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Robert Hooks
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Robert Hooks
Robert Hooks (born Bobby Dean Hooks; April 18, 1937) is an American actor, producer, and activist. Along with Douglas Turner Ward and Gerald S. Krone, he founded The Negro Ensemble Company. The Negro Ensemble Company is credited with the launch of the careers of many major black artists of all disciplines, while creating a body of performance literature over the last thirty years, providing the backbone of African-American theatrical classics. Additionally, Hooks is the sole founder of two significant black theatre companies: the D.C. Black Repertory Company, and New York's Group Theatre Workshop.
The youngest of five children, Hooks was born in Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C., to Mae Bertha (née Ward), a seamstress, and Edward Hooks, who had moved from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, with their four other children, Bernice, Caroleigh, Charles Edward "Charlie", and James Walter "Jimmy". Named Bobby Dean Hooks at birth, Robert was their first child born in Washington, D.C., and the first to be born in a hospital. His father, Edward, died in a work accident on the railroad in 1939.
Hooks attended Stevens Elementary School. In 1945, at the insistence of his sister Bernice who was doing community arts outreach for youngsters at Francis Junior High School, he performed the lead in his first play, The Pirates of Penzance, at the age of nine. From the ages of six to 12, Bobby Dean journeyed with his siblings to Lucama, North Carolina, to work the tobacco fields for his uncle's sharecropping farm as a way to help earn money for the coming school year in D.C.
In 1954, just as Brown vs. Board of Education was being implemented in the north, Hooks moved to Philadelphia to be with his mother, her second husband, and his half-siblings, Safia Abdullah (née Sharon Dickerson), George E. Dickerson, Charles Dickerson, Annette Dickerson, Margie Dickerson, Robert Dickerson. Hooks experienced his first integrated school experience at West Philadelphia High School. Hooks soon joined the drama club and began acting in plays by William Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett. Hooks graduated in 1956, passing on a scholarship to Temple University in order to pursue a career as a stage actor at the Bessie V. Hicks School of Theatre (alongside Charles Dierkop and Bruce Dern, with whom he second-acted plays doing their pre-Broadway tryouts in Philadelphia), while working at Browning King, a men's tailor shop at Fourteenth and Chestnut Streets.
Having trained at the Bessie V. Hicks School of Theatre in Philadelphia, and after seeing A Raisin in the Sun in its Philadelphia tryout in February 1959, Hooks moved to New York to pursue acting. In April 1960, as Bobby Dean Hooks, he made his Broadway debut in A Raisin in the Sun, replacing Louis Gossett Jr., who would be doing the film version. Hooks then continued to do its national tour. He then stepped into the Broadway production of A Taste of Honey, replacing Billy Dee Williams; then repeating the same national tour trajectory as he had done for "Raisin..." the previous year.
In early 1962, he next appeared as the lead in Jean Genet's The Blacks, replacing James Earl Jones as the male lead, leaving briefly that same year to appear on Broadway again in Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright, before stepping back into the lead role in The Blacks in 1963. He then returned to Broadway, first in Ballad for Bimshire and then in the short-lived 1964 David Merrick revival of The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Any More (as a character created by Tennessee Williams for this revival) and starring Tallulah Bankhead and Tab Hunter in his only stage performance. Immediately thereafter, on March 24, 1964, he originated the role of Clay in Amiri Baraka's Dutchman. With this play, on the advice of Roscoe Lee Brown, Hooks became known as, Robert Hooks. He also originated roles on the New York stage in Where's Daddy? for which he won the Theatre World Award and he was nominated for Best Male Lead in a Musical for Hallelujah Baby while he was simultaneously starring in David Susskind's N.Y.P.D.—the second African-American lead on a television drama, following Bill Cosby on “I Spy”.
In 1968, Hooks was the host of the new public affairs television program Like It Is.
Hooks was nominated for a Tony for his lead role in the musical Hallelujah, Baby!, has received both the Pioneer Award and the NAACP Image Award for Lifetime Achievement, and has been inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. He also won an Emmy for his PBS special Voices of Our People.
