Ron Thompson, Actor in ‘No Place to Be Somebody’ and ‘American Pop,’ Dies at 83

Ron Thompson, the anonymous actor that starred on Broadway for Charles Gordone in the Pulitzer Champion No Place to Be Someone and played papa and child artists for Ralph Bakshi in the computer animated cult traditional American Pop, has actually passed away. He was 83.

Filmmaker Joe Black informed The Hollywood Press reporter that he located Thompson in his Van Nuys home on Saturday mid-day. Both had actually collaborated in 8 attributes, consisting of Hate Steeds (2017 ), Chicks, Guy (2018) and Suffrage (2023 ), and Black saw him a pair times a week to aid him out.

“For a man of his age, he was so full of life, he had such a presence,” Black stated. He called Thompson“the Sam Jackson to my Tarantino.”

In 1969, Thompson came from off-Broadway the function of Small house Mulligan in the Joseph Papp-produced No Place to Be Someone, starring Ron O’Neal, after that went along with the dramatization to Broadway and on a trip around the nation.

In his testimonial for The New york city Times, Mel Gussow created that Thompson was “splendid” in his turn as a“hip-talking, drum-playing white Uncle Tom who desperately want to be Black.”

Robert Hooks, the Set Firm founder that understood Thompson from their days as New york city stars, informed THR that his friend “stole that play from everybody.” He stated he really felt forced to go backstage to fulfill Thompson after seeing No Place to Be Someone for the very first time.

“It might seem odd, but Ronnie Thompson is the only white actor I have ever known who deserves to be included in Black Theatre History,” Hooks created on Facebook.“I have never known a white actor absolutely unafraid to go to the emotionally naked places that expose white jungle-fever delusion and turn it into heartbreaking pathos and high art.”

In American Pop (1981 ), Thompson depicted both protagonist, Tony Belinsky and his child, Pete. He and the various other stars were recorded for animators, that after that would certainly develop anime personalities out of them in a procedure called Rotoscoping, comparable to activity capture today.

“Live animators were still working. They would blow up the photograph, they would then trace the actor, his physical appearance, his movement, his expression, everything, then draw in the background,” Thompson remembered in 2012.“It’s not just the actor’s voice, you’re seeing the actor’s physical likeness and total performance, facial expression, everything!”

Born upon Jan. 31, 1941, in Louisville, Kentucky, Phillip Thompson relocated with his household to Miami in 1945. Influenced to be an actor after seeing Marlon Brando in On the Beachfront, he looked like an additional in Jerry Lewis’ The Bellboy (1960 ), moved to New York City when he was 19 and showed up on episodes of CBS’ Armstrong Circle Movie Theater in 1962.

He likewise videotaped songs under the assistance of rockabilly entertainer Ersel Hickey (“Bluebirds Over the Mountain”) and depicted a rock vocalist in Brown Eye, Wickedness Eye (1968 ).

After No Place to Be Someone, Thompson acted onstage along with Henry Fonda, Richard Dreyfuss and Gloria Grahame in a 1972 rebirth of William Saroyan’s The moment of Your Life in Los Angeles.

A year later on, he obtained an L.A. Movie critics Circle Honor for his representation of Bickham in Does a Tiger Use a Necktie? (A young Al Pacino had actually won a Tony for playing the component in 1969.)

Thompson likewise repeated in 1975-76 as a newbie covert police officer called Nopke on the ABC criminal offense collection Baretta, starring Robert Blake, and he guest-starred on such various other programs as Mannix, Ironside, Amy Prentiss, The Streets of San Francisco, Bronk, Quincy, M.E., The Waltons and Cagney & & Lacey.

His movie résumé consisted of The White Buffalo (1977 ), American Me (1992) and Deep Cover (1992 ).

Thompson was passionately entailed with late starlet Diane Sommerfield (Days of Our Lives, The Black Godfather) in the 1970s. He has no well-known survivors.