Roscoe Lee Browne Movies

In this modern parable of middle-American values, a nine-year-old boy leaves behind the family farm for a few very instructive days in New York. A disagreement with his father sends Brill (Richard Bray) hitching to New York City to seek his fortune. After arriving in Manhattan, he falls in with a young gang of shoe-shine boys and paper carriers who are "managed" by Rick (Jaime Charlamagne), a teenage punk who "protects" them in exchange for half their earnings. With the help of his new friend Paco (Roberto Marsach), a Puerto Rican boy about his own age, Brill gets a job selling papers. The next day Brill wins most of Rick's money in a crap game and he takes Paco out for a night on the town. When Rick's gang beats up Brill for winning the money, Suzy (Lee Grant), a prostitute, takes him home to care for him. The next morning, Suzy buys Brill new clothes and takes him on a tour of the city. He sees Suzy picked up by the police and decides to return home, purchasing a bicycle for the trip. Rick's gang spots him and gives chase, but Paco intercepts them, allowing Brill to escape. On the highway home, a truck wrecks the bike, and Brill stays the night at an elderly African-American couple's house. Upon returning home the next day, he presents his father with the remainder of his "fortune."

Pie in the Sky was Allen Baron's second attempt at directing and screenwriting. His 1961 Blast of Silence received good reviews, but never gained popularity in the United States. Pie in the Sky is a better film, painting a realistic yet heartwarming picture of a young boy's adventures. Richard Bray gives a commendable performance as the wayward youth, despite his non-professional status as an actor. The film was criticized for choppy narration in 1964, giving a "too European" feel, although modern audiences would likely be more accepting. Donald Malkame's cinematography is one of the film's strongest points. It is clear, crisp, and shot entirely on location -- including 42nd Avenue through hidden camera, and the exciting bicycle chase through upper Manhattan. ~ Lucinda Ramsey, All Movie Guide

The humorous title of this story taken from the novel by Graham Greene gives the viewer the wrong impression. The story concerns the residents of a once-posh hotel in Haiti and the fate of the country's people under the despotic dictator Papa Doc Duvalier. Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) is the philandering wife of a South American ambassador Peter Ustinov. She seeks solace in the arms of hotel-owner Brown (Richard Burton), whose main focus is to keep making improvements on his crumbling building. Alec Guinness plays Jones, the suave charlatan who claims to be a retired military officer to hide his vocation as a shadowy weapons dealer. Brown later gets a sudden twinge of morality and decides to go off to the mountains to help the rebels in their heroic cause. Watch for silent film great Lillian Gish as Mrs. Smith in this plodding drama. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This documentary about poet Peter Orlovsky's schizophrenic brother, Julius, is a film within a film and is generally regarded as photographer/documentarian Frank's masterwork. Brother Julius spent years in a mental hospital and upon release was put into his brother's care. Frank captures the brothers' day-to-day lives, as well as a road trip with Allen Ginsberg. At times the film breaks into another film about actors working on a film about them; cinematic devices -- including black-and-white, color cutting, and unsychronized sound -- lend an element of visual "schizophrenia" to the work. One of the players is a young Christopher Walken. The emerging document is a testament to the camera's voyeuristic tendencies and a commentary on the mentally ill in society as well as an investigation into the life of the filmmaker himself. ~ Denise Sullivan, All Movie Guide

Justice runs red in the deep South in this powerful drama. Steve Mundine (Lee Majors) is a young lawyer who, shortly after marrying his sweetheart Nella (Barbara Hershey), takes a position with a law firm in a small Southern town, run by his uncle Oman Hedgepath (Lee J. Cobb). L.B. Jones (Roscoe Lee Browne) is a well-to-do African-American funeral director who comes to Hedgepath's firm in search of legal representation. Jones wishes to divorce his wife Emma (Lola Falana), but his grounds make the case a hot potato -- Jones has learned Emma has been having an affair with Willie Joe Worth (Anthony Zerbe), a white police officer who is the father of Emma's unborn child. Worth does not want his affair dragged into a court of law, so he and his fellow officer Stanley Bumpas (Arch Johnson) violently take matters into their own hands. The last feature film from legendary Hollywood director William Wyler, The Liberation of L.B. Jones was based on a novel by Jesse Hill Ford. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In one of John Wayne's more interesting late Westerns, "The Duke" plays Will Anderson, a crusty veteran cattleman preparing a 400-mile drive to get a herd of steers to market. Shortly before the trip is scheduled to begin, Will's crew quits when they get word of a nearby gold strike. With little time and few alternatives, Will recruits eleven boys, ages nine through 13, and teaches them the basics of herding cattle and riding the range. Bruce Dern plays a memorably foul villain and cattle rustler named Long Hair, while Roscoe Lee Browne portrays Jebediah, the cattle drive cook, and Colleen Dewhurst is Kate, a madam. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Nurse Donna Harris (Lynn Hamilton), erstwhile fiancée of Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx), invites one of her patients to Fred's house for dinner. Said patient, a virile smooth-talker named Wilcox (Roscoe Lee Browne), wastes no time in making Fred look like a washout by comparison. On the verge of punching Wilcox before the rump roast is served, Fred is halted in his tracks when Donna reveals a startling secret about her patient. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

