MOVIE CORNER
By HOWARD MCQUITTER II
Whether it was screen, television, or stage, Ms. Cicely Tyson shined, breaking way for many more African American thespians, especially for African American women. She refused to be pigeonholed into the usual Black stereotypes of maids or cooks. When looking at her in the earliest of her career, you saw a woman with big beautiful eyes, rich chocolate skin, fronting an Afro – at that time criticized for wearing it even by many Black people, preferring she straighten her hair as was common for Black women of the day.
Tyson”™s first film Carib Gold (1957) came at a time when Black actresses had few decent roles in Hollywood, including talent like Dorothy Dandridge, Pearl Bailey, Ruby Dee, Eartha Kitt, Juanita Moore, Hazel Scott, and Beah Richards. Indeed, Cicely Tyson would become known to all people. How- ever, in Black households she was a household name gracing the front covers of African American magazines Ebony and Jet.
In her lustrous career she appeared in at least 68 televi- sion series, including playing Kunta Kinte”™s mother in the TV miniseries Roots (1977). In 1978, she played Coretta Scott King in the NBC mini- series King, about the last years of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. She took on the role as Harriet Tubman with the Underground Railroad in A Woman Called Moses (1978). Fast forward to 2013 on Broadway when Tyson starred by playing Carrie Watts, an elderly woman who goes back to her hometown before she dies, in The Trip to Bountiful. (The role was originally played by white actress Geraldine Page in a film of the same title in 1985).
Early in her career she starred with Sammy Davis Jr. in the black and white film A Man Called Adam (1966), where she played the girlfriend of a mercurial jazz trumpet player. And I cannot forget her role in Robert Ellis Miller”™s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968). Cicely Tyson won a Tony, three Emmys and a honorary Academy Award. She was in about 100 films and television shows. What a marvelous Black woman she was.
