actor Terry Carter dies at age 95. Boomers will recognize his face
Terry Carter, Barrier-Breaking Actor and Documentarian, Dies at 95
He was the only Black actor on “Combat!” and “The Phil Silvers Show,” then made well regarded documentaries on luminaries like Duke Ellington and Katherine Dunham.
Terry Carter as Colonel Tigh on the ABC science-fiction series “Battlestar Galactica.” He appeared on the show in 1978-79.Credit...via Everett Collection
Mr. Carter, right, on “McCloud” as the sidekick to Deputy Marshal Sam McCloud, played by Dennis Weaver, left. Mr. Carter appeared on the series from 1970 to 1977.Credit...via Everett Collection
Terry Carter, who broke color barriers onstage and on television in the 1950s and ’60s and later produced multicultural documentaries on the jazz luminary Duke Ellington and the dancer-choreographer Katherine Dunham, died on Tuesday at his home in Midtown Manhattan. He was 95.
His death was confirmed by his son, Miguel Carter DeCoste.
Mr. Carter was raised in a bilingual home next door to a synagogue in a predominantly Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. His best friend was the future jazz great Cecil Taylor. In his first stage role, at 9, Mr. Carter played the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama on a voyage of discovery.
And in a wayfaring six-decade career, he was a merchant seaman, a jazz pianist, a law student, a television news anchor, a familiar character on network sitcoms, an Emmy-winning documentarian, a good will ambassador to China, a longtime expatriate in Europe — and a reported dead man; in 2015, rumors that he had been killed were mistaken. It was not him but a much younger Terry Carter who had died in a hit-and-run accident in Los Angeles by a pickup truck driven by the rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight.
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In the 1950s, when many American entertainments were racially segregated and hundreds of actors had been blacklisted during Communist witch-hunts by congressional investigators, Mr. Carter met the veteran actor Howard Da Silva, whose Hollywood and television career had stalled in 1951 after he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
“It was Howard who talked me into becoming an actor — he’s the one who changed my life,” Mr. Carter said in an interview for this obituary in 2018. “I quit law school and began studying at Howard’s acting school. I think he called it the Mobile Theater Workshop.”
Mr. Carter appeared in several Black-cast stage productions, both on Broadway and Off Broadway, before breaking into television as the only Black character on “The Phil Silvers Show” (1955-59), playing Pvt. Sugie Sugarman in 92 half-hour episodes of the CBS comedy about an Army con man, Sergeant Bilko, and his motor pool crew.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/arts/television/terry-carter-dead.html
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