Earle Hyman

Hyman, Earle (b. 1926), actor. The African‐American leading man, who has played dozens of classical roles in theatres on two continents, has performed the role of Othello more than anyone on record, with hundreds of performances in four countries over a span of twenty‐five years. He was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and grew up in Brooklyn, later studying acting at the American Theatre Wing and the Actors Studio. Hyman appeared in some Off‐Broadway productions by the American Negro Theatre before gaining attention as Rudolf, who is in love with the streetwalker Anna Lucasta (1944). He also was lauded for the title role of the amiable young African Mister Johnson (1956), who accidentally murders a man; the confused Vladimir in Waiting for Godot (1957); the useless aristocrat Gaev in an all‐black revival of The Cherry Orchard (1972); the deathlike specter Oscar in The Lady from Dubuque (1980); and several other classical roles in addition to his Othello.

actor

Personal Information

Born on October 11, 1926, in Rocky Mount, NC; son of Zachariah Hyman and Maria Lilly Hyman; moved to Brooklyn, NY at the age of six. Education: Studied acting at the American Theater Wing with Eva Le Gallienne and at the Actor's Studio.
Education: Studied acting at the American Theater Wing with Eva Le Gallienne and at the Actor's Studio.

Career

Was invited to join the American Negro Theater company in 1943; appeared as Rudolph in the American Negro Theater's performance of Anna Lucasta and travelled to London with this production, 1947; associated with the American Shakespeare Festival and played many roles including that of Othello, 1955-60; has played all of the major Shakespearean tragic leads: Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear; performed in Driving Miss Daisy both on Broadway and in Denmark and Sweden; acted frequently in Denmark and Sweden, including playing the lead in The Emperor Jones and Sam Semola in the premier of Athol Fugard's Master Howard and the Boys in Oslo; has appeared on numerous soap operas; played the role of Russell Huxtable on The Cosby Show, 1984-92.

Life's Work

In the United States, Earle Hyman is probably best known for his role as Russell Huxtable, the tall, kindly, and often wise father of Bill Cosby's character on The Cosby Show. However, among his fellow actors, his reputation rests upon a solid string of roles in classical theater, especially from the plays of William Shakespeare and Henrik Ibsen. Also, although few of Hyman's fans in the United States are aware of it, he is a popular and highly regarded actor in Norway, where he often performs roles in Norwegian.

Shakespearean Internship

Hyman has been playing roles in Shakespearean plays since 1951. Owen Dodson, a playwright and chair of the drama department at Howard University in Washington, D.C., was also a friend of Hyman's family. One day when Dodson was visiting, Hyman played a recording of actors reading selections from Hamlet for him. Three of the actors were well-known Shakespearean actors; the fourth voice was Hyman's recording of himself. Impressed, Dodson cast Hyman in the title role of a production of Hamlet at Howard in 1951. He was only 25-years-old at the time. The production was so well received that 500 people had to be turned away on the last night of the show.

Two years later in 1953, Hyman was cast as the lead in a New York production of another Shakespearean tragedy, Othello. As a result of that performance, he was invited to join a Shakespeare repertory company that was just being formed, the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut. During five seasons with the company, Hyman performed a wide variety of Shakespearean roles.

Hyman is more than a Shakespearean actor, yet his experiences playing such a wide range of roles in so many Shakespearean plays in the first stage of his career were a significant part of his acting apprenticeship. His love of Shakespeare began when he was 11-years-old. Hyman's family had moved to Brooklyn from North Carolina during the Depression. However, like many African American children who lived in the North, he spent his summers down South. In an interview with Tony Brown for the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, Hyman recalled that in the summer of 1937, the library in his parents' hometown of Warrenton, North Carolina, was opened to African Americans for the first time. He went in, and asked for the biggest book they had. The librarian gave him the complete works of Shakespeare. On summer afternoons, when there was nothing better to do, Hyman read Shakespeare. "I was too young to really understand it," he told Brown, "but it blew my mind." In 1993, over 45 years after the summer he discovered Shakespeare, Hyman returned to North Carolina to play the role of King Lear at the age of 66. He is the only African American actor to have played all four of the major Shakespearean tragic leads: Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Othello.

Hyman's passion for the theater may have begun with Shakespeare, but it was the works of the 19th century Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, that had the greatest impact on his career. The first play that Hyman saw was Ibsen's The Ghosts. When he was 13, his mother gave him a choice of going to see The Wizard of Oz at a local movie theater, or going to see a production of The Ghosts at the Brighton Beach Theater. He chose the play. It was that experience that inspired Hyman to become an actor. His teachers at Franklin K. Lane High School in Brooklyn encouraged his interest in the theatre. By the time he was 15, Hyman landed his first role when he performed in a radio series about African American history with actor Paul Robeson. When he graduated from high school, Hyman was offered a prize to attend Columbia College and study in their drama school. However, he decided to try acting on a full-time basis.

Robeson and others asked Hyman to join a new company, The American Negro Theatre in Harlem. His third role with the company was the part of Rudolph in Anna Lucasta. The play became a solid hit, and eventually moved from Harlem to Broadway. When the cast traveled to London to perform the play, Hyman, then only 21-years-old, accompanied them. His role in Anna Lucasta firmly established his acting career.

