In Black America; The Late Ossie Davis and The Legendary Rudy Dee

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. There was a young man organizing the march named Biod Rustin, and when Biod call people you didn't say no, Biod Rustin, but he had the capacity to organize hundreds of thousands of people. When he has a plan and a program, he called you and he tells you how the whole thing depends on you. If you don't show up, you're going to be exposed to the whole thing, it's going to collapse and it's going to be blamed on you. Biod reached out to me and to Ruby and just said, we need somebody to MC the first part of the program in the march on Washington,

while the people are assembling. There needs to be entertainment and we need somebody to sort of keep it going. So Ruby, you and I see, you are selected. The late I see Davis. For seven decades, Davis led a distinguished career as an active writer, director and producer. Along with his beloved wife, Ruby Dee, he was a renowned civil rights activist and an unforgettable figure in the African-Americans struggle for a quality. In 1946, he began his acting career in Harlem. He made his film debut in 1950 in the Sydney Portier Film No Way Out. David experienced many of the same struggles that most African-American actors of this generation underwent. He wanted to act but did not want to play stereotypical, sub-servant roles such as Butler that were the stand-in for African-American actors of this generation. Instead, he tried to file the example of poetry and played more distinguished characters. When he found his necessity to play a poor man quarter, or Butler, he tried to inject the roles of a certain degree of dignity.

In 1998, Davis and Ruby Dee published their dual autobiography in this life together. In celebration of their 50th wedding anniversary, on February 4, 2005, David was found dead in Miami where he was making a movie. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, I see in Ruby in this life together in Black America. In the Hollywood entertainment industry syndrome, professional or an actor is looked on as a celebrity, as a commodity, and is taught to teach the public to worship himself or herself as an object of divine, whatever. And if you begin to consider only yourself, if yourself is your only object, then all other things will begin to fall away from you. You have to learn in this business that yourself cannot be your only object. You have to say, myself and my wife and my children,

those are the things that mean the most to me, and I don't care what fame does or celebrity does, that's where I will be going, and that's where I stake my claim. You have to be tough and say, I'm going to make this marriage work because if I lose this one, the only thing I can do is get another, which will be just like it. So I might as well make this one work. I see Davis and Ruby Dee were one of the most revered couples of the American stage, two of the most prolific and fearless artists in American culture. As individual and as a team, they created profound and lasting work that has touched all of us. With courage and tenacity, they often broke new ground for African Americans and opened many of your door previously shut tight to African American artists. This generation may recognize Davis and Dee for their appearances in several Spike Lee movies, including Malcolm X in which Davis played himself, having delivered the eulogy for the slain civil rights leader. Born on December 18, 1917 in Cogsdale, Georgia,

the odors of five children, Davis grew up and weighed cross Georgia. On December 9, 1948, Davis and Ruby Dee were married. In 1950, they made their film debut in No Way Out with Sydney, Poet J, and then started together on Broadway and Arraised in the Sun. In honoring this legendary couple and selling, bringing the birthday of Davis, M. Black America presents this rebroadcast of a 1998 interview regarding the publication of their dual autobiography. One seems to forget that all of us are human beings under our stardom or whatever our vocation. Was it difficult in going back and reliving those early years?

Not difficult in an emotional sense. But what was difficult was that we found that we had different members, often of the same thing. Sometimes we couldn't reconcile our differences, so I wrote my version, Ruby wrote her version, made the best contest and emerged by effort. Sometimes conversations, dialogue, we take chapters, the format kind of varies, you know, like that. Like life does. How long did it take you all to put this work together? Two solid years. I would ask the aesthetic wasn't solid because in between that we were working. One of us would be away and thank God I was the writer and the family. We kept us on track and we were working with a wonderful one-year-old Sydney Mahon when my daughter is a dramaturg. And I was helping us with research. So that was when our children sometimes, my sister,

my daughter Nora, helping us with the memories when they were small. So that helped a great deal. But I just had to cry a little bit with that word solid. And although those times when we ate, we had some disagreements too about this and that. But we never came to blows. No, we never came to blows. Mr. Davis, are you still your own editor and sensor? I am still my own editor and sensor, but I found out that a lot of people have gotten into the act. So it's me and a whole board of directors telling me what to do. Tell our audience how you all met in 1948. Well, now let's go versus. We were both involved in a play called Jib. And we met at the New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street in New York. Is that the ranking is now? Yeah. That first day at rehearsal. And it didn't seem extraordinary to me at all.

