Godfrey Cambridge

Began his career off-Broadway in "Take a Giant Step" (1956) and won acclaim, and an OBIE Award, for his performance in the all-star production of Jean Genet's "The Blacks" (1961) in which he played a black man who is transformed into an aged white woman. Adept at both ironic comedy and serious drama, Cambridge often starred in films with racial themes including the satirical "Watermelon Man" (1970) as a white bigot who wakes up to find himself suddenly turned into a black man. Cambridge, who was also memorable in "The President's Analyst" (1967), and "Cotton Comes to Harlem" (1970), died of a heart attack on the set of a TV movie in which he was playing Idi Amin Dada.