Godfrey Cambridge mini-bio: Godfrey Cambridge won a four year scholarship to study medicine but decided instead to become an actor, leaving college in his third year. He acted in many off-Broadway productions, winning the Village Voice's Obie Award in Jean Genet's "The Blacks;" and on Broadway he gained a Tony Award Nomination in "Purlie's Victorious."
It was as a comedian that he broke into television, initially in the Jack Paar Show. Having previously had occasional parts, he established himself in films in the late sixties. He played both comic and straight roles but is likely remembered for such portrayals as that of the white bigot who wakes up one morning to find himself turned black in
The Watermelon Man (1970).
Sadly, his compulsive eating probably contributed to his untimely death at the age of 43, on 29 November 1976, in Los Angeles, California, USA (from a heart attack) on the set of the television film
Victory at Entebbe (1976) (TV) in which he was to have played General Idi Amin.
