THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 23, 1997 TAG: 9702220123
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Profile
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: 80 lines
HE'S NOT Rappaport, but he IS one of the legendary actors of his generation.
Ossie Davis is the pioneering African-American actor of both Broadway and Hollywood - a man who has a record as producer, actor, director, playwright and screenwriter. Now, in what may be the crowning achievement of his film career, he co-stars with Walter Matthau in ``I'm Not Rappaport,'' the comedy-drama playing at the Naro Expanded Cinema in Norfolk.
Davis, who frequently visits Hampton Roads to speak to students at Norfolk State or Hampton University, was sitting in a hotel suite in Beverly Hills and remembering.
``When you think about it, I haven't had that many starring roles,'' he said. ``Supporting roles are usually the best anyway. It's only the bit players who are bitter. When I came into `I'm Not Rappaport,' Walter was already set. The producers had other ideas about casting Midge, but with Walter's insistence, I got the role.''
At 82, he is one year older than Midge, the character he plays, an apartment-building superintendent.
``I don't consider Midge old at all,'' Davis said. ``Some people think old people get grumpy, but it's physical, not emotional. Young people are always busy forming a philosophy of life, but old people know they don't have that choice. They just live it, and the philosophy takes care of itself.''
Midge is a realistic, grounded man who contrasts with Nat, the dreamer and show-off played by Matthau. The two of them sit on a park bench every day and argue.
``Walter would stop to tell jokes,'' Davis said. ``They were pretty bad, but you laugh because you love the man.''
Born in Cogdell, Ga., he decided to be a playwright, even though he had seen only ``a few cowboy movies'' and had never seen a stage. ``We read Shakespeare in school, and that's what gave me the urge,'' he recalled.
The son of a railroad engineer, he came to New York after Howard University and attended a Harlem acting school at night while working in the day as a janitor, stock clerk, and garment center hand-cart pusher. He got into theater during his World War II military service and made his Broadway debut in 1946.
His triumph was in 1961 as both the author and star of the musical ``Purlie Victorious,'' a comedy set in the cotton patches of the South.
``What Martin Luther King tried to do with love, I tried to do with laughter,'' he said.
In 1970, he turned out his first film as director, ``Cotton Comes to Harlem,'' which was both a box office and critical success.
On his long marriage to actress Ruby Dee, his frequent co-star, he said ``we, from the first, felt that the theater could draw us closer together without being competitive. We lived out of each other's pockets.''
Asked the secret to his five-decade-long marriage, he shook his head, laughed and said, ``The secret is that there can't be any secrets. Ruby and I learned early on that marriage is a process - like a garden that needs watering. You live it one day at a time. That is, if you get through the day without killing each other.''
They have three children.
Most recently, Davis played the judge in the film version of John Grisham's ``The Client.'' His other movies have included ``The Cardinal'' (with John Huston), ``The Hill'' (with Sean Connery), ``The Scalphunters'' (with Shelley Winters) and the Stephen King TV miniseries ``The Stand.''
With Ruby Dee, he produced, for PBS, ``With Ossie and Ruby'' and ``Martin Luther King: The Dream and the Drum.''
``Actually, I knew Martin Luther King only after he had become an icon,'' he said. ``I knew Malcolm X better, as a person. Ruby's brother was a Muslim and a follower of Malcolm. When Malcolm's house was firebombed, he brought his children into my brother-in-law's home. He was a deeply wounded man.''
Davis recently published his first novel, ``Just Like Martin,'' about young people in the Civil Rights movement.
``I think what black actors most want is just the right to mess it up like everybody else,'' he said. ``We need the right to take chances, and not be expected to be great every time out.''
He has never been a proponent of total integration. ``There are too many beautiful things in Negro culture that I don't ever want to see lost. If I'm told I can come into the Big House so long as I leave my old possessions at the door, well, I'm just gonna stay right outside on the porch of democracy until I can carry ALL my stuff inside.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Gramercy
KEYWORDS: PROFILE