Roscoe Lee Browne

A cancer ended the life of Roscoe Lee Browne on April 11 at the age of 81. His name may not sound familiar to the general public, but his career as an actor encompasses more than forty years. His world was television, cinema and theater, although without forgetting poetry, his great passion. According to what many say, like Sidney Poitier , it was a real pleasure to hear him recite, because Lee Browne had a powerful voice. Due to his dubbing, in Spain he could not enjoy that voice that, indefatigable, has accompanied him until the last days of his career.

Roscoe Lee Browne was born on May 2, 1925 in Woodbury, New Jersey. The son of a Baptist priest, he participated in World War II. After the war he graduated from Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, where he later taught French and comparative literature. His aptitudes also went through sports, and specifically, through athletics, which led to international triumphs. It wasn’t until his mid-fifties that he decided that he wanted to be a professional actor. So he quit his job at a wine company to get on stage. From that moment his career was dotted with works in the theater, film and television. As a stage actor he was nominated for a Tony for his supporting role in August Wilson’s ‘Two Trains Running’ (1992). Television helped him win two Emmy Awards.The Hill Cosby Hour (1984) and Barney Miller (1975). His television resume includes shows like Bonanza , Planet of the Apes , Starsky and Hutch , Highway to Heaven , Falcon Crest , ER or Law & Order .

Thanks to television, especially, Lee Browne’s face was familiar. The difficulty of associating him with a name was rooted in that most of his roles were supporting roles, which probably helped his prolific career. In the cinema he debuted in 1962 with the drama The Connection . The lack of leading roles did not prevent her from working with big names in cinema such as Richard Burton , Elizabeth Taylor , Alec Guinness and Peter Ustinov in The Comedians (1967); under the orders of Alfred Hitchcock in Topaz (1969); or under the baton of William Wyler in Silence cannot be bought(1970). They enriched a filmography characterized by the variety of genres. Lee Browne went through the western with John Wayne in John Wayne and the Cowboys (1972); for the family comedy in the Disney title Son of the Jungle (1973); for the thriller Alert: missiles (1977), where he coincided with Burt Lancaster ; for the action in Super Fly TNT (1973); for the comedy Dangerously Together (1986), where he worked with Robert Redford , Debra Winger and Daryl Hannah ; and for the adventure with El guerrero del bosque (1996), starringChuck Norris .

His voice turned out to be a great ally in his work as an actor, something that Lee Browne soon understood that, despite his advanced age, he was able to continue working thanks to her. His works as a narrator had followed one another in his career, but it was in the last years of his life that they gained more strength. When the fashion is to dub cartoons, which he did in 1994 with the evil Kingpin from the cartoon series Spiderman , he stood out for being the storyteller. This was demonstrated in titles such as the two installments of Babe the pig, the animated film Treasure Planet (2002), Garfield 2 (2006) and Epic Movie (2007). Films that kept him linked to the world of cinema until a short time before he died.