A Passion for Ibsen and Norway

Hyman continued to be fascinated by the works of Ibsen. He began studying Norwegian, teaching himself how to read and write it so that he could read Ibsen in the original language. To learn more about his favorite playwright, Hyman decided to visit Norway in 1957. He contacted Ibsen's grandson and his wife, and arranged to visit them. On that visit, Ibsen's grandson introduced him to many people in the Norwegian theatre world, and Hyman fell in love with the landscape of Norway.

In 1962, when he was appearing in an American production of Othello, a friend contacted Hyman and asked him to consider playing Othello in a Norwegian production. He initially refused because he didn't feel that he had a command of the Norwegian language. However, he began reading the play in Norwegian during his tour, and, one day during rehearsal, his fellow actors fell silent. They told Hyman that he had just recited some of his lines in Norwegian. He contacted the Norwegian company, and told them he would perform as Othello.

For Hyman, the Norwegian production of Othello was the beginning of a long association with the Scandinavian theater, and with Norway as well. During the play's run, he fell in love with the actress who played Desdemona, and began a 26-year romance with her. He also began to be invited to audition for other roles in the Norwegian theater. Soon, Hyman had a thriving career on both sides of the Atlantic. He would often spend half a year performing in Norway, sometimes performing in English and sometimes in Norwegian, and then spend the rest of the year performing in the United States. He played the lead in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm at the request of its artistic director, Ingmar Bergman. In the early 1990's, Hyman performed in Driving Miss Daisy in Danish, a language that is similar to Norwegian. In 1988, he read Ibsen onstage in Norwegian for the first time.

In recognition of his distinguished acting career on the Norwegian stage, the king of Norway awarded Hyman with the St. Olav Medal in 1988. This is the highest civilian honor that a foreigner can be awarded in Norway. Hyman feels equally at home in both the United States and Norway. While he owns his family's old house in Warrenton, North Carolina, he also owns a house in a small village on the west coast of Norway, and has spoken of retiring there.

Hyman's command of the Norwegian language has opened the door to many roles, including roles that had not been written for African Americans. Like many actors of his era, Hyman's career has been played out against the backdrop of segregation and the civil rights movement in the United States. In the early stages of his career, he performed mostly with all-African American productions or in roles written exclusively for African American actors. Beginning in the late 1950s, theater companies in the United States began to experiment with non-traditional casting, in which actors are placed in roles according to their suitability for the role, without regard to race. When he was in rehearsal for the role of Colonel Pickering in a production of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (a character that could not have been black historically), Hyman commented to a New York Times reporter that non-traditional casting was much more widely accepted in the European theater. For example, when he played the part of a Norwegian bishop in a play in Norway, no one was concerned that his race would interfere with the audience's experience of his interpretation of the part. Non-traditional casting occurred in the United States, but it continued to be a source of controversy. In the same article, Hyman stated, "I'm still saying that all roles should be made available to all actors of talent, regardless of race. Why should I be deprived of seeing a great black actress play Hedda Gabler?"

Starred as Russell Huxtable

While Hyman's major roles have been on the stage, he has also worked consistently in film and on television. He has appeared in hundreds of soap operas including Love of Life, and As the World Turns. He has played the role of Bill Cosby's father, Russell Huxtable, on The Cosby Show beginning in 1984, and was nominated for an Emmy. During one period, he was filming The Cosby Show during the day and then appearing in the two-person play, Driving Miss Daisy, in the evening.

While some people grow into their life's work or find it by accident, others like Hyman seem attracted to one field like a magnet from the very beginning. In an interview with David Black at the New School in New York, Hyman related the passion he feels for the theater. Of his career in theater, he remarked, "I cannot remember when I didn't want this life of illuminated emotion, this other world, this magic."

Awards

Nominated for a Tony award for his role in Edward Albee's The Lady from Dubuque, in 1979; won an ACE award for his work in a film production of Long Day's Journey into Night, 1983; won the Norwegian State Award for best actor for his role in The Emperor Jones, 1984; nominated for an Emmy for his role as Russell Huxtable on The Cosby Show; awarded the St. Olav Medal in Norway for his three decades of performing on the Norwegian stage, 1988.

Further Reading

Books

• Black, David The Magic of Theater, Macmillan, 1993, pp. 159-175.
• Hill, Errol. Shakespeare in Sable, University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.
• Mapp, Edward. Directory of Blacks in the Performing Arts, Scarecrow Press, 1978.

• Chicago Tribune, May 5, 1988, p. 17H.
• Chicago Tribune, August 16, 1990, p. 15C.
• Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, September 1, 1993, p. 1901K7115.
• New York Times, March 24, 1991, sec. 2, p. 5.

• Additional information for this profile was obtained from Henderson Hogan Talent Agency.

