The Oscar-winning actor had a passel of Westerns to his credit.
The C&I team wants to offer a farewell salute to Oscar-winning actor Louis Gossett Jr., who passed away at age 87 on Friday in Santa Monica, California.
Gossett arguably was best known for his acclaimed performances as the sage Fiddler in the groundbreaking 1977 TV miniseries Roots and the demanding gunnery sergeant Emil Foley in the 1982 drama An Officer and a Gentleman. (For the latter film, Gossett was the first Black man to ever win an Academy Award in the Best Supporting Actor category.) But C&I readers likely will also recognize the Brooklyn-born actor from his frequent appearances in movie and TV Westerns.
He made an especially strong impression early in his film career opposite James Garner in Skin Game (1971), an audaciously amusing comedy-drama about two brassy pre-Civil War con artists who operate a traveling scam in 1857 Missouri and Kansas. Working in tandem with Jason O’Rourke (Gossett), a New Jersey-born free Black man, smooth operator Quincy Drew (Garner) fleeces gullible marks with a cynical game plan: First, he sells his “slave” for top dollar; then, he helps Jason escape, so they can repeat their ploy in the next town. The race-conscious humor is sometimes shockingly hilarious, particularly when the partners in crime frankly acknowledge the racism that makes their enterprise profitable. “Why can’t I sell you next time?” Jason asks. “Because,” Quincy matter-of-factly replies, “you’re the color they’re buying this year.”
Gossett repeated his role as O’Rourke in Sidekicks (1974), a TV-movie spinoff with Larry Hagman in the Garner role; starred in the made-for-television Westerns El Diablo (1990) and Return to Lonesome Dove (1993); and guested on such series as Cowboy in Africa, The Young Rebels, Bonanza, McCloud, and Alias Smith and Jones.
