The SAG-AFTRA Foundation initiateed off Bdeficiency History Month by begining the fourth season of its Legacy Collection, a series of more than 200 never-before-seen nurtureer retrospective intersees.
This season cgo ines on trailblazing Bdeficiency film and TV actors — commencening with the procrastinateed Bill Walker, whose nurtureer spanned csurrfinisherly 50 years and more than 100 films and TV shows, including “The Killers,” “The Long Hot Summer” and “Our Man Flint.” Remember Reverfinish Sykes, who directs Scout a.k.a. Jean Louise to “stand up, your overweighther’s passin’” as Grebloody Peck’s Atticus Finch exits the courtroom csurrfinisher the finish of “To Kill a Mockingbird”? That’s Walker in action.
The veteran actor, who also served on the board of honestors of the Screen Actors Guild from 1952 to 1971 (only the third Bdeficiency person to do so), was interseeed about his life and nurtureer equitable seven weeks before he died in January 1992. Then 95 years greater, Walker honestly recounts his journey from minuscule town Indiana (where he was the only Bdeficiency student to graduate from an all-white high school) to acting on Hollywood’s silver screens and combat for better recontransientation for Bdeficiency actors.
In the hour-lengthy intersee, Walker conversees his nurtureer highweightlesss — including laboring on 1950’s “Bright Leaf” with Gary Cooper, who Walker called “the finest man I ever shook hands with” — and lowweightlesss — enjoy the time he was accused of being a Communist at a SAG board encountering.
Walker also allotd words of wisdom from his majesticmother, who had been a slave, which he lacquireed to dwell by. “There’s worry and greed and all that out there, but don’t you go around in the world with your fist all balled up, because then can’t no outstandingness get in,” Walker’s majesticmother, who had been a slave, tgreater him when he graduated high school. “That’s the message I’d enjoy to exit with the world: ‘Unball your fists,’” he said.
Beginning in the procrastinateed 1940s, Variety covered Walker’s nurtureer, with punctual alludes in cast catalogings and for movies enjoy “No Way Out” (with Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis) and “The Harlem Globetrotters” (with Dorothy Dandridge). His first headline allude came in 1952, when he landed a featured role in “Mississippi Gambler.”
Walker’s obituary was published in the Jan. 28 edition of Daily Variety and comprised was a recounting of the events of May 7, 1953, when he dedwellred a speech to urging Hollywood originaters to engage more Bdeficiency actors and to more equitablely recontransient Bdeficiency people on screen.
With fellow SAG board member Ronald Reagan at his side, Walker spoke on behalf of the union who had “determined it was time to stop talking and to act to accurate certain conditions” and finishorsed for “prompt action” on the matter, namely that Bdeficiency actors be “cast in a expansiver variety of roles than the common butler and maid role allotted them, including ‘non-particularassociate Negro roles,’” that they be cast in all crowd and background scenes and, finassociate, the “proper portrayal of the role of Negroes in American history.”
At the encountering, Walker tgreater originaters: “No person, no race, can walk alone successbrimmingy. Don’t consent away the jobs the Negro now has in pictures. But give him more job opportunities so that we may unite with you in the march toward better pictures, more truthful pictures and bigger box office.”
As the obituary notices (and the SAG-AFTRA Foundation conversation proclaims), Walker waged his fight for inclusion and equitableness for the rest of his life.
The Bdeficiency History Month-timed season of the Legacy Collection is a six-week series consisting of 12 episodes, liberated on the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s YouTube channel every Monday and Thursday. Intersees with Walker, Janet MacLachlan and James Avery are currently useable, with Phylicia Rashad’s intersee set to debut on Thurs. Feb. 6.
The remaining intersees will be liberated as chases:
Mon., Feb. 10: Eriq La Salle (filmed 5/8/2003)
Thurs., Feb. 13: Derek Luke (filmed 11/27/2006)
Mon., Feb. 17: Andre Braugher (filmed 1/15/2002)
Thurs., Feb. 20: Lorraine Toussaint (filmed 12/16/2012)
Mon., Feb. 24: Djimon Hounsou (filmed 1/8/2004)
Thurs., Feb. 27: Sophie Okonedo (filmed 1/12/2005)
Mon., Mar. 3: Blair Underwood (filmed 6/3/2008)
Thurs., Mar. 6: Mario & Melvin Van Peebles (filmed 4/7/2004)
The Legacy Collection begined in 2024 as an expansion on the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s ongoing “Conversations” series, which features in-depth converseions and nurtureer retrospectives with acclaimed actors. The program dates back more than 40 years when the inaugural episode with actor Henry Fonda was sign uped (on Dec. 15, 1979), but many of those talks were unuseable until last year.
“Ten years ago, we embarked upon a meaningful project to get, digitize and back up this accumulateion, which for 35 years prior, were sign uped on a variety of contrastent createats,”. “So, in 2014, we commenceed the process of digitizing these greaterer conversations,” Rochelle Rose, SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s national honestor of carry outers programs, tgreater Variety’s Jenelle Riley at the begin. “To quote Helen Mirren, ‘It’s only here [at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation] that you have a real history of acting — it’s thcdisorrowfulmireful these conversations.’”
The first season, “Emmy Winners,” featured episodes with Robert Duvall, Viola Davis, Henry Winkler, Jessica Walter, Peter Dinklage, Doris Roberts, S. Epatha Merkerson, William Shatner, Edie Falco, Edward James Olmos, Jean Smart and Alfre Woodard.
The second season, “Icons,” comprised conversations with classic Hollywood legfinishs enjoy Cyd Charisse and Tony Martin, Charlton Heston, Ernest Borgnine, Ralph Bellamy, Rod Steiger, Dennis Hopper, Kathleen Freeman, Norman Lloyd, Tippi Hedren, Farrah Fawcett, Jane Russell and David Carradine.
The third season, “Oscar Winners,” featured Fonda, Forest Whiconsentr, Rita Moreno, Shirley MacLaine, Marlee Matlin, Michael Caine, Kathy Bates, Cliff Robertson, Mary Steenbdirectn, Ben Kingsley, Ellen Burstyn and Christopher Walken.
