Ossie Davis
Birthday: 1917-12-18
Place of Birth: Cogdell, Georgia, USA
Biography: Raiford Chatman "Ossie" Davis (December 18, 1917 – February 4, 2005) was an American actor, director, writer, and activist. He may be best known for his roles in Spike Lee-directed films such as School Daze (1988) and Do the Right Thing (1989). Other films Davis acted in include The Hill (1965), A Man Called Adam (1966), Let's Do It Again (1975), Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), Grumpy Old Men (1993), The Client (1994), Dr. Dolittle (1998), Dinosaur (2000), and Bubba Ho-Tep (2002). He was married to Ruby Dee, with whom he frequently performed, from 1948 until his death.
Movies
Do the Right Thing
Salvatore "Sal" Fragione is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggi...
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Doctor Dolittle
A successful physician and devoted family man, John Dolittle seems to have the world by the tail, un...
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Jungle Fever
A successful and married black man contemplates having an affair with a white girl from work. He's q...
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Dinosaur
An orphaned dinosaur raised by lemurs joins an arduous trek to a sancturary after a meteorite shower...
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Neighborhoods: The Hidden Cities of San Francisco - The Fillmore
From the Peabody and Emmy Award-winning PBS series NEIGHBORHOODS: THE HIDDEN CITIES OF SAN FRANCISCO...
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Joe Versus the Volcano
Hypochondriac Joe Banks finds out he has six months to live, quits his dead end job, musters the cou...
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Goin' Back to T-Town
Goin’ Back to T-Town tells the story of Greenwood, an extraordinary Black community in Tulsa, Oklaho...
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Grumpy Old Men
For decades, next-door neighbors and former friends John and Max have feuded, trading insults and wi...
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The Hill
North Africa, World War II. British soldiers on the brink of collapse push beyond endurance to strug...
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Sam Whiskey
A widow hires an ex-gambler to retrieve gold bars from a sunken river boat in Colorado and discreetl...
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The Scalphunters
Forced to trade his valuable furs for a well-educated escaped slave, a rugged trapper vows to recove...
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12 Angry Men
During the trial of a man accused of his father's murder, a lone juror takes a stand against the gui...
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Bubba Ho-tep
Bubba Ho-tep tells the "true" story of what really became of Elvis Presley. We find Elvis as an elde...
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Baadasssss!
Director Mario Van Peebles chronicles the complicated production of his father Melvin's classic 1971...
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Let's Do It Again
Clyde Williams and Billy Foster are a couple of blue-collar workers in Atlanta who have promised to ...
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I'm Not Rappaport
Old Nat Moyer is a talker, a philosopher, and a troublemaker with a fanciful imagination. His compan...
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Avenging Angel
Molly Stewart, now a law student at UCLA, is determined to leave her prostitute past behind. After l...
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Get on the Bus
Several Black men take a cross-country bus trip to attend the Million Man March in Washington, DC in...
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The Secret Path
14-year-old Jo Ann Foley lives in squalor in a rural Southern community during World War II. Abused ...
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Harry & Son
Widower Harry Keach is a construction worker who was raised to appreciate the importance of working ...
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Feast of All Saints
Set in nineteenth-century New Orleans, the story depicts the gens de couleur libre, or the Free Peop...
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The House of God
Comedy about a couple of interns in a hospital named 'The House of God'....
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Hot Stuff
When a police department's burglary task force is facing the possibility of being shut down because ...
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Finding Buck McHenry
Jason Ross is an 11-year-old boy whose love for baseball exceeds his talent for the game. When cut f...
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Malcolm X
A tribute to the controversial black activist and leader of the struggle for black liberation. He hi...
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Here's to Life!
Owen is the head administrator of an old age home in Washington. One day, a resident discovers he is...
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The Peace!
Amid an escalating war in Iraq, rising terror levels and the threat of nuclear attack, a growing bod...
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Miss Evers' Boys
The true story of the US Government's 1932 Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiments, in which a group of black...
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John Brown's Raid
White abolitionist John Brown and twenty of his men attempt to start an armed slave revolt in 1859 b...
