Roscoe Lee Browne in Topaz
I post this about two days after the announcement of the death of Roscoe Lee Browne in April of 2007.
Obituaries led with Browne's working with Hitchcock on "Topaz" -- proof that the Hitchcock name carries weight even if the Hitchcock movie in question isn't among his best.
Still, Roscoe Lee Browne was, reportedly, Hitchcock's favorite actor in "Topaz," and appeared in Hitchcock's personal favorite sequence in the episodic "Topaz" -- the "Hotel Theresa" suspense sequence.
"Topaz" lacked a major star in the lead of French spy Andre Devereaux,for whom Hitchcock selected unknown Frederick Stafford; therefore it rather depended on colorful character actors along the way. Roscoe Lee Browne was certainly colorful, and perhaps the sole actor of color to figure importantly in a Hitchcock film (other than, perhaps, one of the cast in "Lifeboat.")
Browne plays DuBois, "the Man from Martinque," a freelance spy who doubles as a Harlem florist and who is recruited by Andre to enter the Hotel Theresa and get photographs of papers relating to the Cuban Missile Crisis from a briefcase held by Castro lieutenant Rico Parra (John Vernon, yet another personable character actor who would go on to a certain fame in "Dirty Harry," "Josey Wales," and "Animal House.")
Roscoe Lee Browne becomes the "lead hero" of "Topaz" for a major scene, while Andre literally watches from the sidelines: across the street from the Hotel Theresa.
DuBois is a charming, jaunty, elegant man, whose sense of humor is no better illustrated than in this exhange with Andre over what kind of fake press credentials he should use to get in to see Parra:
DuBois: Shall I be Ebony (magazine) or Playboy?
Andre: Ebony.
DuBois: I would prefer Playboy.
Andre: EBONY
DuBois: Man, are you square.
DuBois manages to charm his way into the Hotel Theresa to pay off another Cuban, Uribe. Together, DuBois and Uribe steal Parra's briefcase away from him in a classic little Hitchcock suspense sequence. Parra bursts in on the men in a bathroom while they are photographing the papers, like pornographers. DuBois leaps out a window onto an awning below and saves himself (and his photos of the key Cuban Missile papers); Uribe does not.
One critic wrote that Roscoe Lee Browne played DuBois in "the Martin Balsam manner". Both actors were short, bald, suave and possessed of fine voices (though Browne's was "super-fine.") DuBois can be seen as a variation on Balsam's detective Arbogast in "Psycho" : both men use their wiles to outfox opponents out of information (Norman Bates, Rico Parra), and both men enter "zones of danger" (the Bates mansion for Arbogast, the Hotel Theresa filled with Cubans for DuBois.) But DuBois KNOWS of his danger, and survives and escapes. Barely.
Browne was famous for other things. Narrating "Babe" in his later years. Being famously stuck in an elevator with Archie Bunker.
In 1972, Browne was John Wayne's heroic associate in "The Cowboys" pitted against the evil Bruce Dern. Thus did two Hitchcock actors of the late period -- Browne and Dern -- join their differing personalities and differing great voices together.
I prefer to envision Roscoe Lee Browne leaving his life the way DuBois leaves one scene in "Topaz." Entering an elevator in the Hotel Theresa and bidding farewell to the Cubans, DuBois turns, smiles and waves, as the elevator doors close...
...and take him away from us.