I first heard the name Frank Silvera (1914-1970) when I was working in the back office of Theater for the New City; I think the Frank Silvera Writers Workshop had presented work there, or maybe was based there at some point. Curious, I looked into him, and as so often happens discovered that I had seen him many times on television. Silvera was a very successful character actor, it's just that his name was seldom prominent in the credits. But his life and career were really interesting, and his early death was tragic.
If Silvera had come along a few decades later, he'd have had a shot at being a leading man, I think. He was strikingly good looking, and had the acting chops. But his dark complexion forbade that back in his time. He was a mixed race Jamaican, part black, part white, part Sephardic Jew (as the surname indicates, Portuguese). His family moved to Boston when he was six. In boyhood, he participated in drama at school and church. After graduating from BU, he studied law at Northeastern but was cast in a local production of Paul Green's Roll Sweet Chariot and dropped the law. Throughout the late '30s he acted in regional repertory productions, making his way to Broadway by 1940, when he garnered a walk-on in Theodore Ward's Big White Fog. He served in the Navy throughout World War 2, entertaining troops.
In 1947, the Actor's Studio was founded and Silvera became an early member. Elia Kazan was obviously a fan of his work: he cast him in the lead role of Mr. Gutman in the original 1953 production of Tennessee Williams' Camino Real, and in a smaller part in the film Viva Zapata!, one of four movies in which Silvera appeared in 1952. While Silvera continued to have success on Broadway in such things as the the 1955 revival of The Skin of Our Teeth, and the original production of Hatful of Rain that same year, he worked constantly in film and television, where his striking looks (reminds me a bit of Robert Ryan) and immense skill made him eminently castable. On account of his skin color he tended to be typecast, usually in Mexican or otherwise Latin or Native parts, and as a consequence, the majority of his parts were in westerns, usually as mean heavies, although he also sometimes worked in gritty urban crime dramas.
When you read of the some of the movies Silvera acted in, you'll likely realize you too have seen him many times. Stanley Kubrick cast him in his early films Fear and Desire (1953) and Killer's Kiss (1955). He's also in George Cukor's Heller in Pink Tights (1960), not to mention the 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), Toys in the Attic (1963), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967). Westerns included The Appaloosa (1966), Hombre (1967), The Stalking Moon (1968), and Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969), as well as guest shots on tv shows like Bonanza, Bat Masterson, Daniel Boone, Rawhide, Gunsmoke, and The Wild, Wild West.
In 1964 he co-founded Theatre of Being, whose mission was to present work by black artists. That year, he directed and acted in James Baldwin's Amen Corner, which opened in L.A. and then moved to Broadway. Many notables were in that cast: Beah Richards (later nominated for an Oscar for her role as Sidney Poitier's mother in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?), Juanita Moore (Oscar nominated for her role in the 1959 version of Imitation of Life), Isabell Sanford (later of The Jeffersons), Whitman Mayo (later of Sanford and Son), Helen Martin (later of Good Times and 227), and others. A similar project Silvera was involved in was Jules Dassin's 1968 film Uptight! which updated John Ford's The Informer in the context of the Black Power movement. Silvera was third-billed in the film, which also featured Roscoe Lee Browne, Ruby Dee, et al.
Silvera's career was in a terrific place at the end of his life. He had an important recurring role as Don Sebastian Montoya on the tv show The High Chaparral (1967-70), and supported Burt Lancaster in a fourth-billed role in the western film Valdez is Coming (1971). He was doing guest shots on shows like Marcus Welby MD, The Flying Nun, and Hawaii Five-O.
It all ended with horrible absurdity in mid 1970 when Silvera electrocuted himself while performing a home repair...on his garbage disposal. To a near certainty we would have seen a lot more of him in films and television and on Broadway throughout the '70s and '80s if that accident hadn't happened, for he was on a brilliant trajectory and as time went on, things started to slowly open up for actors of color. But, nah. The guy had to do his own wiring.
You already know the epilogue. In 1973, Morgan Freeman and other friends and colleagues founded the Frank Silvera Writers Workshop, still very much a going concern. These days they operate out of The Billie Holiday Theatre in Bed-Stuy. They have a very excellent website with lots of information about Silvera, as well as their own ongoing projects here.
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