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Robert Hooks
Robert Hooks (born Bobby Dean Hooks; April 18, 1937) is an American actor, producer, and activist. Along with Douglas Turner Ward and Gerald S. Krone, he founded The Negro Ensemble Company. The Negro Ensemble Company is credited with the launch of the careers of many major black artists of all disciplines, while creating a body of performance literature over the last thirty years, providing the backbone of African-American theatrical classics. Additionally, Hooks is the sole founder of two significant black theatre companies: the D.C. Black Repertory Company, and New York's Group Theatre Workshop.
The youngest of five children, Hooks was born in Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C., to Mae Bertha (née Ward), a seamstress, and Edward Hooks, who had moved from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, with their four other children, Bernice, Caroleigh, Charles Edward "Charlie", and James Walter "Jimmy". Named Bobby Dean Hooks at birth, Robert was their first child born in Washington, D.C., and the first to be born in a hospital. His father, Edward, died in a work accident on the railroad in 1939.
Hooks attended Stevens Elementary School. In 1945, at the insistence of his sister Bernice who was doing community arts outreach for youngsters at Francis Junior High School, he performed the lead in his first play, The Pirates of Penzance, at the age of nine. From the ages of six to 12, Bobby Dean journeyed with his siblings to Lucama, North Carolina, to work the tobacco fields for his uncle's sharecropping farm as a way to help earn money for the coming school year in D.C.
In 1954, just as Brown vs. Board of Education was being implemented in the north, Hooks moved to Philadelphia to be with his mother, her second husband, and his half-siblings, Safia Abdullah (née Sharon Dickerson), George E. Dickerson, Charles Dickerson, Annette Dickerson, Margie Dickerson, Robert Dickerson. Hooks experienced his first integrated school experience at West Philadelphia High School. Hooks soon joined the drama club and began acting in plays by William Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett. Hooks graduated in 1956, passing on a scholarship to Temple University in order to pursue a career as a stage actor at the Bessie V. Hicks School of Theatre (alongside Charles Dierkop and Bruce Dern, with whom he second-acted plays doing their pre-Broadway tryouts in Philadelphia), while working at Browning King, a men's tailor shop at Fourteenth and Chestnut Streets.
Having trained at the Bessie V. Hicks School of Theatre in Philadelphia, and after seeing A Raisin in the Sun in its Philadelphia tryout in February 1959, Hooks moved to New York to pursue acting. In April 1960, as Bobby Dean Hooks, he made his Broadway debut in A Raisin in the Sun, replacing Louis Gossett Jr., who would be doing the film version. Hooks then continued to do its national tour. He then stepped into the Broadway production of A Taste of Honey, replacing Billy Dee Williams; then repeating the same national tour trajectory as he had done for "Raisin..." the previous year.
In early 1962, he next appeared as the lead in Jean Genet's The Blacks, replacing James Earl Jones as the male lead, leaving briefly that same year to appear on Broadway again in Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright, before stepping back into the lead role in The Blacks in 1963. He then returned to Broadway, first in Ballad for Bimshire and then in the short-lived 1964 David Merrick revival of The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Any More (as a character created by Tennessee Williams for this revival) and starring Tallulah Bankhead and Tab Hunter in his only stage performance. Immediately thereafter, on March 24, 1964, he originated the role of Clay in Amiri Baraka's Dutchman. With this play, on the advice of Roscoe Lee Brown, Hooks became known as, Robert Hooks. He also originated roles on the New York stage in Where's Daddy? for which he won the Theatre World Award and he was nominated for Best Male Lead in a Musical for Hallelujah Baby while he was simultaneously starring in David Susskind's N.Y.P.D.—the second African-American lead on a television drama, following Bill Cosby on “I Spy”.
In 1968, Hooks was the host of the new public affairs television program Like It Is.
Hooks was nominated for a Tony for his lead role in the musical Hallelujah, Baby!, has received both the Pioneer Award and the NAACP Image Award for Lifetime Achievement, and has been inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. He also won an Emmy for his PBS special Voices of Our People.
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