Charles S. Dutton 1951 –

Actor

At a Glance …

“Prison Saved My Life”

Earned Degree in Theater

From the Stage to the Big and Small Screens

Sources

Charles S. Dutton liked to joke that he went “from jail to Yale.” He is certainly the only star of a television series who ever did hard time in a state penitentiary, the only artist to leapfrog from the meanest streets in Baltimore to a prestigious Ivy League drama school, and from there to stardom on stage and screen. Dutton is best known as the character Roc on the FOX Network television show of the same name. He has also received some of the best roles available to African American actors in stage plays by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author August Wilson. As John Stanley noted in the San Francisco Chronicle, Dutton “has come to symbolize how the American dream can be ripped in half--but then pasted back together.”

“By all odds, Charles Dutton should be dead,” wrote Kenneth R. Clark in the Chicago Tribune. “The life he was born to lead afforded hundreds of opportunities for an early demise, and he took advantage of most of them.” Dutton has conceded that he has spent a dozen years of his life behind bars, if he includes his years in reform school. “At one time, prison was all I knew,” the actor admitted in the San Francisco Chronicle. “I was a hell raiser, and I’d come to enjoy it. The other prisoners would have scowls on their faces each morning, but I always had a smile. I was the kind who’d never start a fight, but I’d always finish it. There came the time when I envisioned myself doing something with the rest of my life. Something inside me told me that I wasn’t going to be a hell raiser forever.”

On Roc, Dutton portrayed a law-abiding, hard-working citizen with a blue collar job, modest ambitions, and an intolerance for criminals. The show tackled tough issues such as urban crime and its effect on city residents, and Dutton helped to craft the scripts from his own firsthand experiences. “[Roc] had to be grounded in a foundation of reality,” he asserted in the San Francisco Examiner. “I’m not one to criticize comedy shows. But I was determined that this show would not be like any show before it. The emotions are real. The violence is real. The danger has to be real. Let’s not play at it.”

Dutton was born the second of three children on January 30, 1951, in Baltimore, Maryland. He and his family lived in a public housing project just south of the Maryland Penitentiary, one of the toughest prisons in the nation. “I could see it from my bedroom,” Dutton recalled in USA

Born January 30, 1951, in Baltimore, MD; son of a laborer; married Debbi Morgan (an actress), 1989, divorced 1994. Education: Hagerstown junior College, A.A., 1976; Towson State University, B.A., 1978; Yale University, M.A., 1983.

Career: Actor, 1978–. Principal stage appearances include roles in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, 1984; Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, 1988; and The Piano Lesson, 1990. Principal motion picture appearances include roles in Crocodile Dundee II, 1988; Alien 3, 1992; The Distinguished Gentleman, 1992; Menace II Society, 1993; Rudy, 1993; Surviving the Game, 1994; A low Down Dirty Shame, 1995; Get On the Bus, 1996; A Time to Kill, 1996; Mimic, 1998; Blind Faith, 1998; Black Dog, 1998; Cookie’s Fortune, 1999; and Random Hearts, 1999. Principal television appearances include the title role in Roc, broadcast on FOX, 1991–95; Homicide: Life on the Street, 1996; Full Time Felon, 1997; True Women (miniseries), 1997; and The ‘60s (miniseries), 1999. Made debut as a television director on Full Time Felon, 1997.

Awards: Drama Desk Award, Theater World Award, and Tony Award nomination, all 1985, all for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; Tony Award nomination, 1991, for The Piano lesson.

Addresses: c/o Twentieth Century-Fox Television, 5746 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028.

Today. “In my neighborhood, more guys went to prison than school.” The product of a broken home, Dutton grew up strong and aggressive. Even his nickname bore evidence of the trouble to come. “When I was a kid, we had rock fights,” he explained in the Chicago Tribune. “My gang would line up on one side of the street and another gang would line up on the other side, and we’d let fly. I was always out front, leading the charge, and… get my head busted about twice a month. As a result, the guys started calling me ‘Rockhead.’ Somewhere along the line, the ‘k’ and the ‘head’ got dropped and it’s been Roc ever since.”

