Louis Gossett Jr., 87, Dies; ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’ and ‘Roots’ Actor

Louis Gossett Jr., who took house an Academy Award for “An Officer and a Gentleman” and an Emmy for “Roots,” each occasions enjoying a mature man who guides a youthful one taking up a brand new position — however in drastically completely different circumstances — died early Friday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87.

Mr. Gossett’s first cousin Neal L. Gossett confirmed the dying to The Related Press.

Mr. Gossett was 46 when he performed Emil Foley, the Marine drill teacher from hell who finally shapes the humanity of an emotionally broken younger Naval aviation recruit (Richard Gere) in “An Officer and a Gentleman” (1982). Reviewing the film in The New York Instances, Vincent Canby described Sergeant Foley as a merciless taskmaster “recycled as a man of recognizable cunning, dedication and humor” revealed in “the kind of performance that wins awards.”

Mr. Gossett informed The Instances that he had acknowledged the position’s price instantly. “The words just tasted good,” he recalled.

When he accepted the 1983 finest supporting actor Oscar, he was the primary Black performer to win in that class — and solely the third (after Hattie McDaniel and Sidney Poitier) to win an Academy Award for appearing.

He had already received an Emmy as Fiddler, the mentor of the lead character, Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton), within the blockbuster 1977 mini-series “Roots.”

Fiddler, an enslaved man on an 18th-century Virginia plantation, was, because the identify recommended, a musician. Mr. Gossett was not thrilled concerning the position at first. “Why choose me to play the Uncle Tom?” he requested in a 2018 Television Academy video interview. However he got here to admire the survival expertise of forebears like Fiddler, he stated, and primarily based the character on his grandparents and a great-grandmother.

The portrayal, he stated, grew to become “a tribute to all those people who taught me how to behave.”

Louis Cameron Gossett Jr. was born on Could 27, 1936, in Brooklyn, the one youngster of Louis Gossett, a porter, and Helen (Wray) Gossett, a nurse. He made his Broadway debut when he was 17 and nonetheless a scholar at Abraham Lincoln Excessive Faculty on Ocean Parkway.

Whereas therapeutic after a basketball damage, he appeared in a faculty play, simply to occupy his time. Impressed, a instructor recommended that he audition for “Take a Giant Step,” a play by Louis Peterson that was opening on the Lyceum Theater within the fall of 1953. He received the lead position, that of Spencer Scott, a troubled adolescent. Brooks Atkinson of The Instances praised his “admirable and winning performance,” one which conveyed “the whole range of Spencer’s turbulence.”

Sidney Fields devoted a column in The Sunday Mirror to the younger man, who shared his profession plans. “I always wanted to study pharmacy,” Mr. Gossett stated. “But now after college I’ll try acting. I know it’s a tough business, but if I fail, I’ll have the pharmacy degree to fall back on.”

He ended up majoring in drama (and minoring in pharmacy) whereas on a basketball scholarship at New York College. In 1955, he returned to Broadway, in William Marchant’s “The Desk Set.” By the point he graduated, appearing was paying him greater than any basketball group would.

He made his movie debut in “A Raisin in the Sun” (1961), an adaptation of the Lorraine Hansberry play, performing alongside Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee as an annoying faculty man. He had appeared onscreen solely twice earlier than — in two episodes of “The Big Story,” an NBC drama collection, in 1957 and 1958.

Earlier than movie stardom, Mr. Gossett had sustained a thriving theater profession. In lower than a decade he landed six Broadway roles, together with that of a Harlem hustler in “Tambourines to Glory” (1963), a South African grandfather’s servant in “The Zulu and the Zayda” (1965), a lawyer who had killed a white man in a civil rights demonstration in “My Sweet Charlie” (1966) and the Congolese chief Patrice Lumumba in “Dangerous Angels” (1971).

Within the mid-Sixties, he changed the actor enjoying the big-time boxing promoter Eddie Satin within the musical “Golden Boy,” starring Sammy Davis Jr. His most unlucky position might have been as a Black man with a white slave in “Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights” (1968), a comedy written by Robert Alan Aurthur and directed by Sidney Poitier. The play, which Clive Barnes of The Instances known as racist, closed after every week.

Mr. Gossett by no means dedicated to a different Broadway position. However he appeared for 4 nights because the flashy lawyer Billy Flynn within the musical “Chicago” in 2002.

His dozens of function movies included “The Landlord” (1970), during which he performed a person on the point of madness; “Travels With My Aunt” (1972); and “The Deep” (1977), as a Bahamian drug seller. His later movies included “Diggstown” (1992) and Sam Shepard’s “Curse of the Starving Class” (1994).

Mr. Gossett was seen in additional than 100 tv collection, together with “The Partridge Family” and “Madame Secretary,” and performed the title position, a Columbia anthropology professor who investigates crimes, in “Gideon Oliver” (1989).

Mr. Gossett additionally appeared in lots of tv motion pictures, amongst them “The Lazarus Syndrome” (1978), a couple of heart specialist; “A Gathering of Old Men” (1987), a couple of Black man who kills in self-defense; “Strange Justice” (1999), concerning the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court docket affirmation course of (he performed the presidential adviser Vernon Jordan); and “Lackawanna Blues” (2005), primarily based on Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s play. His different TV-movie roles included the Egyptian chief Anwar Sadat and the baseball star Satchel Paige.

He was seen final yr within the movie model of the Broadway musical “The Color Purple.”

Mr. Gossett’s marriage to Hattie Glascoe in 1964 lasted solely 5 months.He and Christina Mangosing married in 1973, had one youngster and divorced after two years. His 1987 marriage to Cyndi James Reese resulted in divorce in 1992.

Mr. Gossett is survived by his sons, Satie and Sharron Gossett, and several other grandchildren.

Within the Tv Academy interview, Mr. Gossett urged fellow actors to assist impact political and social change in a disturbing world. “The arts can achieve it overnight,” he stated. “Millions of people are watching.” He added: “We can get to them quicker than anybody else.”

Michael S. Rosenwald contributed reporting.