It can frankly be exhausting to have your first movie role be extraordinarily successful. If it takes a while of being a “hey, it’s that guy” before you hit it big, you’ve at least got a chance that people will know you as something else, though the cast of Star Trek is well aware that it doesn’t always work that way. Still, a chance is better than nothing, which is pretty well what you get when your first movie role is as John Shaft, sometimes known as “the first black action hero” and definitely known as “the black private dick who’s a sex machine with all the chicks.”
Richard Roundtree spent a lot of years coming to terms with that. It’s worth noting that, unlike various other blaxploitation performers, he not in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. By the time Original Gangstas came out, I guess he’d dealt with things, and he’s also been in both of the attempted revivals of Shaft. On the other hand, though, there are not a lot of blaxploitation figures who appeared in Speed Racer or Corky Romano. He’s done a wide array of things, including comedy and drama as well as action.
But, when you get right down to it, he’s Shaft—John Shaft. (Do I know the whole song? It’s entirely possible.) And honestly, I’m quite sure he was hired to be in Brick because of it, even though Brick is many things but definitely not in the same genre as Shaft. Except in the extremely broad genre of “detective movie,” I suppose, but still. (And now, my brain has just suggested Roundtree in his prime in a race-bent Thin Man, and I won’t stop thinking about that for a while, I’m sure.) To throw out the fourth thing IMDb suggests he’s best known from, he definitely wasn’t playing Shaft in George of the Jungle, but I’m sure it’s why he was hired.
The fact is, every attempt at recreating the success of the original Shaft—including the TV show you might not have known existed, which is in fact a series of TV movies—has felt the need to include Roundtree in some form. (No, I can’t tell if the TV version had the same theme without buying it on DVD; since it had to tone down pretty much everything about the character, it doesn’t seem worth it.) He’s played the detective’s uncle—despite, I’d note, being only six years older than Samuel L. Jackson—and father. You just can’t have any variant on the character without having Richard Roundtree, because he’s so iconic in the part.
Yeah, I can see how it can take you a while to move past that. Because he is, after all, more than just John Shaft. He’s done soap operas. Comedies. Roots. What’s more, he is the survivor of a double mastectomy for breast cancer, which is something people don’t talk about and something he wishes they would. Ten percent of breast cancer cases are in men. Roundtree survived, and is grateful to have done so. I’m sure he’d really appreciate my taking just a minute here to talk about the importance of early detection in men, who after all have a lot of the same tissue in their chests as women, just in different amounts.
No one understands me but people who contribute to my Patreon or Ko-fi!