{"id":595444,"date":"2023-10-25T03:51:18","date_gmt":"2023-10-25T00:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/richard-roundtree-dead-shaft-star-was-81\/"},"modified":"2023-10-25T03:51:18","modified_gmt":"2023-10-25T00:51:18","slug":"richard-roundtree-dead-shaft-star-was-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/richard-roundtree-dead-shaft-star-was-81\/","title":{"rendered":"#Richard Roundtree Dead: ‘Shaft’ Star Was 81"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Richard Roundtree, an icon of Blaxploitation film who starred as detective John Shaft in Gordon Parks\u2019 1971 action thriller, died Tuesday afternoon after a short battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 81 years old.<\/p>\n

\n His death was confirmed by Patrick McMinn, his manager since 1987.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cRichard\u2019s work and career served as a turning point for African American leading men in film,\u201d McMinn said in his statement. \u201cThe impact he had on the industry cannot be overstated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Roundtree was a leading man from the very start of his lifetime in screen acting. After beginning his career in modeling, he secured \u201cShaft\u201d at the age of 28, marking his feature debut. A smash hit in theaters, the MGM release earned $12 million in ticket sales off of a $500,000 production budget, helping to save the studio from bankruptcy.\u00a0A breakthrough hit, \u201cShaft\u201d set the tone for a prolific decade of Blaxploitation filmmaking and demonstrated Hollywood\u2019s historical failure to consider Black talent and the moviegoing audiences that they could reach.<\/p>\n

\n When asked about the \u201cexploitation\u201d label attached to \u201cShaft\u201d by the New York Times in a 2019 interview, Roundtree expressed some ambiguity about the term.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cI had the privilege of working with the classiest gentleman possibly that I\u2019ve ever known in the industry, Gordon Parks. So, that word, exploitation, I take offense to with any attachment to Gordon Parks\u2026 I\u2019ve always viewed that as a negative. Exploitation. Who\u2019s being exploited?\u201d Roundtree said. \u201cBut it gave a lot of people work. It gave a lot of people entr\u00e9e into the business, including a lot of our present-day producers and directors. So, in the big picture, I view it as a positive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Two sequels about the \u201cbad mother (shut your mouth)\u201d quickly followed within the span of two years: \u201cShaft\u2019s Big Score\u201d and \u201cShaft in Africa.\u201d In 1973, CBS attempted a \u201cShaft\u201d television series<\/a> starring Roundtree \u2014 a run that only lasted a handful episodes.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cYou can\u2019t erase events, but that\u2019s one I wish I could,\u201d Roundtree told the Times in 2019. \u201cI had just come back from \u2018Shaft in Africa\u2019 when they tried to convert the character to television. It wasn\u2019t going to happ<\/a>en. That was an ugly point in my long, illustrious career.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Long and illustrious, it was. Already a marquee name, Roundtree quickly grew beyond his star-making role, with roles in the ensemble disaster film \u201cEarthquake,\u201d a starring turn alongside Peter O\u2019Toole in \u201cMan Friday\u201d and an ill-fated detective in Larry Cohen\u2019s monster comedy \u201cQ \u2014 The Winged Serpent.\u201d He also frequently popped in for guest starring performances on TV, with credits including \u201cRoots,\u201d \u201cMagnum P.I.\u201d and \u201cThe Love Boat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Roundtree returned to the world of \u201cShaft\u201d in director John Singleton\u2019s 2000 revival of the franchise, starring Samuel L. Jackson. Although Jackson also played a detective named John Shaft, his character was written as the nephew to Roundtree\u2019s original private eye. Both actors reprised their roles in 2019 for Tim Story\u2019s comedic take on the series.<\/p>\n

\n Born July 9, 1942 in Rochester, N.Y., Roundtree briefly attended Southern Illinois University before dropping out to pursue a modeling career. In the late \u201960s, he joined the Negro Ensemble Company and began acting in New York stage productions.<\/p>\n

\n Roundtree worked regularly for more than 50 years, with his iconic turn in \u201cShaft,\u201d rich history in genre filmmaking and compelling screen presence adding color to the worlds of films like \u201cSe7en,\u201d \u201cBrick\u201d and \u201cSpeed Racer.\u201d He played a supporting role in \u201cMoving On,\u201d a comedy starring Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda that debuted at the Toronto Film Festival last year before releasing in theaters this past summer.<\/p>\n

\n Roundtree was married twice, first to Mary Jane Grant from 1963 to 1973, then to Karen M. Cierna, from 1980 to 1998. He is survived by his four daughters, Nicole, Tayler, Morgan and Kelli Roundtree, and his son, James.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Richard Roundtree, an icon of Blaxploitation film who starred as detective John Shaft in Gordon Parks\u2019 1971 action thriller, died Tuesday afternoon after a short battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 81 years old. His death was confirmed by Patrick McMinn, his manager since 1987. \u201cRichard\u2019s work and career served as a turning point for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":595445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Richard-Roundtree-Shaft-Dead.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-595444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}