Robert Hooks (born Bobby Dean Hooks; April 18, 1937) is an American actor, producer, and activist. Along with Douglas Turner Ward and Gerald S. Krone, he founded The Negro Ensemble Company. The Negro Ensemble Company is credited with the launch of the careers of many major black artists of all disciplines, while creating a body of performance literature over the last thirty years, providing the backbone of African-American theatrical classics. Additionally, Hooks is the sole founder of two significant black theatre companies: the D.C. Black Repertory Company, and New York's Group Theatre Workshop.
Contents
Biography
Early life
The youngest of five children, Hooks was born in Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C., to Mae Bertha (née Ward), a seamstress, and Edward Hooks, who had moved from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, with their four other children, Bernice, Caroleigh, Charles Edward "Charlie", and James Walter "Jimmy". Named Bobby Dean Hooks at birth, Robert was their first child born in Washington, D.C., and the first to be born in a hospital. His father, Edward, died in a work accident on the railroad in 1939.
Hooks attended Stevens Elementary School. In 1945, at the insistence of his sister Bernice who was doing community arts outreach for youngsters at Francis Junior High School, he performed the lead in his first play, The Pirates of Penzance, at the age of nine. From the ages of six to 12, Bobby Dean journeyed with his siblings to Lucama, North Carolina, to work the tobacco fields for his uncle's sharecropping farm as a way to help earn money for the coming school year in D.C.
In 1954, just as Brown vs. Board of Education was being implemented in the north, Hooks moved to Philadelphia to be with his mother, her second husband, and his half-siblings, Safia Abdullah (née Sharon Dickerson), George E. Dickerson, Charles Dickerson, Annette Dickerson, Margie Dickerson, Robert Dickerson. Hooks experienced his first integrated school experience at West Philadelphia High School. Hooks soon joined the drama club and began acting in plays by William Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett. Hooks graduated in 1956, passing on a scholarship to Temple University in order to pursue a career as a stage actor at the Bessie V. Hicks School of Theatre (alongside Charles Dierkop and Bruce Dern, with whom he second-acted plays doing their pre-Broadway tryouts in Philadelphia), while working at Browning King, a men's tailor shop at Fourteenth and Chestnut Streets.
Acting career
Having trained at the Bessie V. Hicks School of Theatre in Philadelphia, and after seeing A Raisin in the Sun in its Philadelphia tryout in February 1959, Hooks moved to New York to pursue acting. In April 1960, as Bobby Dean Hooks, he made his Broadway debut in A Raisin in the Sun, replacing Louis Gossett Jr., who would be doing the film version. Hooks then continued to do its national tour. He then stepped into the Broadway production of A Taste of Honey, replacing Billy Dee Williams; then repeating the same national tour trajectory as he had done for "Raisin..." the previous year.
In early 1962, he next appeared as the lead in Jean Genet's The Blacks, replacing James Earl Jones as the male lead, leaving briefly that same year to appear on Broadway again in Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright, before stepping back into the lead role in The Blacks in 1963. He then returned to Broadway, first in Ballad for Bimshire and then in the short-lived 1964 David Merrick revival of The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Any More (as a character created by Tennessee Williams for this revival) and starring Tallulah Bankhead and Tab Hunter in his only stage performance. Immediately thereafter, on March 24, 1964, he originated the role of Clay in Amiri Baraka's Dutchman. With this play, on the advice of Roscoe Lee Brown, Hooks became known as, Robert Hooks. He also originated roles on the New York stage in Where's Daddy? for which he won the Theatre World Award and he was nominated for Best Male Lead in a Musical for Hallelujah Baby while he was simultaneously starring in David Susskind's N.Y.P.D.—the second African-American lead on a television drama, following Bill Cosby on “I Spy”.
In 1968, Hooks was the host of the new public affairs television program Like It Is.
Hooks was nominated for a Tony for his lead role in the musical Hallelujah, Baby!, has received both the Pioneer Award and the NAACP Image Award for Lifetime Achievement, and has been inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. He also won an Emmy for his PBS special Voices of Our People.
