Richard Roundtree is a cultural icon always remembered for his iconic performance in the title role in the movie “Shaft” in 1971.   He was born in 1942 in New York.   He also starred  in the sequels “Shaft’s Big Score” and “Shaft in Africa”.   Other movies include “Embassy”, “Escape to Athena” with Roger Moore and David Niven, “A Game for Vultures” with Richard Harris and Joan Collins and “Brick” in 2005.

TCM overview:

This handsome black lead made his name as the smooth title character in the classic action film “Shaft” (1971), which while not exactly a blaxploitation movie itself, spawned a generation of them. Richard Roundtree subsequently starred in two sequels–“Shaft’s Big Score” (1972) and “Shaft in Africa” (1973)–as well as a CBS TV series, “Shaft” (1973-1974) before settling in as a second lead and occasional star of various projects. There were years during the 1980s when the “Shaft” stigma seemed to put an early end to Roundtree’s career, but he bounced back in the 90s with numerous films and TV shows. He was tapped to lead an ensemble cast, playing the head of a center for troubled teens in the Fox drama series “413 Hope Street” (1997).

Roundtree was a virtual unknown, having appeared only in “What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?” (1970), when he was chosen by Gordon Parks to play “Shaft”. Based on his success, he landed a variety of roles that included the manager of a daredevil motorcycle rider in “Earthquake” (1974). In 1975, he co-starred with Peter O’Toole in the title role of “Man Friday”, a retelling of the “Robinson Crusoe” story in which Friday is not “civilized,” and Crusoe commits suicide. After appearing in the disastrous “Inchon” (1982), film roles in the 80s became sporadic and Roundtree found himself generally playing law enforcement types, like the police commissioner in “Maniac Cop” (1988) and the police captain in both “Party Line” (1988) and “A Time to Die” (1991). After a supporting role in David Fincher’s “Seven” and a turn as an iceman who sparks a racial incident in Tim Reid’s “Once Upon a Time…When We Were Colored” (both 1995), he joined Bernie Casey, Fred Williamson, Pam Grier and other stars of 70s black action films in “Original Gangstas” (1996), in which the older stars–now somewhat paunchy–return for one last go-round. It put some spark into Roundtree’s feature film career, as in 1997, he co-starred in both “Steel” (as the junkyard-owning mentor to the title character) and “George of the Jungle” (as the jungle leader Kwame).

On TV, Roundtree had one of his best opportunities in the breakthrough miniseries “Roots” (ABC, 1977), playing a handsome, well-groomed carriage driver with whom Kizzy (Leslie Uggams) falls in love until she sees that when the master (George Hamilton) calls, Roundtree grovels. Roundtree also starred in the miniseries “AD” (NBC, 1985), before having another shot at a series with a supporting role in “Outlaws” (CBS, 1986-1987) as Ice McAdams. By 1990, Roundtree was out of primetime and in the cast of the short-lived multi-racial NBC daytime drama “Generations”, playing a doctor forced to live in hiding for 15 years for a murder he did not commit. He co-starred in two “Bonanza” revival movies, “The Return” (NBC, 1993), and “Under Attack” (NBC, 1995), and, during the 1995-1996 season, hosted the UPN specials “Cop Files”. Roundtree tried his hand at sitcoms in 1996, playing Dave Chappelle’s father in the short-lived “Buddies” (ABC). In 2001, Roundtree was cast in the comedy-crime feature “Corky Romano” and one year later, he toured with the play “Men Cry In The Dark”.

Richard Roundtree died in 2023 aged 81.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

New York Times obituary in 2023:

By Anita Gates

• Published Oct. 24, 2023Updated Oct. 25, 2023, 12:46 p.m. ET

Richard Roundtree, the actor who redefined African American masculinity in the movies when he played the title role in “Shaft,” one of the first Black action heroes, died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 81.

His manager, Patrick McMinn, said the cause was pancreatic cancer, which had been diagnosed two months ago.

“Shaft,” which was released in 1971, was among the first of the so-called blaxploitation movies, and it made Mr. Roundtree a star at 29.

The character John Shaft is his own man, a private detective who jaywalks confidently through moving Times Square traffic in a handsome brown leather coat with the collar turned up; sports a robust, dark mustache somewhere between walrus-style and a downturned handlebar; and keeps a pearl-handled revolver in the fridge in his Greenwich Village duplex apartment.

As Mr. Roundtree observed in a 1972 article in The New York Times, he is “a Black man who is for once a winner.”

In addition to catapulting Mr. Roundtree to fame, the moviedrew attention to its theme song, written and performed by Isaac Hayes, which won the 1972 Academy Award for best original song. It described Shaft as “a sex machine to all the chicks,” “a bad mother” and “the cat who won’t cop out when there’s danger all about.” Can you dig it? The director Gordon Parks’s gritty urban cinematography served as punctuation.

