The migrant’s son

An acclaimed comedian with strong Guyanese roots, Godfrey MacArthur Cambridge rose to fame on Broadway

Although born in the United States, Godfrey Cambridge had strong Guyanese roots because of his British Guiana born parents. He was acclaimed by US Time Magazine as one of the country’s four most celebrated African American comics in the 1960s.

Godfrey MacArthur Cambridge, actor and comedian, was born February 26, 1933 in New York City.

His father, Alexander Cambridge, and his mother Sarah Cambridge were born in British Guiana.

They moved first to Sydney in Nova Scotia, Canada and then to Harlem, New York.

Before emigrating, his father worked as a bookkeeper and his mother worked as a stenographer. In New York, they worked as a day labourer and garment worker respectively.

Cambridge’s parents disapproved of the New York City school system, so as a child, Cambridge lived with his grandparents in Sydney where his grandfather worked in a coal mine and ran a grocery store.

When Cambridge was 13, he moved back to New York and attended Flushing High School.

In 1949, Cambridge won a scholarship to Hofstra University. Three years later, he dropped out of school to become an actor. His 1956 performance in the Off- Broadway show ‘Take a Giant Step’ opened the door to several television and Broadway roles. Cambridge also started performing stand-up in local comedy clubs. Nonetheless, during this time he worked as cab driver, bead-sorter, ambulance driver, gardener, judo instructor, and clerk for the New York City Housing Authority.

In 1961, Cambridge played Diouf in an Off- Broadway production of Jean Genet’s ‘The Blacks’ and won an Obie award for his performance. In ‘The Blacks’ he played a black man who was transformed into an aged white woman. The following year Cambridge was nominated for a Tony Award for his role in Ossie Davis’s ‘Purlieu Victorious’ in 1962. The same year, he married actress Barbara Ann Teer, whom he divorced in 1965.

After performing in the film adaptation of Purlie Victorious entitled ‘Gone Are the Days!’ (1963), Cambridge joined the Greenwich Village integrated comedy revue, ‘Living Premise’, and continued performing comedy gigs on the college circuit. He earned national fame for his comedy after he appeared on The Jack Paar Show in 1964.

That appearance led to performances in top-tier comedy clubs and earned him a contract with Epic records.

Cambridge recorded four comedy albums: ‘Ready or Not’, ‘ Here’s Godfrey Cambridge’, ‘Them Cotton Pickin Days Is Over’, ‘ Godfrey Cambridge Toys with the World’, and ‘ The Godfrey Cambridge Show’ between 1960 and 1965.

In the late 1960s, Cambridge performed a variety of roles on stage and screen. His body of work includes ‘The Troublemaker’ (1964), ‘The President’s Analyst’ (1967), ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum’ (1967), ‘How to Be a Jewish Mother’ (1967), ‘The Busy Body Braverman’ (1968), ‘Cotton Comes to Harlem’ (1970), and ‘ The Watermelon Man’, which tells a story of an extremely bigoted white man finding out the hard (and somewhat humorous) way what it is like being a black man (1970). He also starred in the 1972 sequel ‘Beware! The Blob’ a horror science fiction film where he played the role of Chester.

Along with writer Maya Angelou and actor Hugh Hurd, Cambridge organised one of the first benefits for Martin Luther King, Jr. held in New York City.

According to Angelou, it was held at the Village Gate in the late 1950s and raised US $ 9,000 for King’s civil rights movement.

In the 1960s, Cambridge took up photography and displayed his photographs in a New York City exhibit.

Godfrey Cambridge died November 29, 1976 while working on the role of Idi Amin in a television movie about the raid on Entebbe. He was 43. (blackpast. org)