Trivia: After excelling in football and track Northwestern University, African-American film star Fred Williamson was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers. He later played for Pittsburgh, Oakland and Kansas City, bringing attention to himself in the latter city by wearing a custom-tailored uniform and white shoes, and developing a karate-based offensive move which he called "The Hammer." In 1969, Williamson moved into acting, playing important roles in the original M*A*S*H (1970) and Otto Preminger's Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970); he also appeared in the recurring part of Diahann Carroll's macho boyfriend on the TV series Julia (1969-71). One of Hollywood's major black stars of the 1970s, Fred Williamson starred in such actioners as The Legend of Nigger Charley (1972), Hell Up in Harlem (1973), Take a Hard Ride (1975) and The Bronx Warriors (1983); in addition, Williamson produced, directed and wrote many of his vehicles.

Trivia: African-American comedian Richard Pryor grew up bombarded by mixed messages. Pryor's grandmother owned a string of brothels, his mother prostituted herself, and his father was a pimp. Still, they raised Richard to be honest, polite, and religious. Living in one of the worst slums in Peoria, IL, Pryor found that he could best defend himself by getting gang members to laugh at instead of pummeling him. This led to his reputation as a disruptive class clown, although at least one understanding teacher allowed Pryor one minute per week to "cut up" so long as he behaved himself the rest of the time. At age 14, he became involved in amateur dramatics at Peoria's Carver Community Center, which polished his stage presence. In 1963, Pryor headed to New York to seek work as a standup comic; after small gigs in the black nightclub circuit, he was advised to pattern himself after Bill Cosby -- that is, to be what white audiences perceived as "nonthreatening." For the next five years, the young comic flourished in clubs and on TV variety shows, making his film bow in The Busy Body (1967). But the suppression of Pryor's black pride and anger by the white power structure frustrated him. One night, sometime between 1969 and 1971, he "lost it" while performing a gig in Las Vegas; he either walked off-stage without a word or he obscenely proclaimed that he was sick of it. Over the next few years, Pryor found himself banned from many nightclubs, allegedly due to offending the mob-connected powers-that-be, and lost many of his so-called friends who'd been sponging off of him. Broke, Pryor went underground in Berkeley, CA, in the early '70s; when he re-emerged, he was a road-company Cosby no more. His act, replete with colorful epithets, painfully accurate character studies of street types, and hilarious (and, to some, frightening) hostility over black-white inequities, struck just the right note with audiences of the committed '70s. Record company executives, concerned that Pryor's humor would appeal only to blacks, were amazed at how well his first post-Berkeley album, That Nigger's Crazy!, sold with young white consumers. As for Hollywood, Pryor made a key early appearance in the Diana Ross vehicle Lady Sings the Blues. But ultra-reactionary Tinseltown wasn't quite attuned to Pryor's liberal use of obscenities or his racial posturing. Pryor had been commissioned to write and star in a Mel Brooks-directed Western-comedy about a black sheriff, but Brooks replaced Pryor with the less-threatening Cleavon Little; Pryor nonetheless retained a credit as one of five writers on the picture, alongside such luminaries as Andrew Bergman. When Pryor appeared onscreen in The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings and Silver Streak (both 1976), it was as a supporting actor. But Pryor's popularity built momentum, and by the end of the '70s he became the highest-paid starring comedian in films, with long-range contracts ensuring him work well into the next decade - when such efforts as Stir Crazy, Bustin' Loose, and The Toy helped to both clean up the foul-mouthed comic's somewhat raunchy public image, and endear him to a whole new generation of fans. His comedy albums -- and later, videocassettes -- sold out as quickly as they were recorded. The only entertainment arena still too timid for Pryor was network television -- his 1977 NBC variety series has become legendary for the staggering amount of network interference and censorship imposed upon it.By the early '80s, Pryor was on top of the entertainment world. Then came a near-fatal catastrophe when he accidentally set himself afire while freebasing cocaine. Upon recovery, he joked liberally (and self-deprecatively) about his brush with death, but, otherwise, he appeared to change; his comedy became more introspective, more rambling, more tiresome, and occasionally (as in the 1983 standup effort Richard Pryor: Here and Now) drew vicious heckling and catcalls from obnoxious audiences. His cinematic decline began with a thinly-disguised film autobiography, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986), which Pryor starred in and directed; it met with critical scorn. Pryor's films declined in popularity, the audiences grew more hostile at the concerts, and Pryor deteriorated physically. Doctors diagnosed him with multiple sclerosis in the late '80s, and, by 1990, it became painfully obvious to everyone that he was a very sick man, although his industry friends and supporters made great effort to celebrate his accomplishments and buoy his spirits. The twin 1989 releases Harlem Nights and See No Evil, Hear No Evil (the latter of which re-teamed Pryor with fellow Silver Streak alums Arthur Hiller and Gene Wilder) failed to reignite Pryor's popularity or draw back his fanbase.Pryor's ill-fated attempt to resuscitate his stand-up act at L.A.'s Comedy Store in 1992 proved disastrous; unable to stand, Pryor was forced to deliver his monologues from an easy chair; he aborted his planned tour soon after. He appeared in television and films only sporadically in his final decade, save a rare cameo in David Lynch's 1997 Lost Highway. These dark omens foretold a sad end to a shimmering career; the world lost Pryor soon after. On December 12, 2005, the comedian - only 65 years old -- died of a heart attack in a Los Angeles hospital. But he left a peerless legacy behind as a stand-up comic and black actor.