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The Evolution of an American Filmmaker
Spike Lee's filmmaking career is examined in this partial making-of for the film 25th Hour (2002). I...
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The Red Shoes
In this animated contemporary interpretation of a Hans Christian Andersen morality tale, a pair of m...
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Billy: Portrait of a Street Kid
A young ghetto kid despairs of ever getting out of that environment and making something of himself,...
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A Man Called Adam
A famous jazz trumpeter finds himself unable to cope with the problems of everyday life....
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The Tuskegee Airmen: They Fought Two Wars
A documentary filmed at Moton Field in Tuskegee Alabama, home to the airmen of the 99th Fighter Squa...
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Teacher, Teacher
Hamilton Cade is an alcoholic teacher striving to put his life back together. He accepts a job tutor...
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Gone Are the Days!
A young, idealistic man returns home to the plantation where he grew up in servitude. With him, he b...
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The Tenth Level
Inspired by the Stanley Milgram obedience research, this TV movie chronicles a psychology professor'...
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Still A Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class
The Black middle class, torn between white goals and Black needs, are examined by producers William ...
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The Soul Collector
Zachariah, makes a few mistakes and it is decided that he is to live as a human being for thirty day...
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The Cardinal
A young Catholic priest from Boston confronts bigotry, Nazism, and his own personal conflicts as he ...
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Arthur Ashe: Citizen of the World
Join tennis greats John McEnroe and Billie Jean King and world leader Nelson Mandela as they pay hom...
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By Any Means Necessary: The Making of 'Malcolm X'
A short documentary about the making of Spike Lee's biopic, "Malcolm X."...
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Unstoppable
An interview/overview on the influential careers of Gordon Parks, Ossie Davis, and Melvin Van Peeble...
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School Daze
Fraternity and sorority members clash with other students at a historically black college during hom...
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The Android Affair
Karen Garrett, a promising young doctor, is assigned to perform a difficult operation on Teach, an a...
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Countdown at Kusini
An American musician working in Nigeria becomes involved with a patriot hunted by a mercenary in Afr...
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Deacons for Defense
Inspired by a true story, this drama is set in 1965, not long after passage of the Civil Rights Act....
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Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues
Never-before-heard personal recordings and archival footage tell the story of Louis Armstrong's life...
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Marcus Garvey: Toward Black Nationhood
A documentary, combining archival material and live interviews with Marcus Garvey, Jr., and others, ...
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Slaves
A Kentucky slave (Davis) fights for his freedom from a cruel overseer whose mistress eventually join...
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Fourteen Hours
A young man, morally destroyed by his parents not loving him and by the fear of being not capable to...
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No Way Out
Two hoodlum brothers are brought into hospital for gunshot wounds, and when one dies, the other accu...
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Scandalize My Name: Stories from the Blacklist
A look at the confluence of the Red Scare, McCarthyism, and blacklists with the post-war activism by...
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The Outsider
Darren McGavin is David Ross, a private investigator playing a game of follow the money. A simple ca...
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4 Little Girls
On September 15, 1963, a bomb destroyed a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young gi...
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Malcolm X
James Earl Jones narrates this fascinating and moving documentary about the life of the assassinated...
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The Fall
"The Fall" depicts certain scenes in New York City between October 1967 and March 1968, shot by the ...
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The Sun... the Sand... the Hill
Promotional film depicting the production and Cannes premiere of the Sidney Lumet film "The Hill."...
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The Sun... the Sand... the Hill
Promotional film depicting the production and Cannes premiere of the Sidney Lumet film "The Hill."...
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Making 'Do the Right Thing'
The Behind-the-Scenes documentary of the dramatic comedy Do the Right Thing....
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Tyler Texas Black Film Collection
"Tyler Texas Black Film Collection" (1985) is a promotional film hosted by Ossie Davis....
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All God's Children
Big city judge Parke Denison is involved in a forced busing dispute at the climax of his long career...
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Freedom Road
Ex-slave and former Union soldier Gideon Jackson represents other ex-slaves at the constitutional co...
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Freedom Man
The story of Benjamin Banneker, the early American patriot whose achievements rival those of Benjami...
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Beah: A Black Woman Speaks
Beah: A Black Woman Speaks is a 2003 documentary about the life of Academy Award nominated actress B...
