Ardrey's 1946 play Jeb. In their joint autobiography With Ossie and Ruby, they described their decision to have an open marriage, later changing their minds.[14] In the mid-1960s they moved to the New York suburb of New Rochelle, where they remained ever after.[15][16] Their son Guy Davis is a blues musician and former actor, who appeared in the film Beat Street (1984) and the daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Their daughters are Nora Davis Day and Hasna Muhammad.

Davis with activist and opera star Stacey Robinson (left) in 1998

Davis and Dee were well known as civil rights activists during the Civil Rights Movement and were close friends of Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr. and other icons of the era. They were involved in organizing the 1963 civil rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and served as its emcees. Davis, alongside Ahmed Osman, delivered the eulogy at the funeral of Malcolm X.[17] He re-read part of this eulogy at the end of Spike Lee's film Malcolm X. He also delivered a stirring tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, at a memorial in New York's Central Park the day after King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

Davis was found dead in a Miami Beach hotel room on February 4, 2005. He was 87 years old. An official cause of death was not released, but he was known to have had heart problems.[18] His ashes were interred at Ferncliff Cemetery.

Davis's funeral was held in New York City on February 12, 2005. The line to enter The Riverside Church, located on the edge of Harlem, stretched for several blocks, with a thousand or more members of the public unable to attend as the church filled to its 2,100 capacity.[19] Speakers included Davis's children and grandchildren, as well as Alan Alda, Burt Reynolds, Amiri Baraka, Avery Brooks, Angela Bassett, Spike Lee, Attallah Shabazz, Tavis Smiley, Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez, Harry Belafonte, and former president Bill Clinton, among many others.[20] Wynton Marsalis performed a musical tribute. Burt Reynolds, who early in his career had worked with Davis, said "Ossie Davis took the bad parts of the South out of me.... I know what a man is because of Ossie Davis." Ms. Shabazz, oldest daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, spoke lovingly of the man she and her five sisters called Uncle Ossie, saying he had provided exceptional support to her and her sisters after her father's assassination. Bill Clinton arrived midway through the service, and said from the pulpit "I asked to be seated in the back. I would proudly ride on the back of Ossie Davis's bus any day," adding that Davis "would have made a great president."[21]

Delivering the eulogy, Harry Belafonte said: Ossie Davis "embraced the greatest forces of our times. Paul Robeson, Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, Eleanor Roosevelt, A. Philip Randolph, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Thurgood Marshall, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and so many, many more. At the time of one of our most anxious and conflicted moments, when 'Our America' was torn apart by seething issues of race, Ossie paused, at the tomb of one of our noblest warriors, and in the eulogy he delivered, insured that history would clearly understand the voice of Black people, and what Malcolm X meant to us in the African-American struggle for freedom.... It is hard to fathom that we will no longer be able to call on his wisdom, his humor, his loyalty and his moral strength to guide us in the choices that are yet to be made and the battles that are yet to be fought. But how fortunate we were to have him as long as we did."[22]