Show-business racism slammed

Press, 1 September 1989, Page 11

Show-business racism slammed

NZPA-AP Winston-Salem, North Carolina Actress Esther Rolle, who made her name internationally in television’s “Maude” and “Good Times,” says the lot of the black American actor has improved little since she started in show business in 1942. “No matter what age I am or what age they require, I generally have

to be fat and grey,” said Rolle, aged 55, who played' the maid, Florida, on “Maude.”

“They can’t see an attractive, mature black grandmother. She has to be grey and decrepit, generally. But a white grandmother can be her age.”

Rolle said the best hope for black actors is the small but growing number of black producers.

Whites, she said, just do not think of casting blacks in mainstream roles. “How long have you watched ‘Magnum P.l.’?” she asked. “Magnum’s got women chasing him every day.” Yet Roger Mosley, the black actor who played Magnum’s sidekick, she said, “is at least as attractive, but you seldom see him with a woman.”