A fictional product of his unenlightened pre-feminist era, Shaft was living the Playboy magazine reader’s dream, with beautiful women available to him as willing, even downright grateful, sex partners. And he did not always treat them with respect. Some called him, for better or worse, the Black James Bond.

Mr. Roundtree played the role again in “Shaft’s Big Score!” (1972), which bumped up the chase scenes to include speedboats and helicopters and the sexy women to include exotic dancers and other men’s mistresses. In that movie, Shaft investigated the murder of a numbers runner, using bigger guns and ignoring one crook’s friendly advice to “keep the hell out of Queens.”

In “Shaft in Africa” (1973), filmed largely in Ethiopia, the character posed as an Indigenous man to expose a crime ring that exploited immigrants being smuggled into Europe. The second sequel lost money and led to a CBS series that lasted only seven weeks.

But the films had made their impact. As the film critic Maurice Peterson observed in Essence magazine, “Shaft” was “the first picture to show a Black man who leads a life free from racial torment.”

Richard Arnold Roundtree was born on July 9, 1942 (some sources say 1937), in New Rochelle, N.Y., the son of John and Kathryn (Watkins) Roundtree. His parents were identified in the 1940 census as a butler and a cook in the same household.

Richard played on New Rochelle High School’s undefeated football team and, after graduating in 1961, attended Southern Illinois University on a football scholarship. But he dropped out of college in 1963 after spending a summer as a model with the Ebony Fashion Fair, a traveling presentation sponsored by Ebony magazine, the news and culture publication aimed at Black readers.

Mr. Roundtree moved back to New York, worked a number of jobs and soon began his theater career, joining the Negro Ensemble Company. His first role was in a 1967 production of Howard Sackler’s “The Great White Hope,” starring as a fictionalized version of Jack Johnson, the early 20th century’s first Black heavyweight boxing champion. A Broadway production starring James Earl Jones opened the next year and won three major Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

After “Shaft,” Mr. Roundtree made varied choices in movie roles. He was in the all-star ensemble cast of the 1974 disaster movie “Earthquake,” appearing alongside Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner, among others. He played the title role in “Man Friday” (1975), a vibrant, generous, ultimately more civilized partner to Peter O’Toole’s 17th-century explorer Robinson Crusoe.

In “Inchon” (1981), which Vincent Canby of The Times described as looking like “the most expensive B movie ever made,” Mr. Roundtree was an Army officer on the staff of Gen. Douglas MacArthur (Laurence Olivier) in Korea. He starred with Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds in “City Heat” (1984) and with a giant flying lizard in “Q” (1982).

On television he played Sam Bennett, the raffish carriage driver who courted Kizzie (Leslie Uggams) in the acclaimed mini-series “Roots” (1977). That show was transformational, Mr. Roundtree said in an ABC special celebrating its 25th anniversary: “You got a sense of white Americans saying, ‘Damn, that really happened.’”

Mr. Roundtree’s name remained associated with the 1970s, but he was just as busy during the next four decades.

He was an amoral private detective in a five-episode story arc of “Desperate Housewives” (2004); appeared in 60 episodes of the soap opera “Generations” (1990); and played Booker T. Washington in the 1999 television movie “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years.” He was a big-city district attorney in the film “Seven” (1995) and a strong-willed Mississippi iceman in “Once Upon a Time … When We Were Colored” (1996).

After the year 2000, when he was pushing 60, he made appearances in more than 25 TV series (he was a cast member of or had recurring roles in nine of them — including “Heroes,” “Being Mary Jane” and “Family Reunion”) and was seen in half a dozen television movies and more than 20 feature films.

In 2020, Mr. Roundtree starred as a fishing boat’s gray-bearded captain in “Haunting of the Mary Celeste,” a supernatural maritime movie mystery. In 2022, he was a regular in the second season of “Cherish the Day,” Ava DuVernay’s romantic drama series.

Mr. Roundtree married Mary Jane Grant in 1963. They had two children before divorcing in 1973. In 1980, he married Karen M. Cierna. They had three children and divorced in 1998.

Mr. Roundtree is survived by four daughters, Kelli, Nicole, Tayler and Morgan; a son, John; and at least one grandchild.

The Shaft character, created by Ernest Tidyman in a series of 1970s novels, endured — with Hollywood alterations. Samuel L. Jackson starred as a character with the same name, supposedly the first John Shaft’s nephew, in a 2000 sequel titled “Shaft.”

In 2019, another “Shaft” was released, also starring Mr. Jackson (now said to be the original character’s son), with Jessie T. Usher as his son, J.J. Shaft, an M.I.T.-educated cybersecurity expert. Like the 2000 “Shaft,” it also included Mr. Roundtree in the cast.

The film felt something like a buddy-cops comedy, but the smartest thing it did, Owen Gleiberman of Variety noted in a review, was to take Mr. Roundtree, “bald, with a snowy-white beard,” and “turn him into a character who’s hotter, and cooler, than anyone around him” and whose “spirit is spry, and tougher than leather.