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The Ernest Green Story
Follows the story of Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock Nine who were the first blacks to integrat...
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Gladiator
Tommy Riley has moved with his dad to Chicago from a 'nice place'. He keeps to himself, goes to scho...
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Black Liberation
Produced in collaboration with Malcolm X and narrated by Ossie Davis, this call to arms layers revol...
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Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property
In 1831, Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in the United States that resulted in the murder of local ...
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Trans-Siberian Orchestra: The Ghosts of Christmas Eve
Enchanting holiday tale of a young runaway who has broken into an old movie palace, looking for shel...
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Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives
When the Civil War ended in 1865, more than four million slaves were set free. Over 70 years later, ...
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A Vow to Cherish
John and Ellen have a picture-perfect life: while John runs a successful business, Ellen works as a ...
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Night Gallery
This anthology telefilm aired on NBC on November 8, 1969, and tells three strange tales: "The Cemete...
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The Sheriff
A rape case opens racial divisions in a small town. A black sheriff and his white deputy investigate...
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Death of a Prophet
After breaking ties with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X became a man marked for death...and it was j...
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Theater Talk: 'A Raisin in the Sun'
Panel discussion about the original Broadway production of Lorraine Hansbury's "A Raisin in the Sun....
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The Client
A street-wise kid, Mark Sway, sees the suicide of Jerome Clifford, a prominent Louisiana lawyer, who...
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Jackie Robinson: Breaking Barriers
Jackie Robinson: Breaking Barriers celebrates the ground-breaking career of the first-ever African-A...
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Preminger: Anatomy of a Filmmaker
This documentary, hosted by actor Burgess Meredith, explores the life and career of movie director O...
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The History Makers: Success
Ossie Davis, Terry McMillan, Horace Julian Bond, Isaac Hayes, Dionne Warwick and many others share t...
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Don't Look Back: The Story of Leroy "Satchel" Paige
The story of Leroy "Satchel" Paige, the legendary pitcher, from his barnstorming days in the 1920s, ...
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Black Shadows on a Silver Screen
Ossie Davis narrates a history of "race films," films made before 1950 which catered to a primarily ...
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Proud
The true story of the only African-American crew to take a Navy warship into combat in World War II....
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Malcolm X: Make It Plain
Narrated by actress Alfre Woodard, this trenchant, eye-opening doc traces the radical civil rights l...
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The Legend of the Candy Cane
The night a mysterious stranger rode into the lonely prairie town of West Sage, no one realized thei...
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Sesame Street: Sleepytime Songs & Stories
Bedtime Stories & Songs is a 1986 Sesame Street direct-to-video compilation, released on VHS as part...
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Hands of Inge
The work of sculptor Inge Hardison is the subject of this beautiful short portrait of an artist. Har...
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She Hate Me
Fired from his job, a former executive turns to impregnating wealthy lesbians for profit....
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Kongi's Harvest
An African dictator (Wole Soyinka) needs to convince the former king (Rashidi Onikoyi) to legitimize...
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Shock Treatment
A private investigator endures the rigors of an insane asylum in order to locate $1 million in stole...
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The Unfinished Journey
A multimedia short created for the U.S. millennium celebrations, The Unfinished Journey reflects on ...
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Paul Robeson: Here I Stand
Paul Robeson: Here I Stand presents the life and achievements of an extraordinary man. Athlete, sing...
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Cop & ½
When a pint-sized 8-year-old kid witnesses a murder he offers to help the police, if they make him a...
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Lincoln
Famous actors read testimonies from people close to Lincoln about him and his actions during the Civ...
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Small Steps, Big Strides: The Black Experience in Hollywood
Louis Gossett Jr. takes viewers through a special documentary celebration of the groundbreaking achi...
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Wattstax
A documentary film about the Afro-American Woodstock concert held in Los Angeles seven years after t...
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Haiti: Killing the Dream
A documentary focusing on the the events in Haiti following the coup of September 30, 1991. The prog...
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The Real Malcolm X
CBS News looks at Malcolm X, focusing on his public life from 1959 to his assassination in 1965, sug...
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