Trivia: Commanding African American actor Thalmus Rasulala launched his film career in such blaxploitationers of the 1960s and 1970s as Cool Breeze, Blacula, Bucktown and Friday Foster. He was prominently cast in the Emmy-winning made-for-TV feature The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, played Omro in the 1977 miniseries Roots, and was one of the nine stars of the 1981 multipart drama The Sophisticated Gents. Rasulala's series-TV manifest included the occasional role of Mabel King's ex-husband on What's Happening!! (1976-79), and a substantial run on the daytime drama One Life to Live. In the 1991 TV movie Above the Law, Rasulala played a character named Crowder, which happened to be his given name. Thalmus Rasulala died of heart failure and leukemia at the age of 51; his last film, Mom and Dad Save the World (1992), was released posthumously.

Trivia: Not to be confused with African-American action star Jim Brown or with the "Godfather of Soul" of the same name, American actor James Brown was a tennis pro before entering films in 1941. Clearly a man of unlimited athletic prowess, Brown appeared in such rugged Hollywood productions as The Forest Rangers (1942), Air Force (1943), Objective Burma (1945) and Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). He had more sedate roles in Going My Way (1944), as nominal romantic lead Ted Haines (Bing Crosby, the star of the film, was a priest and therefore out of the running with the leading lady), and in Pride of St. Louis (1952), a biopic about baseball star Dizzy Dean wherein Brown played sidelines ballplayer "Moose." Few of his later movies were worth mentioning, though Brown had a few telling moments as the stern, rifle-toting father of the serial killer "protagonist" in Peter Bogdanovich's Targets (1968). Brown, sometimes billed as Jim L. Brown, is best known to aging baby boomers for his continuing role as Lt. Rip Masters on the enormously popular 1950s TV series Rin Tin Tin. He retired from acting in the late 1960s to manage his successful body-building equipment concern, then was appointed head of customer relations at Faberge, a cosmetics firm. When Faberge's filmmaking division, Brut Productions, put together a 1975 comedy titled Whiffs, the producers persuaded Brown to return to acting in a supporting role. And in 1976, James Brown redonned his 19th century cavalry uniform to film new wraparounds for a syndicated Rin Tin Tin rerun package.

Trivia: American actor Robert Phillips played supporting roles on television and in feature films of the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Phillips specializes in playing villains. His daughter, Barbara Livermore, is also an actress.

Trivia: Mike Henry rose to prominence as star linebacker of the Los Angeles Rams. Handsome enough to pass as a movie star, Henry was offered any number of film and television assignments upon his retirement from the gridiron. His first TV starring role was as the army-sergeant husband of Juliet Prowse in Mona McCluskey, a 1965 sitcom that came and went in 13 weeks. Shortly afterward, Henry made his screen bow as filmdom's 14th Tarzan in Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966); he starred in two subsequent Tarzan epics before relinquishing the role to Ron Ely. Sporadically active in films ever since, Mike Henry was featured in all three Smokey and the Bandit films of the late 1970s-early 1980s.

Trivia: Born in Georgia and raised in a black Long Island ghetto, Jim Brown distinguished himself in high school athletics. Recruited from Syracuse University, Brown was signed with the Cleveland Browns in 1957, remaining with that organization as star fullback for ten years. Breaking any number of NFL records, Brown was named Rookie of the Year in 1958 and Player of the Year in 1960; he played in every Pro Bowl game from 1958 through 1965, and in 1971 was elected to the Football Hall of Fame. While still with Cleveland, Brown made his film debut in the 1963 Western Rio Conchos, an event deemed worthy of a four-page color spread in Life magazine. He became a full-time actor upon his retirement from the NFL in 1967, co-starring that year in The Dirty Dozen. Though he had trepidation about the climactic scene in which he blew dozens of helpless Nazi officers and their sweethearts to bits with hand grenades, it was this uncompromising sequence that truly "socked" Brown over with the audience. He rapidly rose to leading roles in such actioners as Ice Station Zebra (1968) and 100 Rifles (1969); in the latter film, he stirred up controversy by sharing several steamy scenes with white actress Raquel Welch. Brown also headlined the above-average crime capers Kenner (1969) and Black Gunn (1972) as well as the ultraviolent Slaughter series. He cut down on his film appearances in the late '70s, devoting most of his time to his many civic activities and business concerns; during this period, he also founded the Black Economic Union. After several years' absence from the screen, Jim Brown co-starred with fellow blaxploitation icons Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, and Richard Roundtree in the delightfully "retro" action-fest Original Gangstas (1996).