Black History #Blaxcellence✊🏾👑❤️🖤💚 @thedayafter2016 Robert Guillaume was born Robert Williams Nov 30, 1927, in St. Louis, MO. Abandoned by his alcoholic mother, he was raised by his grandmother. While in school he idolized Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes, and William Warfield. Expelled from school, Guillaume joined the Army in 1945. He eventually returned to high school, graduated, and then worked as a postal clerk and a streetcar driver while attending St. Louis Univ and Washington Univ, where he majored in music. In 1957, Guillaume won a 9 week classical music summer scholarship to Aspen, CO; there he met Russell and Rowena Jelliffe who invited him to join @karamuhouseinc House Theatre in Cleveland. He changed his name from Williams to Guillaume (French for Williams), received his first acting lessons, and befriended Ron O’Neal, who would later cast him in Superfly TNT in 1973. In 1959, Guillaume toured Europe with Quincy Jones, Clark Terry, and Harold Nicholas in the musical Free and Easy. He spent most of the 1960s and 1970s in musical theatre and drama. Guillaume made his first TV appearance on Diahann Carroll’s Julia; he achieved stardom when he won an Emmy Award playing the butler, Benson, on Soap in 1979. Guillaume reprised the role of Benson DuBois in his own sitcom, Benson, which ran from 1979 through 1986. Nominated 5 times for best actor in a comedy series, Guillaume won another Emmy in 1985, and appeared in The Robert Guillaume Show, the first comedy about an interracial family, in 1989. In 1994 he became the voice of Rafiki in Walt Disney’s The Lion King. Guillaume also produced The Kid with the 2000 I.Q in 1983. After suffering a stroke in his dressing room while working on the sitcom Sports Night, Guillaume made history by returning to the show; he went on to appear in more films. He died in 2017. #robertguillaume #actor #karamuhouse #rafiki #benson #soap #notsolongago #nsla https://www.instagram.com/p/CMHprZjDnwG/?igshid=1gk8jtypqa67n
