A 1999 Broadway play and a 2024 movie that my wife Barb and I watched last week resonated deeply with both of us. Warning: I am probably going to cry a couple of times during the writing of this. That’s a side effect of open heart surgery, which I had in 2017 – emotional reactions. But I think I might have cried, if not quite wept, in any case, considering these two men who passed recently.
Both Robert Morse and Richard Roundtree deserved more from their respective careers, and we deserved more from them, though that we didn’t wasn’t their fault, and what they did give us is to their eternal credit. At least I hope it will be, in this amnesiac culture.
I’ve spoken about Robert Morse before. Like here. And here.
Few actors, few performers, have enjoyed better first acts – Robert Morse appeared on Broadway in major roles in The Matchmaker (1955), Say, Darling (1958, written by Iowa author Richard Bissell), Take Me Along (1959) and finally as J. Pierpont Finch in How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying (1961). His movie career seemed to be taking off in a big way as the lead in Honeymoon Hotel (1964), Quick, Before It Melts (1964), and significantly the controversial funeral business satire, The Loved One (1965) from then-hot director Tony Richardson. This latter film was the only one that at all captured the Morse who’d made such a splash on Broadway.

It’s hard to overstate the impact Morse made in the Broadway version of How to Succeed. The two revivals of the play find leading men/boys (Matthew Broderick, Daniel Radcliffe) desperately trying to recapture Morse’s magic. The film version of How to Succeed certainly captures Morse at his best, but on its first release coming a bit too late – post-JFK assassination, Beatles era – to be more than a minor hit…and today a cult one.
Watching the film version of How to Succeed, though, it’s difficult to understand how Morse could, well, not have succeeded further. I once described him as “Jerry Lewis goes to graduate school.” He is charming, casually manic, and plays the camera like a kazoo. I know of no other film, for whatever minor flaws, that better captures a great Broadway star performance.
What happened?
The movie roles Morse landed around that time were either underwhelming – Guide for the Married Man (1967), unworthy of him (the aforementioned Honeymoon Hotel and Quick, Before It Melts) or disliked – the uncomfortably dark comedy of The Loved One and the disastrous Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad, made the same year as the film version of How to Succeed. Oh, Dad co-stars the great Rosalind Russell and yet this hardcore Morse fan has never made it all the way through. It’s a trip to the dentist minus the Novocaine.
The second act of Morse’s career begins dismally with leads in Where Were You When the Lights Went Out (1968, a flop Doris Day picture) and the toothless Disney comedy, The Boatniks (1970). That’s Life (1968), an ambitious TV series trying to mount a Broadway musical on a weekly basis (!) was a noble failure and the last look at the vital young Bobby Morse. Ahead were a lot of TV guest star work and such indignities as playing Grandpa Munster in a TV movie. He worked in nearly 80 TV episodes and movies, sometimes as a voice actor in cartoons.
On Broadway, in 1972, Morse made something of a comeback in Sugar, a musical version of Some Like It Hot that might have been a bigger deal had the music been better. Nonetheless it ran over 500 performances. Morse played his role as Jerry/Geraldine in the national touring company as well – a bright spot in his dismal second act.
The other bright spot in this dreary middle act was, however, very bright indeed. His astonishing portrayal of Truman Capote in Tru ran almost 300 performances and won Morse his second Tony. It’s very difficult to see Morse in his funny, moving, spot-on performance as Capone, and when he emerges for a last curtain call with his Capone make-up pulled off to reveal his still youthful, tousled-hair persona intact, it’s almost a gut punch.

His third act had, of course, a delightful finish as he became Bert Cooper, the boss on Mad Men – a sizeable and important supporting role in this TV classic, with a memorable, wonderful finale. As Vanity Fair put it, “Not a bad way for Morse to go…as series creator Matt Weiner gave him a final song-and-dance number, ‘The Best Things in Life Are Free’ — a touching and characteristically ironic song choice.”
What can be said of Morse’s career with its sky-rocketing first act, its sad second one (Tru aside), and a third act that finds him on one of the great television series of all time (and with a sweet send-off to boot)? What lessons are to be learned, if any?
Let’s reserve trying to answer that until we’ve talked about Richard Roundtree.
Roundtree’s John Shaft is a major pop cultural touchstone, and one hell of a performance, particularly as seen in the three Shaft movies (Shaft, 1971; Shaft’s Big Score, 1972), and Shaft in Africa, 1973) and even in his laundered but better-than-remembered series of seven TV movies (1973-1974).

