The world is mourning the loss today of Maya Angelou, the brilliant writer, poet, speaker and activist who died this morning at the age of 86 at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou will mostly be remembered for her writing, including her seven outstanding autobiographies and many books of poetry. Beginning with the international bestseller, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, published in 1970, Angelou’s memoirs describe her difficult childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, her years as a poverty-stricken single mother, her numerous careers, and her involvement in the struggle for civil rights, including close friendships with both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
While her gifts as a writer and poet would ultimately take precedence in her life, Maya Angelou dabbled in all of the arts from an early age. She danced professionally in the early 1950s and traveled the world in the touring company of Gershwin and Heyward’s Porgy and Bess (picking up new languages wherever she went). She recorded a Calypso album, performed on the stage in Jean Genet’s The Blacks, and began singing in nightclubs. Angelou’s first involvement in the movies was as one of the uncredited dancers in Otto Preminger’s 1959 film version of Porgy and Bess starring Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier.
In 1972, Angelou wrote the screenplay (and the musical score!) for a Swedish film called Georgia, Georgia, the story of an African American singer (played by Diana Sands) who meets and falls in love with an American Vietnam War deserter while she is performing in Stockholm. Reviews of the film praised Sands performance and lauded Angelou for telling a story that shows how “a person’s identity comes not from his color, clothing or position but from his need to be accepted and loved as an individual.” Surprisingly, this was Angelou’s only filmed screenplay though she did write several TV movies including a 1979 adaptation of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings with Diahann Carroll, Ruby Dee and Esther Rolle and the 1982 movie Sister, Sister with Diahann Carroll and Paul Winfield.
As an actress, Angelou appeared on television in the groundbreaking mini-series Roots (1977) as well as TV series such as Sesame Street and Touched by an Angel. Her first credited movie role was as Aunt June in John Singleton’s moving Poetic Justice (1993) starring Janet Jackson and the late Tupac Shakur. She narrated the movie The Journey of August King (1995) with Jason Patric and Thandie Newton about a runaway slave in 1815 North Carolina, and had a featured role in Jocelyn Moorehouse’s How to Make an American Quilt (1995) with an all-star cast that included Winona Ryder, Ellen Burstyn, Anne Bancroft and Alfre Woodard. In 1998, Maya Angelou directed the film Down in the Delta about a drug-addicted woman who travels with her children from the city to rural Mississippi to start a new life. The well-reviewed film starred Alfre Woodard, Al Freeman, Jr., Esther Rolle and Wesley Snipes. Angelou’s final movie role was in her friend Tyler Perry’s comedy Madea’s Family Reunion (2006) that also featured Lynn Whitfield, Blair Underwood and Cicely Tyson.
Screenwriter, actor, director, composer, Maya Angelou could do it all. I’m sorry she didn’t have the chance to work on more films during her long and storied career but I’m grateful for every written word she has left behind that will continue to inspire people for generations to come.