And we went on board as an understudy here. And I had seen this picture in the paper, but I had met him. But I didn't even like it because I had wondered some other people I knew from the American Negro Theatre. That's the theatre community here where I got into the business. One of those guys, I get to leave. So I was really very disappointed. And then when I saw him, it was even worse because I thought he looked so peculiar. And his understudy now used to sit in the auditorium and kind of talk about him, you know, because he was this tall, skinny guy that looked like, he looked like a, kind of, with this big Adam's apple that went up and down when he talked. And he kind of like stood along out of his, and the hung out of his clothes, the clothes are too, too, you know, this like this tall, skinny guy wearing the clothes of this short, fat man. It just looked strictly from comedy, but it didn't seem to be self-conscious about

or anything. I have my mojo guard. But we agreed that he was a good actor, you know. That's how it all got started. You all have been very involved with the activism of this country. How has that parallel you all's acting careers? Well, first, let me say that we have been involved in activism in our country, but you remember, remember, activism has been involved with us. I understand. We were born black. And when we married in 1958, I'm sorry, being black was not a happy state of affairs in this country. There were many places where people couldn't vote. People were still getting lynched. Soldiers returning from the war were being killed if they lined up to vote. So when we came into the theater, we were already in the midst of the struggle of our people for dignity and work and freedom. We had no option. There was no way of get out of being black, you know. So you had to get buckle down and struggle. And also our parents

were thinking about my mother walking and pick it up. We went with her for, you know, picketing for jobs in the stores where we couldn't work or go there and buy. We couldn't, we couldn't own stores on our 25th Street. You know, I remember and the poverty and we have been put out the street. We were kind of born both of us from different parts of the country. And I remember on two occasions, when my father's life was threatened by the Ku Klux Klan. And on one occasion, we stayed up all night waiting for the clan to come. They didn't come. But we got the message, you know, so struggle was always a part of who I was and a part of who Ruby was. And all that was part of the marriage too, because the times that we live and affect you in personal ways too. I preceded women's live. And as I looked back, that affected me a lot because there was, I had no way,

ways of thinking about what I felt was ailing me, what I felt was wrong with my being married and all that thing. You know, that's once I got used to it. And I said, oh, this, this, this thing is unfair. This is, it's lopsided, you know, when it comes to, to the involvement of women and men. And so the whole thing struck me as I, as we got married. So through my, as I began this question, quest, this scratching, this searching. And an auntie being a sensitive person to thank God, we managed to scratch our way, move our way into another level of understanding as human beings. You know what I'm saying? But part of it, I think Ruby was because we knew how to struggle, even with each other. We knew how to fight with each other. We knew how to try and arrive at some common truth that would embrace us both. And we had some marvelous examples when we came into the business, ball ropes and Canada leaves. Beautiful young lady named Lena Horn out in Hollywood,

fighting you. So there were examples all along the way that led us into the struggle. And we found that the struggle was our mother. And they kept us so busy that we never had time to stop and ask ourselves if we were happy. You know, we didn't have time for that. The involvement was more important than any kind of, like, disagreements. That's how it seemed to work out. We had so much to do where we had, there was some common thing happening. You know, to go to spend on our personal things. Although we did, we managed to, we managed to have a few wrong paths, you know, going, oh yeah. We had a full personal life. But you know, if you sit in front of the television, in 1963 and you look at what's happening in Birmingham and the dog snapping at children, the water hose knocking people off their feet, you don't look at your wife and say, how wonderful I'm happy. You get mad as hell. You want to do something about it. You know, so the struggle catches you up in it. It's a part of who you are. And it certainly helped to keep

us together and define who we were and what we had to do in this life. Struggle is the center of existence as far as we are concerned. And we intend to keep struggling until we die. How did you all happen to become the MC of the March on Washington in August 1963? There was a young man organizing the march named Biod Rustin. And when Biod called people, no, you did, there was no, you couldn't say no. Biod was, sir. First, he was Dr. King's lieutenant. But he had the capacity to organize hundreds of thousands of people. And when he has a plan and a program, you know, he called you and he told you how the whole thing depends on you. If you don't show up, you don't know what you're supposed to do. The whole thing is going to collapse and it's going to be blamed on you. Biod reached out to me and to Ruby and just said, we need somebody to MC the first part of the program in the March on Washington. While the people are assembling,

there needs to be entertainment and we need somebody to sort of keep it going. So Ruby, you and I see you are selected. What was the feeling once you heard the I have a dream speech at the March? Well, it was, remember, it was, well, a quarter million people there. And it had been a most exciting day. And believe it or not, there had been some other very exciting speeches. But that certainly was the one that topped them all. And we found ourselves after the speech, just started hooking each other, crying, laughing, and just feeling an explosion of joy in the bottom of our belly. Because Martin and speak, when he said, I have a dream, we knew he meant we have a dream. And we knew that we had arrived. What has been the secret of these 50 years? If we could ball it, we could sell it. That's true. Tell them Ruby, because I don't know.

