RIP Jim Brown

 

Jim Brown, the NFL titan who appeared in “The Dirty Dozen,” a number of Blaxploitation films and Oliver Stone’s “Any Given Sunday,” The Running Man,” Tim Burton’s “Mars Attacks” and Spike Lee’s “He Got Game,” to name a few films, died May 18, 2023 in Los Angeles. He was 87. In nine extraordinary seasons as a fullback with the Cleveland Browns, Brown set an array of NFL records. In 2002 the Sporting News named him the greatest professional football player ever. That phenomenal athleticism and a charismatic personality made him bankable as the first African American action star. The 1969 Western “100 Rifles” starred Brown as an Arizona lawman who ventures into Mexico to find Burt Reynolds’ Yaqui Joe, a Native American who robbed a bank to buy rifles for his people. There he tangles with a beautiful native leader played by sex symbol of the day Raquel Welch; much was made in the press of the interracial love scene featuring Brown and Welch, but Brown apparently grew impatient with the actress because of the control her people exerted over the film. “When I’m on a picture,” he told Ebert at the time, “I have two bosses, the director and the producer. My co-star is not my boss.” Brown also starred opposite Lee Van Cleef in three Spaghetti westerns: “El Condor.”, “Take a Hard Ride” and “Kid Vengeance”.