1. Godfrey MacArthur Cambridge was an American stand-up comic and actor.
14 Facts About Godfrey Cambridge
1. 2.
When he was 13, Godfrey Cambridge moved back to New York and attended Flushing High School in Flushing, Queens.
3.
In 1949, Godfrey Cambridge studied medicine at Hofstra College, which he attended for three years before dropping out to pursue a career in acting.
4.
Godfrey Cambridge made his Broadway debut in the original production of Herman Wouk's 1957 play Nature's Way.
5.
Godfrey Cambridge made an appearance in director Sidney Lumet's Bye Bye Braverman as a Yiddish speaking NYC cab driver involved in a car collision with the main protagonists, and another as a gay underworld figure in the 1975 film Friday Foster.
6.
Godfrey Cambridge hosted, financed, and produced Dead is Dead, a drug-awareness film.
7.
Godfrey Cambridge had a small speaking part as a member of Sgt.
8.
Godfrey Cambridge gave an acclaimed performance alongside Tom Bosley in the episode "Make Me Laugh" of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, a story about a failed comedian who looks to a genie for a quick fix to success; the episode was directed by Steven Spielberg.
9.
Godfrey Cambridge perhaps reached his largest television audience in a series of comical commercials for Jockey brand underwear.
10.
Godfrey Cambridge later appeared in Jean Genet's The Blacks: A Clown Show, giving a performance that earned him an Obie Award in 1961.
11.
Godfrey Cambridge's routines were imbued with biting sarcasm and the trenchant topical humor that was common in comedic circles at the time.
12.
Godfrey Cambridge was noted for comic lapses from standard American English to African American English.
13.
Godfrey Cambridge married actress Barbara Ann Teer in 1962; the couple divorced three years later.
14.
Godfrey Cambridge died of a heart attack on November 29,1976, at the age of 43, while on the Burbank, California, set of the ABC television movie Victory at Entebbe, in which he was to portray Idi Amin.