OSSIE DAVIS 1917 - 2005

   Ossie Davis, 87, was in Miami Beach last Friday, about to begin a new film, Retirement, when he died of natural causes.
   Quite simply, Davis was a primal force.
   A great actor, who appeared in films, on television and on the stage, he also wrote, directed and produced plays and movies, and was a leader in the Civil Rights movement.
   Intelligence, passion and grace were in him like blood and bone, and once you heard his extraordinary voice, deep and commanding, you never forgot it.
   Davis made 79 feature and TV films, was about to begin his 80th and his 81st was in pre-production. He narrated another 30 films, made guest appearances on dozens of TV series, and directed five films.
   Fittingly, he met his equally accomplished wife, Ruby Dee, who has an equally amazing voice, on stage in 1946, and often worked with her. Davis and Dee were both 2004 Kennedy Center Honorees. In 1998, their 50th wedding anniversary. they published a dual autobiography, With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together.
   Davis and Dee first appeared together in the plays Jeb, in 1946, and Anna Lucasta, in 1946-47. Davis' first film, No Way Out in 1950, was Dee's fifth.
   Both appeared in the TV series ''Roots: The Next Generation'' (1978), ''Martin Luther King: The Dream and the Drum'' (1986) and ''The Stand'' (1994).
   On learning of his death, Actors' Equity issued a statement calling Davis ''an icon in the American theater'' and he and Dee ''American treasures.'' Broadway marquees were dimmed Friday at curtain time in his honor.
   ''His greatness as a human being went far beyond his excellence as an actor,'' former New York Governor Mario Cuomo said Friday. ''Ossie was a citizen of the country, first, and the world.”
   One of Davis’s more breathtaking Broadway performances was the title character in ''Purlie Victorious'' (1961), a comedy he wrote that made fun of racial stereotypes. In 1970, he co-wrote the book for ''Purlie,'' a musical based on the play. It is scheduled to be revived on Broadway next season.
   Among his more memorable films were Emperor Jones, The Hill, Grumpy Old Men, The Outsider, Malcolm X, Don’t Look Back, The Client, Miss Evers’ Boys, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Do the Right Thing, and BAADASSSSS.
   He was a cast member on two TV series -- ''The Defenders'' from 1963 to 65, and ''Evening Shade'' from 1990 to 1994, and guest-starred on the new Showtime series, “The L Word.”
   Davis took part in many civil rights demonstrations, including the landmark march on Washington in 1963, and delivered a eulogy for Malcolm X, saying, ''In honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves.''
   The oldest of five children, he was born in Cogdell, Georgia, in 1917, entered Howard University in 1935, with plans to become a playwright, made his debut as an actor in 1939, in Harlem, and, after four years in the Army in World War II, made his Broadway debut in 1946, playing opposite Dee.
   Dee was in New Zealand shooting a movie at the time of Davis' death.