I came to truth. I, when people first used to ask us that, especially young people in our travels, we kind of would give up for the fancy, you know, is it, well, we have managed to kill each other. Well, just do one day at a time. Well, just don't go to bed mad. We prefer about things like that. We did for a long time, but it occurred to us that the young, we were asking serious questions. This relationship business is not easy. You know, how to be together, man, woman, wife, sexual partner, temptation, jealousy, envy, resentment. You know, all these things are creeping into our lives to one degree or another. And if your luck and marriage we finally concluded is a process. It's not something that you do. The wedding is something you do on an inner day, but marriage is something you do for the rest of your life every day. You know, around some issues, some, and I just feel it's kind of a percentage game of this. There are more things around

what you can agree and can enjoy life than those things that, well, which you want to divorce. And that marriage feels like it's successful. The same thing with love. I thought I was in love when I first got married, but it wasn't many years into the thing when I realized that I was feeling some things that didn't go, didn't belong with love, you know. We were going through some things that, we've had questions, questions a lot of times, and many times we have an argument asking we wake up the next morning, and I was going to say, well, if you wish you'd married so and so, you know, some, some question like that, and I get angry with the question, or he would say, well, if you're going to quit me, I'm going to go with you. So the one thing that saved us in the rough times was a sense of humor, I tell you the truth, because we, we always, eventually, we found something to laugh at, to laugh about, you know, at the ridiculousness of what the things that were upsetting us, especially after they passed, and, and the whole, and I, and I

would use to get angry with him, because I didn't think he was a good fighter, I didn't think he even had argued very well. And I think there's something about being able to argue constructively and creatively, that sometimes it clears the air and get some understanding, because then sometimes we have a fight in the next morning, I think he would tell me that he understood something. And eventually he began to, to feel with me about how I was feeling as a woman, and being a very smart guy, he would read up on the subject, he thought about things, and he began to re-evaluate women, me, his mother, women in general, that this whole woman is object question, the woman is interlike mind, me as a person capable of being of use in his work, and a youthful to him as a sounding board, I'm a good collaborator, but I had to kind of fight my way into his consciousness, I had to move beyond just being a woman, I had to, I mean, so, you know, this, this, this marriage

business is not easy, but we're hoping that this book will give young marriage some, some, some idea, you know, some, because we, for instance, we study everything in school, but relationships, those important thing we, there's no compulsory course on marriage or child rearing or anything like that that affects us, we have to learn by trial and error. And if you're lucky, you, you're hang together through the rough times and not think that every challenge is an end. And marriage is really what you make it, you have to make what it is you want. Now, in the Hollywood entertainment industry syndrome, a professional or an actor is looked on as a celebrity, as a commodity, and is taught to teach the public to worship himself or herself as an object of divine, whatever, and if you begin to consider only yourself, if yourself is your only object, then all other

things will begin to fall away from you. You have to learn in this business that yourself cannot be your only object. You have to say, myself and my wife and my children, those of the things that mean the most to me, not don't care what fame does or celebrity does, that's where I will be going, and that's where I stake my claim. You have to be tough and say, I'm going to make this marriage work because if I lose this one, the only thing I can do is get another, which will be just like it. So I might as well make this one work. You all were with Malcolm X a day or two days before his untimely assassination. Give us a little insight into the man. Well, I think the last time we saw him, which he was not too long before he left us, he did come to our house by himself and just ruined me and Malcolm's fat, and we just listened

and let him talk. And what was very apparent was that this dedicated, very brilliant, very strong character, very spiritual man, had one thing that heard him more than anything else. And that was his, his, his strangenment from his father figure Elijah Muhammad. He never really got over that. And so all of the things that we admired him for, we knew about and the public knew about. But when he sat to talk and he talked and talked, we could see a young man, a boy reaching out for a father who was no longer there. And that's the inner center central core of my members of Malcolm. I don't know. I thought of racism does to us. We're all affected by it. And I think particularly black man and particularly women do in other areas like women. But this, that his

