And our store of great character actors is another man poorer

...with the death of Roscoe Lee Browne . Excerpting from that Yahoo! News obituary:

Actor Roscoe Lee Browne, whose rich voice and dignified bearing brought him an Emmy Award and a Tony nomination, has died. He was 81.

Browne's career included classic theater to TV cartoons. He also was a poet and a former world-class athlete.

His deep, cultured voice was heard narrating the 1995 hit movie "Babe." On screen, his character often was smart, cynical and well-educated, whether a congressman, a judge or a butler.

In movies, he was a spy in the 1969 Alfred Hitchcock feature "Topaz" and a camp cook in 1972's "The Cowboys," which starred John Wayne.

"Some critics complained that I spoke too well to be believable" in the cook's role, Browne told The Washington Post in 1972. "When a critic makes that remark, I think, if I had said, 'Yassuh, boss' to John Wayne, then the critic would have taken a shine to me."

On television, he had several memorable guest roles. He was a snobbish black lawyer trapped in an elevator with bigot Archie Bunker in an episode of the 1970s TV comedy "All in the Family" and the butler Saunders in the comedy "Soap." He won an Emmy in 1986 for a guest role as Professor Foster on "The Cosby Show."

As luck would have it, I happened to catch an episode of "The Cosby Show" on Nick at Nite recently with Browne in it. I'm not sure if it was the one for which he won an award, as he made a couple of appearances. At any rate he was extremely funny.

The obit doesn't single this out, but another memorable guest part came on an episode in the first season of "Barney Miller," in which Browne played a philisophical and cheerful escape artist. I don't know why they didn't mention it, really, as he won an Emmy for that role as well and deservedly-he was phenomenal.

I also remember that he was in the audience when Laurence Fishburne apeared on 'Inside the Actor's Studio,' which is actually one of the best episodes of that entire series. Browne doesn't speak in it, but Fishburne makes clear what a dear friend and mentor the older actor had been to him. It's genuinely moving when Fishburne thanks him from the stage.

In 1992, Browne returned to Broadway in "Two Trains Running," one of August Wilson's acclaimed series of plays on the black experience. It won the Tony for best play and brought Browne a Tony nomination for best featured (supporting) actor.

The New York Times said he portrayed "the wry perspective of one who believes that human folly knows few bounds and certainly no racial bounds. The performance is wise and slyly life-affirming."

That actually sounds to me like a good description of Browne's attitude in most of his roles. I don't pretend to have seen them all, but he often seemed to me like a man who knew the value of silliness, because it was stupid to pretend that you'd figured everything out. He had a sly smile and, as his friend of four decades Sidney Poitier said,

"He was one of the most remarkable presences on stage, on film, on television,"

I'll miss him.