A former model, the stage-trained Cicely Tyson gained widespread attention for her role as a secretary on the hard-hitting TV series, "East Side/West Side" (CBS, 1963-64), opposite George C. Scott. Like many gifted black performers, Tyson established herself in the theater and found occasional film roles in the 1960s (like her turn as a domestic in "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" 1968). She finally began landing worthy film roles in the 70s, most notably in "Sounder" (1972). As the Depression-era wife and mother struggling to hold her family together while he husband serves jail time, Tyson anchored the film and her luminous, heart-breaking performance earned her critics prizes and a justly deserved Oscar nomination as Best Actress. Good follow-up feature roles, however, have proven rare; partly because of the dearth of good roles for women, but more so the lack of good roles for women of color. She attempted to breath life into her role as a woman suffering with cancer in the little-seen "The River Niger" (1975) and play the cat in George Cukor's overblown version of "The Blue Bird" (1976). She was teamed with her "Sounder" co-star Paul Winfield to play the parents of a teenaged drug addict in "A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Sandwich" (1978) and co-starred with Richard Pryor in "Bustin' Loose" (1981). More recently, Tyson was memorable in a pivotal role in "Fried Green Tomatoes" (1991) and had a ball as the head of the Harlem numbers racket in the period gangster film "Hoodlum" (1997).
Television has afforded this commanding actress many more rich opportunities. Tyson turned in a bravura, Emmy-winning performance in the title role of the TV-movie, "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" (CBS, 1974), aging from a teenager to the age of 110. She has continued to appear as strong, courageous women, like the mother of Kunta Kinte in the groundbreaking ABC miniseries "Roots" (1977), Coretta Scott King in the NBC biography "King" (1978, again opposite Paul Winfield) and as former slave Harriet Tubman who shepherded other escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad in "A Woman Called Moses" (NBC, 1978). Tyson won a CableACE Award for her portrayal of a mother caught up in the Watts riots in the TNT drama "Heat Wave" (1990) and earned another Emmy for her former slave in "The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All" (CBS, 1994). The actress attempted a return to series TV as a crusading Southern lawyer in the drama "Sweet Justice" (NBC, 1994-95). More recently, she was cast as an elderly widow struggling to hold on to her farm by turning it into a care center for those with Alzheimer's disease in "The Road to Galveston" (USA Network, 1996) and played a distaff version of Dickens' character in the holiday-themed "Ms. Scrooge" (USA Network, 1997).
Tyson continued to appear regularly in made-for-television movies throughout the late 90s and early 00s. After appearing as the guardian to a secret lost city discovered by survivors of a plane crash in Bridge of Time (ABC, 1997), she played Luvia in the modern urban fable Always Outnumbered (HBO, 1998), about a tough ex-convict (Laurence Fishburne) who is determined to understand the violence and anarchy that rages in his world and inside himself. In A Lesson Before Dying (HBO, 1999), an adaptation of the period novel by Ernest James Gaines, Tyson played the aunt of a teacher (Don Cheadle) sent to help a man (Mekhi Phifer) falsely accused of murder to die with dignity. Then in Jewel (CBS, 2001), a period drama set in rural Mississippi, Tyson played Cathedral, the house servant of a backwoods mother (Farrah Fawcett) who predicts her new child will be the harbinger of troubled times sent by God. In The Rosa Parks Story (CBS, 2002), Tyson was the strong-willed mother of the woman whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the most successful and revered non-violent protest in American history.
The actress then returned to feature films in 2005, appearing in Diary of a Mad Black Woman, a comedy based on the play by Tyler Perry, and in Because of Winn-Dixie, a sentimental childrens flick about a young girl (AnnaSophia Robb) and her new dog pal who travel a small Florida town bringing love, warmth and healing to those in need.
Copyright © Baseline 2006.