FREDDIE'S DEAD:

Beyond Superfly: Ron O’Neal, actor and filmmaker (Emory Holmes II, 1/30/04, LA Weekly)

O’Neal and his friend Phil Fenty wrote Superfly and raised the $58,000 to finance the film themselves. For a time, it was the top box office draw in the nation, besting even The Godfather. But O’Neal’s silken portrayal of the Harlem coke dealer Priest also brought a bitter rebuke from both the mainstream and African-American press. In an interview with the Weekly in 1988, O’Neal protested, “I am not the character known as Priest in Superfly; I am the actor who made him come alive through my craft. But the press thought I was some n****r off the street who made a movie about his own dissolute life. I never used drugs in those days. And my film was about a dealer who quit selling drugs and got out of that system. Still, the negative press soured my career and, eventually, it soured me.”

Over the following three decades, O’Neal won only sporadic roles in movies and television. He survived drug addiction, a stabbing, poverty and occasional homelessness. Rediscovered by the hip-hop generation in the 1990s, he remarried and had reclaimed his optimism when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2000. On January 13, the day before he died at Cedars-Sinai, a special edition DVD of Superfly was released. He was 66.

If you grew up in the ghetto in the '70s there were really only two people on Earth you wanted to grow up to be the blaxploitation heroes Superfly and Shaft. Which you chose depended largely on which side of the law you preferred (though Isaac Hayes's theme song was superior to Curtis Mayfield's too).

Mr. O'Neal snagged a role in one iconic movie of the 80's also: Red Dawn.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 30, 2004 07:50 AM