Dutton had a nickname that would follow him to stardom, but several years would pass before he ever appeared on stage. Even though his family eventually moved out of the projects, he still got into trouble regularly and was in and out of reform school from the age of twelve. “I quit school in the seventh grade, not because I couldn’t make it academically, but because I thought there was more happening on the street corner,” he declared in the Detroit Free Press. “In my generation, you were expected to go to jail. All my buddies went, and all the guys we looked up to went.”

At the age of 17, “Roc” Dutton fulfilled that expectation. “A guy came at me in a fight and stabbed me eight times and I killed him,” he stated matter-of-factly in USA Today. Convicted of manslaughter, he was sent to the penitentiary in 1967 but released on parole in less than two years. In 1969 he was sent back to jail for possession of deadly weapons. A three-year sentence became an eleven-year sentence when he was convicted for assaulting a prison guard. By the mid-1970s, Dutton found himself looking at a long stretch in a violent, overcrowded urban prison.

Dutton does not shrink from his memories of those desperate years in jail. “I’m neither proud nor am I ashamed,” he disclosed in the San Francisco Examiner. “As I see it now, prison saved my life.” Dutton took his penchant for trouble making with him to jail, joined the Black Panthers and leftist movements, and quarreled with guards and other inmates. On one occasion, he refused to work and was sent into solitary confinement. The Chicago Tribune’s Clark described the conditions: “Solitary confinement meant a 5-by-7-foot cell with a sink, but no bed and no commode. The latter consisted of a hole in the floor [that] vindictive guards could back up at will, flooding the cell ankle-deep in sewage. Prisoners locked naked therein were fed once every three days and were allowed ‘one piece of reading material, ’ though the only light by which to read was that which seeped under the door.”

Dutton had grabbed a book from his cell on the way to solitary. It was a collection of short plays by African American playwrights that had been sent to him by a girlfriend. Dutton had never read a play and had never seen one performed. The book was his only companion for three days, however, so he read all of the plays. The one that affected him most deeply was Day of Absence by Douglas Turner Ward. “It’s about the day all the blacks in a small Southern town decided not to come to work and the whites realized they couldn’t live without them,” Dutton described in the Chicago Tribune. “It’s played by a black cast in white-face and it’s hilarious. I read it over and over and told myself, ‘When I get out of here, I’m going to stage this.”’ Dutton added, “I found my humanity in that cell and I was a changed man when I got out. The prison officials all thought I’d gone crazy, but they let me put on the play.”

Dutton formed a theater group in the prison and prepared the play for presentation at a talent show. “Doing the play before a sea of very hard men, I felt this eerie kind of power,” theactor observed in the San Francisco Examiner. “I could make them quiet, I could make them think. It was the only thing positive I had at that time in my life, the only immediate remedy for prison life. I suddenly knew what I was born to do.”

Danger still threatened, however. Some weeks after Dutton had established a regular theater workshop in the prison, he was stabbed by a fellow inmate. The wound was severe, puncturing Dutton’s lung. He was hospitalized for two months and underwent several operations. Dutton recalled in the Los Angeles Times that the long recuperation period gave him time to think. Although the unspoken code of the prison called for Dutton to exact revenge, he decided that he was finished with violence. Dutton maintained, “I told myself: ‘If I live through this, I’m retiring from this world of stupidity.’”

When he recovered, Dutton was sent to another penitentiary, this one in western Maryland. There he was a model prisoner, earning his high school equivalency diploma with good grades. He persuaded the warden to allow him to take courses at the nearest junior college, and in 1976— the same year he was paroled for the last time—he received an Associate of Arts degree. He returned to Baltimore and finished his college education at Towson State University, majoring in theater.

A professor at Towson State persuaded Dutton to apply to the prestigious Yale Drama School in New Haven, Connecticut. Dutton was skeptical, but he paid the application fee and took the train north for an audition. He was baffled when he found out he had been accepted. “I was afraid to leave my apartment for fear that something would prevent me from getting to Yale. That some twist of irony would destroy me at the very moment that life was turning toward the better,” Dutton recounted in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Though irony did not intervene, Lloyd Richards and August Wilson did. As a student at Yale, Dutton worked closely with Richards, the longtime dean of the drama school. Dutton also met playwright Wilson, who began to create characters for him in works-in-progress. One such work was Ma Rainey ‘s Black Bottom, the story of several jazz musicians in the 1920s. Dutton took a role in the play during repertory performances at Yale, then went with the show when it opened on Broadway. Dutton’s work in that drama earned him his first Tony Award nomination. More importantly, it paved the way for parts in other August Wilson works, including Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and The Piano Lesson.