— Rory Donnelly

Earle Hyman
Born	October 11, 1926 (1926-10-11) (age 82) Rocky Mount, North Carolina, United States
Other name(s)	Earl Hyman
Occupation	Stage, film and television actor
Years active	1943 - present

Earle Hyman (born October 11, 1926, Rocky Mount, North Carolina) is an American stage, television, and film actor. Hyman is best known for his recurring role on The Cosby Show as Cliff's father, Russell Huxtable.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Career 2 Filmography 3 Awards and nominations 4 References 5 External links

Biography

Career

A native of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Hyman's parents, Zachariah Hyman and Maria Lilly Plummer, moved their family to Brooklyn, New York. Earle Hyman became interested in acting after seeing a production of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts. “The first play I ever saw was a present from my parents on my 13th birthday — Nazimova in ‘Ghosts’ at Brighton Beach on the subway circuit — and I just freaked out.”^{[1] [2]}

He made his Broadway stage debut as a teenager in 1943 in Run, Little Chillun, and later joined the American Negro Theater. The following year, Hyman began a two year run playing the role of Rudolf on Broadway in Anna Lucasta, starring Hilda Simms in the title role.^[3]

Throughout his career, Hyman has appeared in productions in both the United States and Norway (he is fluent in Norwegian) where he also owns a home on Norway's west coast and an apartment in Oslo. In 1965, won a Theatre World Award and in 1988, he was awarded the St Olav's medal for his work in Norwegian theater.

In addition to his stage work, Hyman has appeared in various television and film roles including adaptions of Macbeth (1968), Julius Caesar (1979), and Coriolanus (1979). One of his most well known roles, that of Russell Huxtable in The Cosby Show, earned him an Emmy Award nomination in 1986. In the 1980s, Hyman voiced Panthro, amongst other characters, in the 1980s animated series ThunderCats.^{[citation needed]}He is the third cousin of singer Phyllis Hyman.

Filmography

Film
Year	Film	Role	Notes
1945	The Lost Weekend	Smoking Man	Uncredited
1954	The Bamboo Prison	Doc Jackson, medic
1966	Afrikaneren	Raymond	Alternative title: The African
1975	The Possession of Joel Delaney	Charles	Credited Earl Hyman
1979	Coriolanus	Cominius
	Julius Caesar	Cicero
1982	Fighting Back	Police Chief Freeman	Alternative title: Death Vengeance
1985	Thundercats - HO: The Movie	Panthro	Voice
1988	Light Years	Maxum (Voice)	Alternative title: Gandahar
Television
Year	Title	Role	Notes
1957	Hallmark Hall of Fame	Adam	1 episode
	The United States Steel Hour	Jim	1 episode
1963	Espionage	Premier Djatuma	1 episode
	East Side/West Side	Mr. Marsden	1 episode
1964	The Nurses	Buratta	1 episode
	Playdate	Crouch	1 episode
	The Defenders	District Attorney	1 episode
1965	Seaway	Tom Nkomo	1 episode
1968	Macbeth	Macbeth	Television movie
1980	The Ivory Ape	Inspector St. George	Television movie
1982	Long Day's Journey Into Night	James Tyrone	Television movie
1984	The Edge of Night	Baliff	Unknown episodes
1984-1992	The Cosby Show	Russell Huxtable	40 episodes
1985	ThunderCats	Panthro/Redeye (Voice)	130 episodes
	The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus	King Awgwa (Voice)	Television movie
1987	A Different World	Russell Huxtable	Episode: :Sometimes You Get the Bear, Sometimes the Bear Gets You"
1989	A Man Called Hawk	Jefferson Adams	Episode: "Passing the Bar"
1994	Seier'n er vår	Sammy	Unknown episodes
1995	All My Children	Mr. Patterson	Unknown episodes
1996	Hijacked: Flight 285	Wayne Edwards	Television movie
1997	Cosby	Rev. Mitchell	1 episode
2000	The Moving of Sophia Myles	Bishop Heath	Television movie
2001	Twice in a Lifetime	Charley Freeman	1 episode

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Result	Category	Film, series or play
1956	Theatre World Award	Won	-	-
1980	Tony Award	Nominated	Best Featured Actor in a Play	The Lady From Dubuque
1983	CableACE Award	Won	Actor in a Dramatic Presentation	Long Day's Journey Into Night
1986	Emmy Award	Nominated	Outstanding Guest Performer in a Comedy Series	The Cosby Show (For episode "Happy Anniversary")

References

1. ^ "From Ibsen to Pinter and back again Earle Hyman’s long journey with the masters"
2. ^ Winer, Laurie (1991-03-24). "From Cosby's Father to Colonel Pickering, By Way of Norway". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE4DB1F3CF937A15750C0A967958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. Retrieved on 2008-11-09. 
3. ^ Buckley, Michael (2005-10-23). "Stage and Screen Star Earle Hyman". playbill.com. http://www.playbill.com/features/article/95808.html/all. Retrieved on 2008-11-09. 

External links

• Earle Hyman at the Internet Movie Database
• Earle Hyman at the Internet Broadway Database
• Earle Hyman at TV.com
• Audio Interview (2008)

Persondata
NAME	Hyman, Earle
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Hyman, Earl
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Actor
DATE OF BIRTH	October 11, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH	Rocky Mount, North Carolina, USA
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

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