# Calvin Lockhart

Calvin Lockhart (born Bert McClossy Cooper; October 18, 1934 – March 29, 2007) was a Bahamian–American stage and film actor. Lockhart was perhaps best known for his roles as Reverend Deke O'Malley in the 1970 film Cotton Comes to Harlem and Biggie Smalls in the 1975 Warner Bros. film Let's Do It Again.

## Early life

Lockhart was born Bert McClossy Cooper, the youngest of eight children in Nassau, Bahamas. Lockhart's father was Eric Cooper (1912/1913–1976), a Bahamian tailor. Lockhart moved to New York City, New York, when he was 18. He spent one year at the Cooper Union School of Engineering, then left to pursue an acting career. He drove a taxi and operated a carpentry business in the borough of Queens while trying to establish a career as an actor.

## Career

In 1960, Lockhart made his Broadway debut, playing a gang leader in The Cool World (a dramatization of Warren Miller's novel of the same name), which closed after just two performances. Lockhart then traveled to Italy and formed his own theater company in which he both acted and directed, before moving to West Germany and then England, where he landed various roles on British television and small roles in films such as 1968's A Dandy in Aspic and Salt and Pepper.
Lockhart's first notable screen role was in Joanna, a 1968 film about an interracial romance, set in London. Joanna was directed by Michael Sarne, who subsequently cast Lockhart in the notorious Myra Breckinridge. Lockhart's first lead role in a film was in Halls of Anger (1970), playing a former basketball star who becomes vice-principal of an inner-city high school to which 60 white students are being moved. An article in The New York Times that year described Lockhart as having "matinee-idol looks" with "chiseled-out-of-marble features" and "skin the color of brown velvet". He also starred in Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970, based on the Chester Himes novel of the same name) as the Reverend Deke O'Malley. In 1974, Lockhart became an actor-in-residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. In the 1980s, he was a guest star for seven episodes in the prime-time soap opera Dynasty, playing Jonathan Lake. He is familiar to horror film fans after his performance as the millionaire big-game hunter in The Beast Must Die (1974).

## Later life

Lockhart headed a Los Angeles campaign called "Getting Off Drugs," an anti-drug effort to get teenagers off drugs in the late 1970s. Lockhart returned to the Bahamas in the late 1990s and worked as a director on several productions of the Freeport Players Guild. Lockhart's last film role was in Rain, a movie that was shot in the Bahamas and was released in 2007.

## Death

Lockhart died on March 29, 2007, in a Nassau hospital from stroke-related complications, at the age of 72.

## Personal life

Lockhart was married three times and had two sons. In 1972, he married Jamaican model Thelma Walters; they divorced in 1978. In August 1982, Lockhart married British businesswoman Lynn Sloan in the Bahamas; they later divorced. Calvin met his third wife Jennifer Miles in 1979 which led to the birth of actor Julien Lockhart Miles in 1981. The couple officially married 25 years later in 2006. Julien walking his mother down the aisle. In addition to Julien, Lockhart has another son named Leslie Lockhart.

## Pop culture

Lockhart character's name in the 1975 film Let's Do It Again, Biggie Smalls, was used by musical artist Christopher Wallace for his 1991 demo, and was still used by media and friends after a lawsuit forced Wallace to change it to The Notorious B.I.G.

## Filmography
### Film

| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 1961 | Venere creola | Melchiorre | |
| 1963 | Cleopatra | Minor Role (uncredited) | |
| 1967 | Drums Along the Avon | Bus Driver | |
| 1968 | Dark of the Sun | President Mwamini Ubi | Released in the UK as The Mercenaries |
| 1968 | A Dandy in Aspic | Brogue | |
| 1968 | Joanna | Gordon | |
| 1968 | Only When I Larf | Ali Lin | |
| 1968 | Salt and Pepper | Jones | |
| 1968 | Nobody Runs Forever | Jamaica | Also known as The High Commissioner |
| 1970 | Leo the Last | Roscoe, The Pimp | |
| 1970 | Halls of Anger | Quincy Davis | |
| 1970 | Cotton Comes to Harlem | Deke "Reverend" O'Malley | |
| 1970 | Myra Breckinridge | Irving Amadeus | |
| 1972 | Melinda | Frankie J. Parker | |
| 1973 | Le Grabuge | Pablo | Also known as Hung Up |
| 1973 | Contratto carnale | Ruma / Kofi | Also known as Only Love Defies |
| 1974 | Every Nigger is a Star | | Acted and directed |
| 1974 | The Beast Must Die | Tom Newcliffe | |
| 1974 | Uptown Saturday Night | Silky Slim | |
| 1974 | Honeybaby, Honeybaby | Liv | |
| 1975 | Let's Do It Again | "Biggie" Smalls | |
| 1975 | The Marijuana Affair | | |
| 1977 | The Baron | Jason | |
| 1980 | The Baltimore Bullet | Snow White | |
| 1988 | Coming to America | Colonel Izzi | |
| 1990 | Wild at Heart | Reggie | |
| 1990 | Predator 2 | Willie "King Willie" | |
| 1992 | Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me | The Electrician | |
| 2008 | Rain | Samuel | |
| 2014 | Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces | The Electrician | Final film role; scenes filmed in 1992 |

### Television

| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 1965 | Family Christmas | | |
| 1966 | The Corridor People | Theobald Aboo | Episode: "Victim as Black" |
| 1966 | Talking to a Stranger | Leonard Ngana | 2 episodes |
| 1966 | The Power Game | Kofe Lokwe | 2 episodes |
| 1965-1967 | Thirty-Minute Theatre | Mark | Episode: "Family Christmas" |
| 1965-1967 | Thirty-Minute Theatre | Leonard | Episode: "Magnolia Summer" |
| 1965-1967 | Thirty-Minute Theatre | Johnny | Episode: "Go Tell It on Table Mountain" |
| 1967 | Girl in a Black Bikini | Lee Anderson | 3 episodes |
| 1967 | Rainbow City | Youth Leader | Episode: "What Sort of a Boy?" |
| 1967 | Escape | Kingsley Cavanaugh | Episode: "Five Men for Freedom" |
| 1968 | The Wednesday Play | Bus Driver | Episode: "Drums Along the Avon" |
| 1968 | The Wednesday Play | Damon Page | Episode: "Light Blue" |
| 1969 | Mogul | Zeke Nkosi | Episode: "You Want a Clockwork Nightingale" |
| 1969 | Plays of Today | Akanu | Episode: "Beyond the Sunrise" |
| 1970 | Confession | Man | Episode: "Neighbours" |
| 1972 | Play for Today | Jonathan | Episode: "The Beautiful Caribbean" |
| 1972 | Softly Softly: Task Force | Jake Johnson | Episode: "Set Us Alight" |
| 1974 | Get Christie Love! | Emperor | Episode: "Emperor of Death Street" |
| 1978 | Good Times | Raymond, Florida Evans' Gambler Cousin | |
| 1978 | Starsky & Hutch | Allen "Angel" Walter | Episode: "Cover Girl" |
| 1979 | Good Times | Cousin Raymond Brown | Episode: "Cousin Raymond" |
| 1985-1986 | Dynasty | Jonathan Lake | 7 episodes |
| 1989 | 1st & Ten | Moses Jackson's Agent | Episode: "Final Bow" |