Godfrey MacArthur Cambridge was an American stand-up comic and actor. Alongside Bill Cosby, Dick Gregory, and Nipsey Russell, he was acclaimed by Time magazine in 1965 as "one of the country's foremost celebrated Negro comedians."
While pursuing an acting career, Cambridge supported himself with a variety of jobs, including "cab driver, bead-sorter, ambulance driver, gardener, judo instructor, and clerk for the New York City Housing Authority," as well as cleaning airplanes and making popcorn bunnies. His first role was as a bartender in the Off-Broadway play Take a Giant Step. He made his Broadway debut in the original production of Herman Wouk's 1957 play Nature's Way. Cambridge received a 1962 Tony Award nomination as part of the original cast of Purlie Victorious, a play written by and starring Ossie Davis; he was featured in an opening-night cast that also included Ruby Dee, Alan Alda, Sorrell Booke, Roger C. Carmel, Helen Martin, and Beah Richards. Godfrey's memorable film roles include The Last Angry Man, in which he played a character called "Nobody Home", The President's Analyst, where he plays a depressed government agent, and Watermelon Man, in which he played the lead character, a white bigot who one day wakes up and discovers his skin color has turned black. He also had a starring role in the 1970 Ossie Davis adaptation of the Chester Himes novel Cotton Comes to Harlem, as well as its 1972 sequel, Come Back, Charleston Blue. Cambridge made a cameo 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 gayunderworld figure in the 1975 film Friday Foster. His other film appearances included roles in The Busy Body, The Biggest Bundle of Them All, The Biscuit Eater, Beware! The Blob, and Whiffs. He hosted, financed, and produced Dead is Dead, a drug-awareness film. It gave an uncensored look at the downside of drug abuse, showing actual addicts injecting drugs and going through withdrawal. Cambridge appeared on several network television programs, including Car 54 Where Are You?, The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy, The Monkees, and Police Story. He also had a small speaking part as a member of Sgt. Bilko's platoon in The Phil Silvers Show, 1957 episode "Boys Town". 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. He perhaps reached his largest television audience in a series of comical commercials for Jockey brand underwear. He later appeared in Jean Genet's The Blacks: A Clown Show, giving a performance that earned him an Obie Award in 1961. Four years later he did a stock version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
Stand-up comedy
In addition to acting, Cambridge had major success as a stand-up comedian. By 1965 he was earning "as much as $4,000 a week...in all respects a headliner, working the best places, such as San Francisco's Hungry i and Hollywood's Crescendo." He appeared on The Tonight Show and was introduced by his favorite actress Joan Crawford on The Hollywood Palace. His routines were imbued with biting sarcasm and the trenchant topical humor that was common in comedic circles at the time. He was noted for comic lapses from standard educated speech to Black street-speak.
Godfrey Cambridge Toys With The World Epic Records
The Godfrey Cambridge Show: Recorded Live At The Aladdin, Las Vegas Epic Records
Personal life
Cambridge, along with writer Maya Angelou and actor Hugh Hurd, organized one of the first benefits for Martin Luther King, Jr. held in New York City; according to Angelou, it was held at the Village Gate in the late 1950s and raised $9,000 for King's civil rights movement. Cambridge married actress Barbara Ann Teer in 1962; the couple divorced three years later. During the 1970s he remained in semi-retirement, making few public appearances and marrying Audriano Meyers in 1972.