Significant roles for which Hooks is known include Reeve Scott in Hurry Sundown (1967), Mr. T. in the blaxploitation film Trouble Man (1972), grandpa Gene Donovan in the comedy Seventeen Again (2000), and Fleet Admiral Morrow in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). He also appeared on television in an episode of the NBC crime drama series The Eddie Capra Mysteries in 1978, and portrayed Doctor Walcott in the 1980s television series Dynasty.
Activism
Arts and culture
In 1964, as a result of a speaking engagement at the Chelsea Civil Rights Committee (then connected to the Hudson Guild Settlement House), Hooks founded The Group Theatre Workshop, a tuition-free environment for disadvantaged urban teens who expressed a desire to explore acting. Among the instructors were Barbara Ann Teer, Frances Foster, Hal DeWindt, Lonne Elder III, and Ronnie Mack. Alumni include Antonio Fargas, Hattie Winston, and Daphne Maxwell Reid.
The Group Theatre Workshop was folded into the tuition-free training arm of the Negro Ensemble Company, founded in 1967 with Douglas Turner Ward and Gerald S. Krone, with a $1.3 million grant from the Ford Foundation under the auspices of W. McNeil Lowry.
From 1969 to 1972, Hooks served as an original board member of Black Academy of Arts and Letters, located in New York, alongside C. Eric Lincoln, President; John O. Killens, Alvin F. Poussaint, and Charles White. Chartered by the State of New York, its mission was to bring together black artists and scholars from around the world. Additional members included Julian Adderley, Alvin Ailey, Margaret Walker, James Baldwin, Imamu Baraka, Romare Bearden, Harry Belafonte, Lerone Bennett, Arna Bontemps, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee Davis, St. Clair Drake, Ernest Dunbar, Katherine Dunham, Lonne Elder III, Duke Ellington, Alex Haley, Ruth Inge Hardison, Vertis Hayes, Chester Himes, Lena Horne, Jacob Lawrence, Elma Lewis, Henry Lewis, Paule Marshall, Donald McKayle, Arthur Mitchell, Frederick O’Neal, Gordon Parks, Sidney Poitier, Benjamin Quarles, Lloyd Richards, Lucille D. Roberts, and Nina Simone.
In response to his hometown 1968 Washington, D.C., riots, in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and aided by a small grant from the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, Hooks took a leave of absence from the Negro Ensemble Company to create The D.C. Black Repertory Company (1970–1981). The company was intended as a further exploration of the ability of the arts to create healing. The a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock was created and developed within its workshop process.
The Inner Voices (Lorton Prison arts training program, 1971) proved to be a result of the beneficial effect of the repertory company in the D.C. area. In response to a direct plea from an inmate, Rhozier "Roach" Brown, who was serving a life sentence in Lorton, Hooks' D.C. Black Repertory Company structured the first prison-based arts program in the United States. While it is the norm now, it was then a revolutionary attempt at rehabilitation through the arts. Eventually The Inner Voices performed more than 500 times in other prisons, including a Christmas special entitled, "Holidays, Hollowdays." Due to Roach's work, President Gerald Ford commuted his sentence on Christmas Day, 1975.
Personal life
Hooks is the father of actor, television and film director Kevin Hooks. He married Lorrie Gay Marlow (actress, author, artist) on June 15, 2008. Previously, he was married to Yvonne Hickman and Rosie Lee Hooks.
In 2021, Emory University began adding to its official archives material documenting Hooks' career, including scripts, printed material, contracts and financial records, notes, correspondence, writings, books and periodicals, audiovisual and digital files.
Awards
1966 – Theatre World Award (1965–66) for Where's Daddy? (The Billy Rose Theatre)
1979 – American Black Achievement Award – Ebony magazine
1982 – Emmy Award for Producing (1982), Voices of Our People: In Celebration of Black Poetry (KCET-TV/PBS)
1966 – Tony Nomination, Lead Role in a Musical for Hallelujah, Baby
1985 – Inducted into The Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, recipient Oscar Micheaux Award (1985)
1986 – March 2 declared Robert Hooks Day by the City of Los Angeles, Mayor Tom Bradley
1987 – Excellence in Advertising and Communications to Black Communities from CEBA (Excellence in Advertising and Communications to Black Communities)
2000 – Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa honorary degree, Bowie State University
2000 – May 25 declared Robert Hooks Day in Washington, D.C.
