RIP Roscoe Lee Browne

[gm]

Died today in LA

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/04/11/entertainment/e201055D03.DTL

[tandfman]

That is sad news. I saw him just a few months ago in New York and he seemed fine. He was not a young man, but I had no sense at all that he was ill.

Roscoe Browne (he never used his middle name when he was a runner) was a rarity. A number of prominent actors were track and field athletes when they were in school (I think we've done a thread or two about this). But few were as accomplished in both fields as he was.

[bad hammy]

T&F resume, please??

[gh]

Fabulous as the butler who replaced Benson (Robert Guillaume) on Soap.

[AS]

I have strong memories of him in Logan's Run

[AS]

IMDB is claiming "Set a world's record in 1951 at Paris for the 800-meter run."

Doesn't look too likely. Here's the WR progression:

1' 44" 3 Peter Snell, NZL, 02 Feb 62, Christchurch
1' 45" 7 Roger Moens, BEL, 03 Aug 55, Oslo
1' 46" 6 Rudolf Harbig, GER, 15 Jun 39, Milano
1' 48" 4 Sydney Wooderson, GBR, 20 Aug 38, Motspur Park
http://www.athletix.org/statistics/wr800men.htm

His PR appears to have been 1.49.3 from Colombes (Jul 8, 1951)
(Found this at http://trackfield.brinkster.net/)


Yahoo Movies is claiming "Concurrent with teaching, Browne won two American indoor championships in track and the 1951 world championship in the 800 yard dash."

So many ways that last sentence is wrong...

He was definitely ranked #2 in the world behind Arthur Wint in 1951 by TFN (http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/rankin ... anking.pdf)

And he did win the two indoor titles (1950, 1951) over 1000y
http://www.usatf.org/statistics/champio ... /m800m.asp

[louise tricard]

roscoe was a member of the ny pioneer club - with joe yancy as his coach.....

used to train with them in ny indoors at an armory (142nd) and outdoors at macombs dam park opposite yankee stadium.....

[dj]

There are problems with all the bios on Browne. He was on the Lincoln University track team as a freshman in the spring of 1940, so it's highly unlikely he was only 81 years old when he passed away.

He was on the Lincoln team in 1940, '41 and '42, and returned in 1946 for his final year. I've not found confirmation, but one presumes he was in the service the intervening years.

I'm still looking for confirmation of where he attended high school (Ed Grant, are you out there?), probably in South Jersey. He doesn't appear on the Woodbury HS team list for Penn Relays in '38 or '39. (He was born in Woodbury, which is why I started there.)

[Hedgehog]

Hello Gentlemen. This is from Dr. Z's pro football column over at SI.com

From Jonathan of Queens, N.Y. -- "Any thoughts about the death of Roscoe Lee Browne?" Lots of them, primarily of regret. A few years ago I was going to call him to do a memory lane column. I guess most of you know him from his acting. He won an Emmy and an Obie, plus lots of acclaim for his film roles, usually portraying highly sophisticated characters, often of a sinister bent. But I was going to do a piece about his days as just plain Roscoe Browne, second leg on the great indoor mile relay teams of Joe Yancey's NY Pioneer Club. And I never got around to it, for some reason.

I was a devotee of the indoor track circuit in Madison Square Garden during my high school and college years. Later I covered it, but it never was as good as it was in the old days (you might have heard that phrase before). The bang bang bang of the spiked shoes on the wooden floor as they hit the last turn of the 600, the squeak of the boards, the live military band that would accompany each feature race with a rousing march, the music rocking the walls of the old Garden. Many runners told me that was why they loved running in the Garden so much, the way the band got them jacked up. There was nothing like it.
Indoor running, especially on a cramped, 11-lap to the mile track such as the Garden's, was special. You had to be kind of a roughneck. Experienced runners seldom tried to pass on a turn. There were guys such as Pitt's Mel Barnwell, who was wide and muscular, a perfect indoor runner, who never would let anybody by him on a turn. And the Pioneers were terrific in the Garden.

Forgive my memory. I seem to remember Browne taking the stick from George Rhoden and passing off to Mal Whitfield, who gave it to Herb McKenley for the anchor leg. Browne was the only non-Olympic gold medalist on that great team, but he was a sturdy runner who seldom gave up his position. Are there any old time track fans out there who remember the exact lineup? Did he ever run for the Grand Street Boys as well? Was Reggie Pearman of NYU ever on the relay team with him? Help me out. This was 50 years ago, or more. Memory dims. That's what I wanted to talk to him about, but I blew it, and now he's gone. It's sad.

[tandfman]

Hello Gentlemen. This is from Dr. Z's pro football column over at SI.com

Forgive my memory. I seem to remember Browne taking the stick from George Rhoden and passing off to Mal Whitfield, who gave it to Herb McKenley for the anchor leg. Browne was the only non-Olympic gold medalist on that great team, but he was a sturdy runner who seldom gave up his position. Are there any old time track fans out there who remember the exact lineup? Did he ever run for the Grand Street Boys as well? Was Reggie Pearman of NYU ever on the relay team with him? Help me out. This was 50 years ago, or more. Memory dims. That's what I wanted to talk to him about, but I blew it, and now he's gone. It's sad.

I grew up in the same era and I remember Roscoe Browne as a runner. But my memory of that relay team is a bit different from his. As I recall, it was a Grand Street Boys team, and Browne wasn't a part of it. It was Andy Stanfield who ran with Rhoden, McKenley, and Whitfield. I don't recall Browne's ever running for the GSB, just the NYPC.

By the way, in addition to being a fan, Dr. Z was, before he worked for SI and devoted his full time to football, the track writer for the New York Post. He was, needless to say, very good.

[dj]

Reggie Pearman ran for the New York Pioneers after his days at NYU, and he and Browne would have been teammates.

[KDFINE]

My 1962 edition of Wally Donovan's "All Time Indoor Track and Field Record Book" provides a list of the best mile relays. In 1954 the N.Y. Pioneer Club ran a 3:17.9 in Madison Square Garden from scratch in a handicap race. Their order was Carty, Bright, Browne and Pearman. it apparently took place in the NYAC Meet, as this order, time and date was listed as the meet record (page 28). Bring back the scratch relay races indoors! Browne's listed as having a best winning 600 time of 1:13.1 from 1948, and a best winning 1000 time of 2:11:0 from 1950 (Boston AA). From the 1962 AAU program I found out that his winning time in the 1951 1000 was 2:14:0. It only gives the winners from 1951 to 1961. The NYPC won the sprint medley relay in 1954, 1955 and 1957 and the mile relay in 1956. He ran for the NYPC in 1954 so he may have been a member of a relay or two. That's it for what I can provide. Browne was retire long before my time, so the only time I saw him run was in Hitchcock's movie "Topaz." One of the responders questioned his being listed as 81 when he died but I read where his age was reported as 84.

[Walt Murphy]

Can anyone figure out how to respond to Paul Zimmerman on the SI site?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/dr_z/04/13/mailbag/index.html

[tandfman]

From the 1962 AAU program I found out that his winning time in the 1951 1000 was 2:14:0. It only gives the winners from 1951 to 1961.

His winning time in 1950 was 2:15.6.

[KDFINE]

Oops. Thgrowing out the papers I realized that I misreported that I'd seen Browne was 84 years old. They repeated the age of 81. (Maybe I was confusing Browne with Vonnegut.)