GODFREY CAMBRIDGE

BIOGRAPHY:

Cambridge won a four-year scholarship to study medicine but decided, instead, to become an actor, leaving college in his third year.

He acted in many off-Broadway productions, winning the Village Voice’s Obie Award in Jean Genet’s “The Blacks”; and, on Broadway, he gained a Tony Award Nomination in “Purlie’s Victorious”.

It was as a comedian that he broke into television, initially on Tonight Starring Jack Paar (1957) (aka “The Jack Paar Show”).

Having previously had occasional parts, he established himself in films in the late sixties. He played both comic and straight roles but is likely remembered for such portrayals as that of the white bigot who wakes up one morning to find himself turned black in Watermelon Man (1970).

His compulsive eating probably contributed to his untimely death at 43 on the set of the television film Victoire à Entebbé (1976), in which he was to have played General Idi Amin.

MORE MOVIE WITH: Godfrey Cambridge

Friday Foster (1975) Play: Ford Malotte	Come Back Charleston Blue (1972) Play: Gravedigger Jones	Cotton comes to Harlem (1970) Play: Grave Digger Jones	Watermelon Man (1970) Play: Jeff Gerber	Gone Are the Days! (1963) Play: Gitlow Judson

SERIES TV WITH: Godfrey Cambridge