For a short span, Roundtree and his charismatic presence could be seen in major Hollywood productions, both movie (Earthquake, 1974; Man Friday, 1975) and TV (Roots, 1977); but by 1980 he was taking a guest star role on The Love Boat. Jesus. Years of TV guest shots and B (and C and D) movies lay ahead.
He was capable and deserving of so much more. Occasionally he got the chance to show it – movies like Brick (2005) and Wild Seven (2007), his appearances in the two updated Shaft movies with Samuel Jackson (including stealing the show in the 2019 Shaft, despite a relatively late entry into the proceedings). Mostly, however, it was a little of this and a little of that.
He died in 2023. Barb and I looked at a couple of the Shaft movies by way of tribute. And I wrote about him here.
The other day at the Davenport Barnes & Noble I saw, on a 50% off sale, Roundtree’s last film, Thelma (no Louise). I’d heard about this movie and its premise, and that it starred June Squibb, the elderly actress who was nominated for an Academy Award for Nebraska in 2013. So that was a little on my radar, though not the fact that her co-star was Richard Roundtree, in his last role. Anyway, I got the Blu-Ray and Barb and I watched it.

First, it’s a delightful movie. I would say it’s the best movie I’ve seen in a very long time, but for the excellent Sinners. Supporting Squibb are indie legend Parker Posey (Waiting for Guffman), Clark Gregg (Agent Phil Coulson in the Marvel Cinematic Universe), and Fred Hechlinger (Gladiator II). This collection of characters portrays and represents three generations – the grandmother whose daughter and son-in-law are considering putting her in a retirement home, and whose socially awkward (perhaps mildly on the spectrum) grandson loves and helps his grandma with amused love. The patronizing if well-meaning treatment by the middle generation of the older and younger ones are key here.
The basic premise is simple: Thelma falls victim to a phone scammer who, pretending to be her grandson, gets $10,000 out of her; and Thelma sets out on a probably ill-advised trek across Los Angeles to get her money back. It’s kind of a goofy revenge plot that is used to sweetly explore the foibles of each of the three generations. It never gets sentimental or cloying, and is often very funny and frequently touching. The icing on the cake is Malcolm McDowell (who acted in radio plays I wrote!) turning up.
Where does Richard Roundtree come in? He’s Ben, an old friend of Thelma’s, but fairly far down the list of those, as Thelma finds out through a series of phone calls that most of her old friends have passed away or are infirm. Ben is in assisted living and, after Thelma hijacks his scooter, joins her on her quest with the proviso that he get back to the retirement home in time for opening night of an in-house production of Annie, in which he is playing Daddy Warbucks.
Eccentric enough for you? I promise, it’s a hoot and a (scooter) ride and a delight.
And it’s a lovely send-off for Roundtree, who even gets one nice Shaft action moment but mostly shows off his acting chops as a quietly dignified elderly man happy in assisted living, but reluctantly ready for one more rumble. The humor and the depth of his performance, which is nimble and at times heart-breaking and others heart-warming, demonstrates what a waste his career, post-Shaft, really was.
Look. I don’t exactly feel sorry for Robert Morse and Richard Roundtree. They had been big enough early on to carve out a career thereafter – they always seemed to work, and made the lives of their fans better when either Bobby or Richard turned up on a TV show or movie and a fan could say,
“Shit! Look! It’s Richard Roundtree!” “Omigod – that’s Robert Morse!”
For a creative person, an artist, sometimes a great artist, it’s enough to be able to keep working. I understand that. I understand that choices I made, that breaks I got, that breaks I didn’t get, ended up in a career that allowed me to make a living doing something I loved. In my case, I had opportunities to write things that I was urged to take on by smart people, like my agent, but that I turned away from because I preferred to write about Nathan Heller, Quarry and Ms. Tree (among other mental children of mine). I stayed with Dick Tracy longer than some smart people thought I should. I spent more time rehabilitating Mickey Spillane’s reputation than nurturing my own.
I have no regrets.
Other than maybe I wish the likes of Robert Morse and Richard Roundtree had been blessed with the careers they deserved. That alone would have improved life on this planet.
This is the complete Tru on YouTube. This is a Chicago production, but Tru ran on Broadway for around 300 performances.
Thanks, Richard.
Bye, Bobby.
I would appreciate it if you’d buy the Nathan Heller audio drama, True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak at Truenoir.co. Ten episodes, under thirty bucks for all of ‘em.
M.A.C.