Richard Roundtree, the actor who redefined African-American masculinity in film when he played the title role in “Shaft,” one of the first black action heroes, died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 81.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his manager Patrick McMinn, who said the diagnosis had been made two months ago.
“Shaft,” which was released in 1971, was one of the first so-called blaxploitation films and made Roundtree a movie star at the age of 29.
The character John Shaft is his own man, a private detective who walks confidently through the flowing traffic of Times Square in a handsome brown leather coat with the collar turned up; sports a thick, dark mustache somewhere between walrus-style and downturned handlebars; and keeps a pearl-handled revolver in the refrigerator of his duplex apartment in Greenwich Village. As Roundtree noted in a 1972 New York Times article, he is “a black man who, for once, is a winner.”
The film not only made Roundtree famous, but also brought attention to its theme song, sung by Isaac Hayes, which won the 1972 Academy Award for Best Original Song. In it, Shaft was described as “a sex machine for all the girls,” “a bad mother” and “the cat who won’t just get away when there’s danger everywhere.” Do you understand? The punctuation was director Gordon Parks’ dark urban cinematography.
A fictional product of his unenlightened, pre-feminist era, Shaft lived the dream of Playboy magazine readers, with beautiful women available to him as willing, almost grateful sexual partners. And he didn’t always treat her with respect. Some called him the black James Bond, for better or worse.
He reprized the role in “Shaft’s Big Score!” (1972), in which the chase scenes were expanded to include speedboats and helicopters and the sexy women were expanded to include exotic dancers and other men’s mistresses. Shaft investigated the murder of a numbers runner who used bigger guns and ignored a crook’s friendly advice to “stay out of Queens.”
In Shaft in Africa (1973), the character posed as an indigenous man to uncover a crime ring that was exploiting immigrants being smuggled into Europe. The second sequel, shot largely in Ethiopia, lost money and resulted in a CBS series that lasted only seven weeks.
But the films had an impact. As film critic Maurice Peterson noted in Essence magazine, “Shaft” was “the first film to show a black man living a life free from racial torture.”
Richard Arnold Roundtree was born on July 9, 1942 (some sources say 1937) in New Rochelle, NY, to John Roundtree and Kathryn (Watkins) Roundtree, who were identified in the 1940 census as a butler and cook in the same household.
At New Rochelle High School, Richard played on the school’s undefeated football team, graduated in 1961 and attended Southern Illinois University on a football scholarship. But he dropped out of college in 1963 after spending a summer working as a model at the Ebony Fashion Fair, a traveling showcase sponsored by a leading news and culture magazine aimed at black readers.
He moved back to New York, took various jobs and soon began his theater career by joining the Negro Ensemble Company. His first role was in a 1967 production of “The Great White Hope,” in which he appeared as the first black heavyweight boxing champion of the early 20th century. 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,” Roundtree made a diverse selection of film roles. He was part of the all-star ensemble of the disaster film “Earthquake” (1974) with Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner. He played the title role in Man Friday (1975), a lively, generous and ultimately more civilized partner to Peter O’Toole’s 17th-century explorer Robinson Crusoe.
In “Inchon” (1981), which Vincent Canby described in the New York Times as “the most expensive B-movie ever made,” he was an army officer on General Douglas MacArthur’s (Laurence Olivier) staff in Korea. He starred alongside Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds in City Heat (1984) and with a giant flying lizard in Q (1982).
On the small screen, he played Sam Bennett, the crazy coachman who courted Kizzie (Leslie Uggams) in the acclaimed miniseries Roots (1977). The show was transformative. “It feels like white Americans are saying, ‘Damn, that really happened,'” Roundtree said in an ABC special marking the show’s 25th anniversary.
Roundtree’s name is still associated with the 1970s, but he was just as busy over the next four decades. He was an amoral private detective in a five-episode 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 ice cream man in “Once Upon a Time… When We Were Colored” (1996).
After 2000, when he was approaching 60, he appeared in more than 25 small-screen series (nine of which he starred in or had recurring roles in – including “Heroes,” “Being Mary Jane” and “Being Mary Jane”). Family Reunion”) and made half a dozen television films and more than 20 feature films.
In 2020, he starred as a gray-bearded captain of a fishing boat in “Haunting of the Mary Celeste,” a supernatural maritime crime film. In 2022, he appeared in an episode of “Cherish the Day,” the Ava DuVernay romantic drama series.
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.
Roundtree is survived by four daughters; Kelli, Nicole, Taylor, Morgan; a son, John; and at least one grandchild.
The Shaft character, created by Ernest Tidyman in a series of 1970s novels, remained – with Hollywood changes. Samuel L. Jackson played the eponymous character, supposedly the first nephew of John Shaft, in a 2000 sequel titled Shaft.
In 2019, another “Shaft” hit theaters, also starring Jackson (who is said to be the son of the original character) and Jessie T. Usher as his son JJ Shaft, an MIT-trained cybersecurity expert. The film seemed a bit like a buddy-cop comedy, but the smartest thing it did, as the Variety review noted, was to transform Roundtree, “bald, with a snow-white beard,” “into a character who’s hotter.” and cooler than everyone around him” and whose “spirit is lively and tougher than leather.”
Orlando Mayorquin contributed reporting.