At one time, the notion that ancient Egyptians could have sailed either the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean and landed in the Americas was received with the kind of incredulity and derision that Charles Darwin faced after publishing On the Origin of Species. Thor Heyerdahl's adventures in Kon--Tiki and in The Ra Expeditions proved that it could be done, and now the idea is not considered unusual at all. Curiously, Heyerdahl's reputation has not grown more respectable in the interval. Nonetheless, this documentary of his journey in a crude papyrus raft from Morocco to the Caribbean is entertaining and enlightening stuff. As the film (narrated by Heyerdahl and Lee Brown) shows, there was considerable doubt that Heyerdahl and his crew of eight would survive, much less make it to their destinations. Indeed, their first effort foundered after several hundred miles, and the second, a year later, nearly failed in ferocious ocean storms. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Stone (Karl Malden) and Keller (Michael Douglas) make a memorable foray into the San Francisco artists' colony after a painter falls from his studio window to his death. Determining that the victim was murdered, the detectives zero in on the most likely suspect: urban poet and notorious jailbird Yale Courtland Darcy (Roscoe Lee Browne). Convinced that his daughter Jenna (Brenda Sykes) is the guilty party, Darcy takes the rap for the girl--who is equally convinced that her dad did it, and equally determined to cover up his "crime"! Without giving away the ending, it can be noted that the title of this episode is a quote from Henry David Thoreau, referring to the unreliability of "The Obvious". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of the best of the early-1970s Disney farces, The World's Greatest Athlete stars Jan-Michael Vincent in the title role. A "wild boy" living off the land in the jungles of Africa, Vincent is discovered by coaches Tim Conway and John Amos. Cursed with a last-place college athletic lineup, Conway and Amos hope that Vincent will pull them out of their years-long slump. And he does, but not before several Disneyesque slapstick highlights, not to mention a handful of amusing special-effects gags (at one point, Conway is shrunk to mouse size by witch doctor Roscoe Lee Browne). Despite its formidable lineup of comedians-Conway, Billy DeWolfe, Nancy Walker, Vito Scotti et. al.--The World's Greatest Athlete's funniest line goes to guest star Howard Cosell! The script is the handiwork of Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso, late of That Was the Week That Was and Get Smart. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Uptown Saturday Night is a delightful comedy directed by and starring Sidney Poitier. Steve Jackson (Sidney Poitier) is a factory worker. One evening, when boredom gets the best of him, Steve and his pal Wardell (Bill Cosby) decide to go to an underground gambling club to have some fun. While they are there the place is held-up and Steve's wallet is stolen. When Steve and Wardell learn that the wallet contains a winning lottery ticket, the friends go on a desperate search to find it. Shape Eye Washington (Richard Prior), an incompetent private eye, is enlisted to aid them in their search through the criminal underworld where they come up against Geechie Dan Beauford (Harry Belafonte) the mobster who runs the town. Belafonte, in a hilarious parody of Marlon Brando in The Godfather, steals the show. The movie was a huge success and led to two sequels, Let's Do It Again and A Piece of the Action, both also directed by Poitier. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

Soured on America by his experiences as a POW in Vietnam, General Lawrence Dell (Burt Lancaster) hopes that his government will someday tell the truth about the Southeast Asian debacle, thereby allowing his country to embark upon a healing process. Regarded as a dangerous embarrassment by the higher-ups, Dell is framed on a manslaughter charge and sent to prison. Escaping with three hardened convicts (Paul Winfield, Burt Young, and William Smith), Dell takes over an SAC base, threatening to launch nine Titan missiles if his demands that top-secret Vietnam files be made public are not met. Thus, the fate of the world rests in the hands of the mentally unbalanced Dell, his former superior General MacKenzie (Richard Widmark), and U.S. president David Stevens (Charles Durning). For this picture, Edward Huebach and Ronald M. Cohen adapted Walter Wager's novel Viper Three. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dr. Scorpion (Roscoe Lee Browne) is a megalomaniac genius, who plans to rule the world with or without the world's cooperation. His chief nemesis is marine biologist Jonathan Shackleford (Nick Mancuso), an ex-spy better known as "Shack". Shack was also the title of the TV series for which the filmed-in-Hawaii Dr. Scorpion was the pilot. Producer Stephen Cannell lost interest in the project almost from the beginning, thanks to the network-imposed casting of the Nick Mancuso in the leading role (Mancuso agreed that he was wrong for the part, but a buck's a buck). Still, the notion of a Hawaii-based spy appealed to Cannell, so much so that he later revitalized the notion as the moderately successful TV series Stingray. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide