Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Sadly, one of my idols is dead, Ron O'Neale aka Youngblood Priest in "Superfly" is no longer there. I reproduce an article taken in Davey D's website

Superfly's Ron O'Neal Dead at 66
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By now people are probably aware of the passing of actor Ron O'Neal who is best known for his role as a drug dealer named Priest in the landmark movie 'Superfly'. As this article below points out when the movie came out in the early 70s it was ahuge deal. O'Neal himself went on to obtain cult-like status in our community. His legacy lasted all the way through the 80s and 90s within Hip Hop.

'Pusherman' which was the signature song of Superfly was sampled more times or redone by more artists then I can count. O'Neal himself was featured in videos and more recently a song with the Bay Area's Rappin' 4Tay.

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As 'Superfly,' Ron O'Neal Played All Too Well

By Wil Haygood
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 17, 2004; Page C01

We rushed -- Flan, Olen, Bubbles, Tutu, Macaroni, my sisters, myself --
downtown to the Southern Theatre in Columbus, Ohio, in 1972 to see
"Superfly." Dressed in Sunday-ish outfits, we were excited about a movie
everyone was already talking about. It seemed, in a strange and sad and
curious way, to be a documentary about own lives and misguided dreams amid
the urban landscape on the east side of town. In our part of Columbus,
pimps and prostitutes and drug dealers and con men were not reviled but
nearly celebrated. A hustler could make 10 times the money of one of those
Negro men stumbling out of the Buckeye Steel plant.

The Southern Theatre showed black movies, and for "Superfly" the line
swept
down East Main Street. What did we care of the distance, even in cinema
lore, between hero and smooth-talking villain? We were hungry for movies
with black faces. Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Jerry Lewis were good enough,
at least at one time they were. But this was now, the lip of the '70s.
Giveus cool. Give us blaxploitation then. We were not academics making quick
judgments about cartoonish characters. We were young, and youth has its
own lens.

That year, that moment, "Superfly" became an event -- and a kind of
lifestyle if you were prone to such dramatics. The plot consisted of
Priest, a celebrated drug dealer, trying to leave the business, but not
before a final deal must be executed. The dilemma gave him the aura of a
man forced to fight a darker nemesis than himself. The movie drew fans
coast to coast, startling the studio that produced it.

In the role of Priest, Ron O'Neal -- who died Wednesday at age 66 of
cancer
-- was seen fashionably dashing across the silver screen. He was notable
for his long hair, his long coat, his devilish eyes, playing the drug
dealer with a pimp lifestyle (plenty of women) as hero. He became an
iconic
figure to me and many of my friends.

We even knew he had briefly attended Ohio State University in Columbus!
Family friends would regale me with tales of having seen him around town.
Not that I could ever verify such claims.

Those exploitation movies had "cartoonish" names, sure enough. But we had
such names in real life: Too Sweet, Stinky Lynch, Precious Herb; they hung
out with my brother Macaroni, and they all idolized Priest, who gave the
world those colorful coats, wide-brimmed hats, the pimpmobile. (Shortly
after the "Superfly" craze exploded, the window of Lee's department store,
on Mount Vernon Avenue, was crowded with "Superfly" fashions. I didn't
have
to spend a dime inside Lee's for such clothing. My sister, Diane,
hand-sewed my maxi coat.)

I was 17 at the time. Macaroni, not long released from prison, was a pimp,
a bona fide pimp, and a drug user. And how silly and tragic it seems now,
how silly and tragic it was then -- and would become -- especially so when
he wound up behind bars at San Quentin penitentiary. And yet, how
strangely
worshiped he was in the edgy glow of 1972, with Ron O'Neal as "Superfly."
"Aren't you Mac's brother?" I'd get asked all the time. Yes yes yes. Shame
on me: I glowed in his glow.

O'Neal would lament, in later years, when the roles dried up, that he had
been typecast. He would go on to appear in other movies, namely "The
Master
Gunfighter" (1975), "When a Stranger Calls" (1979), "A Force of One"
(1979). There would be plenty of TV guest appearances, on such shows as "A
Different World" and "Frank's Place." But, like William Powell and "The
Thin Man," Lon Chaney and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," it was forever
Ron
O'Neal and "Superfly."

Some of the story of "Superfly" -- considered a cult classic now -- and
O'Neal involves the climb of the black actor in the late '60s and early
'70s. Start with the Karamu House, a theatrical training ground in
Cleveland, where O'Neal studied, where Langston Hughes once wrote and
worked, where Emmy Award-winning actor Robert Guillaume honed his skills.
Fumbling around Columbus after college, looking every which way for a
steady job, I joined a community theater group. The founder was Carol Khan
White, a product of the Karamu House. On lazy evenings, in between
rehearsals, I and others would plead with her to tell us stories about
O'Neal, and she would, and we'd sit with something approaching awe in our
eyes. (My grandfather, with whom I lived, thought a boy with a college
degree thinking of acting was a fool, and a fool, and a fool. I would not
become another Ron O'Neal. )

Blacks were rarely seen on the screen in the 1960s, which kept them out of
consideration for big studio movies, even as the studio heads complained
that they had no "film" on them. The black exploitation films, wildly
uneven as they were, gave a bevy of actors -- O'Neal's "Superfly" co-star
Sheila Frazier, Bernie Casey, Lou Gossett, Pam Grier, Max Julien, Calvin
Lockhart -- film roles. O'Neal had languished in the theater before his
"Superfly" break.

It was, however, more than O'Neal's hypnotic performance that gave the
movie such staying power. The "Superfly" soundtrack, by Curtis Mayfield,
was flat-out haunting. Certain singles from that album qualify as mighty
essays on the futility of a criminal life: "Pusher Man," "Freddie's Dead,"
"Little Child Runnin' Wild," "No Thing on Me." Mayfield sang with a
falsetto voice, and would come to lament that many misunderstood the depth
of his album: It was an anthem against drugs and street life; he sang
about the futility of such living.

How fruitless to attach a movie to lives lived. To lifestyles chosen. The
"Superfly" lifestyle began to frighten me shortly after the movie came out
when it appeared as if certain members of my family had taken it directly
from the screen to the street. (Not that I was totally innocent. The one
lady I ever asked in my life if she knew of a way we might make some money
together slapped me, coldly, on my grandfather's porch. My eyes welled up
and I turned away lest she see the water in them.)

So what sang to my sisters and brothers from Ron O'Neal's celebrated movie
captured me, too, but only for a fleeting moment. I released myself from
that movie's grip to roll down other roads -- college, books, a steady
job. As well, I was long haunted by the memory of having been taken inside the

Franklin County jail at age 14 to visit my brother Macaroni.

Still, I listen to the wondrous "Superfly" soundtrack now and then and
become alternately jumpy and melancholy. Melancholy because it makes me
think of family: The sister, Geraldine, who died a year ago after decades
(starting in the '70s) of drug abuse. The sister, Wonder, in and out of
drug rehab, currently unemployed. I thought she had kicked it; she swore.
The brother, Harry, in and out of drug rehab. I thought he had kicked the
heroin; he swore. The brother, Macaroni, Superfly, in and out of jail
(just released yet again mere months ago). I thought, as did his wife Helen, he
had kicked it; he promised.

It was just a movie. And may Ron O'Neal be remembered for the way he
pleaded with anyone listening not to follow in the twisting unpredictable
road of his Superfly