ATLRetro

By Philip Nutman, Contributing Blogger

In 1968, a white, pissed-off liberal decided it was time to mess up the private eye sub genre of detective fiction and create an African-American version of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, and Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade—a tough BLACK private eye (“that’s a sex machine to all the chicks”).

The writer: Ernest Tidyman. The character: John Shaft.

In 1971, MGM unleashed SHAFT, a movie based on that fictional detective directed by the preeminent African-American LIFE Magazine photographer Gordon Parks. Tidyman cowrote the screenplay, and that year won an Oscar for his adapted screenplay for THE FRENCH CONNECTION, the movie which made Gene Hackman and his stinky feet a star.

Richard Roundtree backstage at the 2011 Trumpet Award ceremony. Photo courtesy of the Trumpet Foundation.

But SHAFT gave African–Americans their first superstar actor: a 28-year-old former football player and EBONY magazine model.

Ernest Tidyman, sadly, passed way in 1984. But Richard Roundtree is still with us and promises his best work is yet to come.

ATLRetro had the privilege to interview him immediately after he received a prestigious Trumpet Award for his contribution to the arts on January 28 at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. The awards ceremony will be broadcast on Sunday April 24 on TVONE.

You’ve seen him in ROOTS. He’s worked with legendary actor Peter O’Toole in MAN FRIDAY (1975). John Shaft is an American icon. Richard Roundtree is a legend…(still in the making…)

ATLRetro: Mr. Roundtree, how did you feel when you finally learned you’d been cast in the lead of a major motion picture?

Richard Roundtree: Dumbfounded, to begin with. I got a message from Gordon Parks. I thought he was going to tell me I came close and chock it up as a learning experience. I called him and he said, as only Gordon can do, “it looks like you got the role.”

Richard Roundtree on stage at the 2011 Trumpet Awards. Photo courtesy of Trumpet Foundation.

Did you fall over?

No.

Or were you actually sitting down?

I was in a phone booth.

You were in a phone booth. So you were propped up?

Yeah. I just said, ‘Really?” And he said, “yes, but let me tell you something. You can’t say anything about this because it’s the holiday season and it’ll get lost in the press. We’re going to have a big party after the new year.”

So this was what, around December of 1970?

Yeah. Right after New Year’s, we’re going to have a big party and announce it and do the whole nine. In the interim period, walking around Manhattan and seeing my fellow actors and what-not, and they’re saying to me after a while, you know I think I might have gotten that role of Shaft. If you hear that a couple of times, you start questioning yourself—did I really have that conversation with Gordon? But sure enough, at the first of the year, we had a big party at Sardi’s, and they announced that Richard Roundtree is playing Shaft.

How old were you when you got the role?

I beg your pardon?

How old…?

I can’t hear you? What did you say?

I’m the one who’s got the hearing aids, you cheeky sod. Come on, Shaft would just kick me for that.

I was 28 or 29.

That’s right. That’s what I was thinking. You hadn’t even hit 30.

No, no.

Richard Roundtree with Kenya Moore, who presented him with the 2011 Trumpet Award for the arts. Photo courtesy of the Trumpet Foundation.

You were an absolute young blood.

Still wet behind the ears.

Can I ask a personal question? So how come, all these years later, you are even more handsome than you were back then.

Bless your heart.

[When you received the Trumpet Award], you thanked your grandmother? Was she a huge influence on you?

Yes, I told a funny story about—as I said out there—the biggest night of my professional life [was] the opening of SHAFT on Broadway with the big lights, the red carpet. I walked into the theater with my mother and my sister and my grandmother, Miss Lucy as we fondly called her. The lights go down, Isaac Hayes’ music starts, and it was quiet in the theater. Then the first fight scene [started], and all of a sudden, in the middle of the fight, my grandmother stood up in the middle of the theater and screamed at the screen, “Don’t you be hitting my grandson!”

Oh, that’s priceless. Oh, thank you. That is wonderful. When you and Gordon and you were working with the great cinematographer Urs Furrer, did you have any clue that it would be such a success as it was?

I was a kid who had this incredible job as a lead in a movie.

It changed your life.

It did. It did. I had no idea. When that movie opened, my life did a 360.

Since you’ve just received a Trumpet Award, looking back over your career, what do you feel is your greatest accomplishment?

I have yet to do that.

Well that’s a great answer.

I have yet to do it. It’s ongoing.

Richard Roundtree recently has been a regular on the hit Internet TV show DIARY OF A SINGLE MOM and guest-starred on THE MENTALIST. He’s still very active in movies. Look for him this year in RETREAT about nine US Korean War soldiers and THIS BITTER EARTH, a drama about a teen jazz prodigy co-starring two other iconic African-American ’70s stars Nichelle Nichols and Billy Dee Williams.