By the time The Piano Lesson had its Broadway debut in 1990, Charles Dutton was a stage star. He had also worked sporadically in television, appearing on Miami Vice and Cagney & Lacey, and had taken some supporting roles in films. Still, he preferred live theater with its energy and audience response. “I never imagined myself working in television or doing a sitcom,” Dutton noted in the San Francisco Examiner. “I was reluctant because I didn’t want to come to Los Angeles as another hired hand on a television show.” In the New Orleans Times-Picayune he pointed out, “When you go to Yale Drama School and you’re trained in the classics, you think you just want to do King Lear and Othello your entire life. Until you have to pay your rent.”

Television producer Stan Daniels caught Dutton’s acclaimed performance in The Piano Lesson and offered the actor an attractive proposition. Daniels thought Dutton would prove a strong presence on the television screen, so they worked together to create a situation comedy about a working-class Baltimore family. Dutton even used his nickname for the central character, and he insisted that the other roles be filled with fellow stage actors. “I think the ground-breaking aspect of this show is … the acting,” Dutton emphasized in the Times-Picayune when Roc debuted on the Fox network in 1991. “These actors and these directors and these writers will find material that we can do something a little different with for situation comedy.” Dutton himself contributed significant images and situations from his memories of Baltimore. “Originally, I wanted to do the black man’s version of [legendary actor-comedian] Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners, ” he informed a San Francisco Chronicle correspondent. “Ralph Kramden was always struggling for something better and I wanted to recapture that quality of the common man, show that the black man struggles just as hard. The ‘Honeymooner’ part of it was changed around a lot, but we still tried to keep that Gleasonesque quality.”

In addition to working on Roc, Dutton developed a career as a movie actor. He appeared in films such as Alien 3 (1992), The Distinguished Gentleman (1993) .Menace II Society (1993), Rudy (1993), Surviving the Game (1994), and A Low Down Dirty Shame (1995). Following the cancellation of Roc in 1995, Dutton continued to work in television and appeared in two episodes of the NBC drama Homicide: Life on the Street in 1996. That same year, he was cast as George in the Spike Lee film Get On the Bus, which told the fictional story of a group of African American men who were riding on a bus to the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. He also appeared as Sheriff Ozzie Walls in the film A Time to Kill

Dutton directed his first television show, Full Time Felon, for the HBO cable network in 1997. He also appeared as Josiah on the show True Women. In 1998, Dutton starred with Mira Sorvino in the science fiction thriller Mimic, and in the critically acclaimed film Blind Faith, which aired on Showtime. He also appeared with Patrick Swayze in the action adventure film Black Dog. In 1999, Dutton played the role of Willis Richland in the film Cookie’s Fortune starring Glenn Close and Julianne Moore. The film, directed by Robert Altmann, told the story of a murder mystery that occurred in a small Mississippi town. That same year, Dutton also appeared in the television miniseries The ‘60s and the Sydney Pollack film Random Hearts.

Books

Contemporary Theatre, Film and Television, Gale, 1997.

Who’s Who Among African Americans, 11th edition, Gale, 1998.

Periodicals

Chicago Tribune, August 25, 1991.

Detroit Free Press, November 17, 1991.

Emerge, August 1992.

Los Angeles Times, January 20, 1990; August 25, 1991.

Orlando Sentinel, May 20, 1990.

Press (Atlantic City, NJ), June 1, 1992.

San Francisco Chronicle, October 20, 1991.

San Francisco Examiner, August 24, 1991; February 24, 1992.

Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA), September 13, 1991.

USA Today, April 17, 1990.

USA Weekend, February 28, 1992.

Other

Additional information for this profile was obtained from the National Black Arts Festival website; the E! Online web site; and the bigstar.com web site.

—Mark Kram and David Oblender