Godfrey Cambridge

Actor and entertainer

• Born: February 26, 1933
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: November 29, 1976
• Place of death: Burbank, California

Although Cambridge was only forty-three when he died, he already was a celebrated Off-Broadway actor, a rising comedian on television and in the recording industry, and a respected comic film actor. Known for his acerbic wit and darkly comic routines on race and discrimination, Cambridge is also remembered for his film work.

Early Life

Born in 1933, Godfrey MacArthur Cambridge was the son of Alexander Cambridge, a British Guyanan accountant who had immigrated to New York with his wife Sarah, a stenographer and teacher. Despite being well educated, both parents wound up working blue-collar jobs, Alexander loading coal cars in Canada and Sarah in a garment factory. As a result, Cambridge grew up in both Nova Scotia—where he lived with his grandparents—and Harlem, when he rejoined his parents back in the United States at the age of thirteen. He graduated from Flushing High School in New York and, in 1951, began studying medicine on a four-year scholarship at Hofstra. He switched his major to English and then quit school altogether after three years as a result of his grief over his father’s death and his desire to become an actor.

Cambridge enrolled at the City College of New York in 1954 to study drama and got his first acting role as a bartender in the Off-Broadway production of Take a Giant Step, later appearing in the Off-Broadway productions of Lost In the Stars and Detective Story. He debuted on Broadway in Nature’s Way in 1956 and collaborated with Maya Angelou in 1960 to produce Cabaret for Freedom. He won an Obie Award in 1961 for his performance in The Blacks, in which he played an African American man who transforms into an elderly white woman. That same year, he starred in Purlie Victorious as Uncle Gitlow, a role for which he received a Tony nomination. His last play was How to Be a Jewish Mother (1967). Despite his success in the theater, he struggled with bitterness at being passed over for leading roles because of his skin color.

Life’s Work

Cambridge was well known for comedy routines and acting roles that dealt with racial and social problems. He often used racial epithets and stereotypes in his humor. For example, in Melvin Van Peebles’ Watermelon Man (1970), Cambridge portrayed an insensitive white insurance agent who is forced to experience life as a black man. He also played the recurring character Gravedigger Jones in the films Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) and Come Back, Charleston Blue (1972). Ossie Davis’s first film as a director, Cotton Comes to Harlem was a blaxploitation caper comedy starring Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques as two plainclothes police officers assigned to investigate a local preacher whose “Back to Africa” movement is actually a scam.

Cambridge’s other films include Gone Are the Days! (1963), the film version of Purlie Victorious, in which he reprised the role of Gitlow Judson that had been created for him by writer and star Davis; The President’s Analyst(1967), in which he received second billing behind James Coburn; and The Troublemaker (1964), in which he played an over-the-top comedic role as an Irish fire chief. As Mike in The Busybody (1967), Cambridge worked with Sid Caesar, Dom Delouise, Bill Dana, and Richard Pryor. In two 1968 comedies cast mostly with white actors, Cambridge played a taxi driver in a character comedy (Bye Bye Braverman) and Benjamin “Benny” Brownstead in a caper comedy (The Biggest Bundle of Them All). In Walt Disney’s animal comedy The Biscuit Eater (1972), he played gas station clerk Willie Dorsey to much acclaim. His credits also include the slapstick comedy Whiffs (1975); Friday Foster (1975), a Pam Grier and Eartha Kitt vehicle; and the biopic Scott Joplin (1977), in which he played composer Tom Turpin. He crossed over into the horror genre with a cameo appearance in Beware! The Blob (1972). Cambridge also was an avid crusader against drug abuse who produced and directed a television special, Dead Is Dead (1970), about drug addiction.

Cambridge’s stand-up comedy routines and interviews often candidly addressed racial problems, as is evidenced in his four albums for Epic Records: The Godfrey Cambridge Show (1960), Ready or Not, Here’s Godfrey Cambridge (1964), Them Cotton-Pickin Days Is Over (1965), and Godfrey Cambridge Toys with the World (1966). On television, he received an Emmy Award in 1965 for his role in the premier episode of Stage II, which ultimately led to a ten-year contract with CBS-TV. Cambridge also found time to appear on various television variety shows, including The Jack Paar Show (1965), The Merv Griffin Show (1968), The David Frost Show (1969-1970), Hollywood Squares (1970), and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1971), and various dramatic and comedic series, including Naked City (1960-1962), Love, American Style (1970), Night Gallery (1971), and Police Story (1975). In the year of his death, 1976, he also had appeared on the children’s television show Captain Kangaroo.

Throughout his career, Cambridge struggled with his weight. At one point in 1969, he dropped from over 360 pounds to around 200 using medical hypnosis. He usually paired such weight fluctuations with an almost fanatical adherence to exercise routines and diets. After one such diet, Cambridge died of a heart attack at the age of forty-three, while playing the role of Idi Amin in Victory at Entebbe (1976). The role was eventually played by Julius Harris. Cambridge was survived by his second wife, Audriano, and two daughters. He had been married to Barbara Ann Teer, who founded the National Black Theater (NBT), from 1962 to 1965.

Significance

Cambridge’s career was on the rise when he died on the set of Victory at Entebbe. An African American comedian during a time of racial upheaval, he appealed to both black and white audiences. While his routines usually vilified white racism, he also made Americans aware of racism within the black community. A contemporary of Bill Cosby, he released four comedy albums during the 1960’s, at one point breaking into the Billboard Top 10. His routines, filled with acerbic race- and class-based satire, influenced later stand-up comedians such as Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and Chris Rock.

As an actor, Cambridge was able to bridge the gap between the servile roles assigned to many earlier African American performers and the darker, militant roles associated with the blaxploitation era. He also upended the racist blackface roles associated with minstrel comedy, twice playing a white character.

Bibliography

“Godfrey Cambridge Dies on Studio Set.” Jet 51, no. 13(December 16, 1976): 56-58. Chronicles Cambridge’s collapse and death on the set of Victory at Entebbe.

Nachman, Gerald. “Color-Coordinated: Godfrey Cambridge.” In Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950’s and 1960’s. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003. Excellent analysis of Cambridge’s career that describes how he used charm and warmth to disarm white audiences, even while delivering pointed barbs about race relations. Includes many quotations from Cambridge himself and insights about Cambridge’s appeal and his dark side from Ossie Davis, a frequent collaborator.

Robinson, Louie Robinson. “Godfrey Cambridge Wins ’Battle of Bulges,’ Loses 117 Pounds.” Ebony 22, no. 12 (October, 1967): 160-170. Traces Cambridge’s bouts with weight fluctuation and his appraisal of how many roles it might have cost him.