2005 – Beverly Hills/Hollywood Chapter NAACP Image Award for Lifetime Achievement
2005 – Beverly Hills/Hollywood Chapter NAACP Trailblazer Award to the Negro Ensemble Company
2005 – Trailblazer Award – City of Los Angeles
2006 – The Black Academy of Arts and Letters (TBAAL), Lifetime Achievement Award (Dallas)
Theatre, film, and television credits
Theatre - Acting
1960: A Raisin in the Sun as George Murchison (Broadway)
1961: A Taste of Honey as The Boy (Broadway)
1962: The Blacks as Village
1962: Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright as Dewey Chipley (Broadway)
1963: Ballad for Bimshire as Dennis Thornton (Broadway)
1963: Arturo Ui as Jim Crockett (Broadway)
1963: The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore as Stage Assistant
1964: Dutchman as Clay
1965: Henry V as Henry V
1965: Day of Absence
1966: Where's Daddy? as Razz (Broadway)
1966: The Airborne Symphony as Narrator
1967: Hallelujah, Baby! as Clem (Broadway)
1968: Kongi's Harvest as Daoudu
1973: The Blacks as Village
1975: Jesus Christ Superstar as Judas
1975: Ceremonies in Dark Old Men as Blue Haven
1979: Splendid Mummer as Ira Aldridge
1981: Voices of Our People - Ensemble Piece
1982: A Soldier's Play as Captain Richard Davenport
Theatre - Producer/Director
1965: We Real Cool
1965: Happy Ending and Day of Absence
1968: Walk Together Children
1967: Song of the Lusitanian Bogey
1967: Kongi's Harvest
1967: Summer of the Seventeenth Doll
1967: Daddy Goodness
1968: God Is a (Guess What?)
1968: Ceremonies in Dark Old Men
1968: The Great MacDaddy
1968: String
1968: Contribution
1968: Malcochon
1968: Man Better Man
1969: The Reckoning: A Surreal Southern Fable
1969: Ceremonies in Dark Old Men
1969: The Harangues
1969: Brotherhood
1969: Day of Absence
1970: Ododo
1970: Perry's Mission
1970: Rosalie Pritchett
1970: The Dream on Monkey Mountain
1970: Ride a Black Horse
1970: Negro Ensemble Company Broadway Benefit
Film
1967: Sweet Love, Bitter as Keel Robinson
1967: Hurry Sundown as Reeve Scott
1970: Last of the Mobile Hot Shots "Chicken"
1970: Carter's Army as Lieutenant Edward Wallace
1972: Trouble Man as "Mr. T"
1975: Aaron Loves Angela as Beau
1977: Airport '77 as Eddie
1982: Fast-Walking as William Galliot
1984: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock as Admiral Morrow
1992: Passenger 57 as FBI Agent Dwight Henderson
1993: Posse as David "King David" Lee
1996: Fled as Lieutenant Henry Clark
Television
1967–1969: N.Y.P.D. as Detective Jeff Ward
1969–1974: The F.B.I. as Wilcox / Steven Harber
1969: Mannix as Floyd Brown
1969: Then Came Bronson as Henry Tate
1970: The Bold Ones as Scott Dayton
1971: The Man and the City
1973: The Rookies as Barney Miller
1973: McMillan and Wife as Sam
1974: Marcus Welby, M.D. as Joe Lucas
1974: The Streets of San Francisco as Joe Joplin
1975: Police Story as Detective Ernie Tillis
1975: Petrocelli as Dave Hill
1976: Just an Old Sweet Song (television film) as Nate Simmons
1979: Backstairs at the White House (television mini-series) as John Mays, Doorman
1979: Trapper John, M.D. as Sykes
1980: The Facts of Life as Mr. Ramsey
1980: The White Shadow as Dr. Luther Tuc
1982: WKRP in Cincinnati as prosecutor in the episode "Circumstantial Evidence"
1983–1988: Hotel as Joe Durran / Frank "Squire" Vance
