Celebrity Biographies
Paul benjamin
It was lavished as secondary to titles such as “Escape from Alcatraz” or “Do what you must”. Paul Benjamin died in Los Angeles on June 28, 2019, at the age of 81, according to what the director of the second, Spike Lee, announced a few days later. “Rest in Paradise,” declared the director.
Born on the first day of 1938, in Pelion, South Carolina, Paul Benjaminhe was the youngest of twelve children born to a Baptist minister. After studying Literature and Letters at Benedict College, in Columbia, he moved to New York, where he trained as an actor with the prestigious Herbert Berghof. “Until then I had not been able to even mention to my family that I wanted to be an actor, it would be as if I had told them that I wanted to go to the Moon,” he recalled in an interview.
After various theatrical roles in the city of skyscrapers, he made his film debut as a waiter in Midnight Cowboy . He next played the fullest role of himself, the leader of a criminal gang, in Panic on 110th Street , where he appeared third in the credits, behind Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto . Over the years, he’s also shared the screen with Clint Eastwood ( Escape from Alcatraz , The Pink Cadillac ), Barbra Streisand ( Loca ), and Joe Pesci ( Superman ).
But Paul Benjamin is most remembered as one of the three “corner men,” urban philosophers who met every day, under a beach umbrella, in Lee’s Do the Right Thing . Another combative Afro director, John Singleton , cast him in Rosewood . He also had a leading role, as a model train enthusiast, in The Station Agent (Crossroads) . “I’m happy with my professional career,” he recalled. “There is nothing worse than having talent but not being able to show it.”