David McKnight, who portrayed the title character in the cult blaxploitation horror classic J.D.’s Revenge and appeared in Hollywood Shuffle and The Five Heartbeats for Robert Townsend, has died. He was 87.
McKnight died Sunday of cancer in Las Vegas, his friend and publicist Cynthia Busby told The Hollywood Reporter.
McKnight also showed up on dozens of TV shows, from Kojak, Hill Street Blues, The Incredible Hulk, Dynasty and Benson to Moonlighting, 227, Roc, L.A. Law and The District.
In the New Orleans-set J.D.’s Revenge (1976), directed by Arthur Marks, McKnight played a deceased hustler who takes over the body of a college student (Glynn Turman) and goes after the man who murdered him and his sister 30 years earlier.
In a 2018 interview, McKnight said that he first met Townsend when the first-time feature filmmaker was putting together Hollywood Shuffle (1987) and offered him advice.
He was then hired to play Uncle Ray, a singer turned barber who encourages Townsend’s Bobby Taylor to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. McKnight said he brought his own photos from home to help dress up the barbershop set on the film, which was made on a shoestring budget.
McKnight later portrayed Pastor Stone in the Townsend-directed The Five Heartbeats (1991) and was the father of Townsend’s Robert Peterson on a 1995 episode of The Parent ‘Hood, the WB sitcom co-created by Townsend.
Born on July 2, 1936, in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, David Lee McKnight and his family moved to Chicago when he was 4. He attended Wendell Phillips Academy High School, where he discovered acting, and Wilson Junior College in his hometown; served with the U.S. Army; and worked as a police officer.
In 1970, McKnight starred on the first all-Black TV soap opera, Richard Durham’s Bird of the Iron Feather, which aired on WTTW in Chicago. His first two movies were J.D.’s Revenge, the Sam Elliott-starring Lifeguard (1976) and Michael Crichton’s Coma (1978).
His résumé included two films written by J.F. Lawton, Pizza Man (1991) and Andrew Davis’ Under Siege (1992), plus A Taste of Hemlock (1989) and Pump Up the Volume (1990). More recently, he appeared with Vivica A. Fox in the 2016 telefilm A Husband for Christmas and on the 2019-23 web series A House Divided.
“Mr. McKnight was a very skilled and adroit character actor whose contributions as a standout African American thespian were unsung throughout his career, like many during his era,” Prof. Rel Dowdell, director of film studies at Hampton University, said in a statement.
Busby noted that McKnight was a great dancer, a sharp dresser and a member of the NAACP’s Hollywood/Beverly Hills chapter. She put together a tribute video to him that can be seen here.
Survivors include his brother, James, and a daughter.
