Richard Roundtreea Blaxploitation movie icon who starred as Detective John hey in Gordon Parks’ 1971 action thriller, died Tuesday afternoon after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 81 years old.
His death was confirmed by Patrick McMinn, his manager since 1987.
“Richard’s work and career served as a turning point for leading African-American men in film,” McMinn said in his statement. “The impact it had on the industry cannot be overstated.”
Roundtree was an outstanding man from the beginning of his life in screen interpretation. After starting her career as a model, she landed “Shaft” at the age of 28, marking her feature film debut. The MGM release earned $12 million in ticket sales on a $500,000 production budget, helping to save the studio from bankruptcy. A breakthrough hit, “Shaft” set the tone for a prolific decade of Blaxploitation cinema and demonstrated Hollywood’s historic failure to consider black talent and the audiences they could reach on film.
When asked about the “exploitation” label attached to “Shaft” by the New York Times in a 2019 interview, Roundtree expressed some ambiguity about the term.
“I had the privilege of working with the classiest gentleman I’ve ever met in the industry, Gordon Parks. So that word, exploitation, I take offense to any attachment to Gordon Parks… I’ve always seen it as a negative . Exploitation. Who is being exploited?” Roundtree said. “But it employed a lot of people. It gave a lot of people entry into the business, including many of our current producers and directors. So, in the big picture, I see it as a positive.”
Two sequels about the “bad mom (shut up)” quickly followed within two years: “Shaft’s Big Score” and “Shaft in Africa.” In 1973, CBS attempted a “Shaft” television series starring Roundtree, a run that lasted only a handful of episodes.
“You can’t erase events, but this is one I wish I could,” Roundtree told the Times in 2019. “I had just come back from ‘Shaft in Africa’ when they tried to turn the character into TV. It wasn’t going to happen. It be an ugly spot in my long and illustrious career.”
Long and illustrious, it was. Already a household name, Roundtree quickly grew beyond her starring role, with performances in the ensemble disaster film “Earthquake,” a starring turn opposite Peter O’Toole in “Man Friday ” and another as a hapless detective in the Larry Cohen film. monster comedy “Q – The Winged Serpent”. He also appeared frequently for guest starring roles on television, with credits including “Roots,” “Magnum PI,” and “The Love Boat.”
Roundtree returned to the world of “Shaft” in director John Singleton’s 2000 revival of the franchise, starring Samuel L. Jackson. Although Jackson also played a detective named John Shaft, his character was written as the nephew of Roundtree’s original private eye. Both actors reprized their roles in 2019 for Tim Story’s comedy version of the series.
Born on July 9, 1942 in Rochester, New York, Roundtree briefly attended Southern Illinois University before dropping out to pursue a modeling career. In the late 1960s, he joined the Negro Ensemble Company and began performing in stage productions in New York.
Roundtree worked regularly for more than 50 years, with his iconic turn in “Shaft,” a rich history in genre filmmaking, and an engaging screen presence that added color to the worlds of films like “Se7en “, “Brick” and “Speed ​​Racer”. He played a supporting role in “Moving On,” a comedy starring Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda that debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last year before opening in theaters last summer.
Roundtree was married twice, first to Mary Jane Grant from 1963 to 1973, then to Karen M. Cierna from 1980 to 1998. He is survived by his four daughters, Nicole, Tayler, Morgan and Kelli Roundtree, and his son, James.
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