ACTING GREAT TYSON DIES
HARLEM-BORN EMMY, TONY AND OSCAR WINNER WAS 96
Trailblazing actor Cicely Tyson, whose commanding moral presence carried her through roles playing everything from a slave to a Harlem mobster, died Thursday. She was 96.
Her manager, Larry Thompson, confirmed her death to the Daily News.
“I have managed Miss Tyson’s career for over 40 years, and each year was a privilege and blessing,” said Thompson, noting that Tyson’s memoir “Just As I Am” was published by HarperCollins only days ago.
“Cicely thought of her new memoir as a Christmas tree decorated with all the ornaments of her personal and professional life. Today, she placed the last ornament, a star, on top of the tree,” he added.
Tyson, whose legion of fans included such luminaries as Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama, excelled on screen, stage and television, playing strong women who almost always got the last word.
She was Kunta Kinte’s mother in “Roots,” a numbers-running queen in “Hoodlum,” the proud aunt of a teacher in “A Lesson Before Dying,” a philosophical maid in “The Help” and the tough-talking matriarch of the Shonda Rhimes-produced ABC hit “How to Get Away with Murder.”
But it was her role as a defiant slave who lived long enough to triumph in the victories of the civil rights movement that earned Tyson her celebrated status.
“The Autobiography of Jane Pittman,” the television adaptation of an Ernest Gaines novel, was among the first made-for-TV movies to deal with the plight of Southern Blacks, and Tyson was almost synonymous with the fictional title role that led to two of her three Primetime Emmy Awards.
“An elder ... now an ancestor. What a vessel,” Bernice King, the daughter of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, wrote in a tribute posted on Twitter.
“She was an extraordinary person. And this is an extraordinary loss. She had so much to teach. And I still have so much to learn. I am grateful for every moment. Her power and grace will be with us forever,” Rhimes said in a tweet.
Mayor de Blasio tweeted that Tyson was “was a proud daughter of Harlem and a passionate champion for women.”
Tyson was defiant and inspirational to the end. In one of her last roles, during an appearance on the series finale of “Madam Secretary,” Tyson’s character talked the nation’s first woman president into reviving the equal rights amendment.
The roles didn’t always come easy for Tyson. Early on, she had trouble finding work because she flatly refused to do “blaxploitation” films, which were all the rage in the 1970s.
“Unless a piece really said something, I had no interest in it,” she told an interviewer in 1983. “I have got to know that I have served some purpose here.’’
But for all her time in the spotlight, on the Broadway stage, on the television screen or making movies in Hollywood, Tyson’s most challenging role might have been the real-life one she played behind the scenes — as jazz legend Miles Davis’ wife.
Years before they were married, Tyson, a former model, even appeared in a portrait on the cover of one of Davis’ albums, “Sorcerer.”
Davis and Tyson were married for seven years in the 1980s, and were the Jay-Z and Beyoncé of their time. And, despite rumors of abuse and infidelity, Tyson said she had fond memories of her time with the mysterious music legend.
“I don’t really talk about it. No, I don’t,” Tyson told CBS News’ Gayle King in 2015. “But I will say this. I cherish every single moment that I had with him.”
Cicely Tyson was born in Harlem on Dec. 19, 1924. When she was 18, she walked away from a typing job and began modeling.
Although she was forbidden from seeing plays or movies as a child, Tyson was bit by the acting bug, and when she got her first job in the field, her religious mother kicked her out of their home for choosing a sinful path.
They reconciled, and Tyson found success in the industry. Among her biggest roles was “Sounder” in 1972, when she played the wife of a Depression-era sharecropper who holds her family together after her husband goes to jail for stealing food to feed his family. Tyson received an Academy Award nomination for her performance.
And after a 30-year absence from Broadway, Tyson returned with a role in “The Trip to Bountiful.” Her performance won Tyson the 2013 Tony Award for best performance by an actress in a leading role in a play.
In 2015 Tyson received the Kennedy Center Honor, and in 2016, President Barack Obama gave her the country’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2018 she received an honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards.
In accepting the award, Tyson mentioned her birthday was the following month, and “I don’t know that I would cherish a better gift than this. This is the culmination of all those years of have and have-not.”