struggle against, against being relegated to negative. It also talks about in the book. This thing that, that, that, that, unfortunately, happens in, in, in, in our culture with, it, it, it, it, it, it seems to be like a constant problem. This, how do we, we reach through racism and, and love each other. And then Malcolm was, that, that, that attempt for the man who had the Nazi bird about that reached toward that for all of us, for all of us. He, he, he, he, he carried with it, with him all the time. And he was, he had a beautiful vulnerability and a nice sense of humor with that crooked little smile, you know. And he, but I think he had a, he, he, he, he was dressed in a direction that was, you know, that was more than just himself. He was a person

sitting, sitting, he, he, I met him through my brother Edward, but he was, I mean, he's transformed my brother and their families are very close. And then, but he was a man who was, he was a, a public, he was a personification of black man in struggle. And so he couldn't have, he, his personal life didn't, was second, second, was second. You know, no, no, I'm saying that these people who walk the earth, who are, they come here for more than themselves. They, they come here to live for a lot of people, just to, to be part of their, their aspiration and, and the thrust. Yes. Is there a great appreciation? I'm quite sure you love both venues, stage and film. Well, I personally prefer the stage because I am a writer and I find that writing for the stage means that you write a work that will exist and its own terms as long as printing

exists. Unfortunately, the work that you do on film will not necessarily exist. Nobody goes and reads a film script. And unless somebody takes care to preserve the film, it could very well disappear. So for me, since I'm a writer, stage is my first love. Well, I can't say that I have a definite preference. I like them both for different reasons. I think there's nothing like stage for finding, hitting the walls of yourself, you know, finding out what you're all about, trotting the tracks, opening the pathways and, and you do it over and over every night on stage. So there's a chance for growth and self-examination and, and use of yourself over and over and over that makes it easier to get to the one point to another. This, this, this practice is like going through the path in an unclear forest, the more you tread it, the better the, the smoother and

more definite it gets. That's what I think the theatre does. It explores the bigness of you and the wideness and the deepness of yourself and, and, and, and helps you to become a better actor on film where you're looking where, where the camera seems to photograph thoughts and emotions and ideas and, you know, the subtleties with the camera can get, get there greater, I think, than, than on stage. But they, but they, but they, but they, but I think you grow more in on stage than you do in film, although there are film actors who master that technique and are just as efficient there as, but I mean to span them both. I think the stage, stage work is a necessary part of the training process, you know. Have you all adapted, Spike Lee? Not officially, but we're working on it. He's adopted us, I think. I know, I know, I know, I have, I feel, all right, I think with Spike kind of brought me into a new, the, the intention of a new,

new generation or something, you know, and also through our son, and also, I think Spike taught a lot of people in the business. He had, he's definitely about integrity and I thought he did the film, the Delta, the Delta Sigma Theta first. When he just, he, he made a film by, by the bootstrap, you know, he just did it. And that's what the Delta did with that film we made, downtown Cousinie. And he gave credit to all the people who helped him. And he took $5, $500,000 and my son happened to be our son, happened to be one of the investors. So I love Spike for that. He brought people into the union where, with the union, you know, it's not known for being, you know, it's kind of, it has a lot to do in terms of racism. And Spike did work on that front too. Everybody worked for Spike. You know, men, women, black, white, Asians, the physically challenged, all those, I mean, Spike, he's a conscientious, young man,

growing philosophically. And so I mean, he's the most exciting person in that realm that, that I've known, you know. You all have worked in virtually all the media, radio, television, film, stage, any new projects on the horizon? Well, Ruby has a couple of films in the can, yeah. The passing, what a passing game. The passing glory. Yes. And we're, we're Quinty Jones was one of the producers in David Solzman and Mike Maggie Johnson. And just it's a, it's a basketball film with Andy Brauer. And the next one is the baby geniuses. No, without one is before then, really, this baby geniuses, that's coming out with Dom De Louise. That was fun for me because I, I love doing those kind of kind of quick. Oh, get out. Could I get one in there? Yeah. All right. And I did one with Delarice called the secret path, which has yet to show up. Meanwhile,

we have other projects that we'll be working on. The late Icy Davis and the legendary Ruby D. If you have questions, comments or suggestions asked your future in Black America programs, email us at Jay Hanson, H-A-N-S-O-N, at kut.org. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. You can hear previous programs online at kut.org. Until we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Alvarez, I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America CDs, KUT Radio, one university station, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America CDs, KUT Radio, one university station, Austin, Texas, 78712. This has been a production of KUT Radio.