resting_place death_date death_place birth_place imagesize name birth_date yearsactive image article_title birth_name occupation
cremation 3 september 2002 dayton , ohio , u.s. zanesville , ohio , u.s. 110px ted ross 30 june 1934 1968 -- 1991 tedross.gif ted ross
 theodore ross roberts actor
ted ross

ross was born in zanesville , ohio , but his mother , elizabeth russell , a nightclub singer in the 1920s and 1930s , moved the family to dayton when young ross was seven .
he loved the clubs on west fifth street -- dayton 's answer to harlem in the first half of the 20th century .
while in junior high , ross , who was big for his age , would dress up and strut into the owl club and the palace theater 's midnight rambles to see great acts such as duke ellington .
his nightclub exploits as a teenager were not very popular at home .
he dropped out of roosevelt high in 1950 and enlisted in the united states air force .
two years later at age eighteen , ross entered an amateur night contest at the top hat bar on germantown street .
home on furlough , he sang a cover of judy garland 's `` over the rainbow '' , won $ 5 that night and found his calling .
after leaving the military , ross worked his way from great falls , montana , to a strip bar in los angeles as a singer and mc .
there he landed his first stage role in oscar brown jr. 's `` bigtime buck white '' .
the musical began as a workshop in watts and moved to new york city in 1968 .
he starred in `` the wiz '' and other broadway productions , such as `` purlie '' , `` ai n't misbehavin '' , and `` raisin in the sun '' .
his first film was `` the bingo long traveling all-stars & motor kings '' , a baseball movie starring james earl jones and richard pryor .
films that followed included `` ragtime '' , '' '' , `` police academy '' , `` stealing home '' , and `` the fisher king '' .
one of the roles he is most fondly remembered for is that of bitterman , arthur bach 's long suffering chauffeur in the 1981 dudley moore hit , `` arthur '' .
in 1990 , ross played troy maxson in a cincinnati production of august wilson 's `` fences '' .
it was the first time his family saw him perform on stage since the contest in 1952 .
ross won the 1975 tony award for best supporting actor in a musical for his portrayal of the cowardly lion in `` the wiz '' .
he reprised the role in the 1978 film .
he came home for good in 1997 and opened your place , a jazz club on west third street .
occasionally , ross sat in and sang in his club , and performed as part of the dayton art institutes 's just jazz series .
he was honored by dayton 's wayman chapel ame church , the miami valley fisk university alumni club and by wrou-fm as a black history month achiever .
he suffered a stroke in 1998 , and died from complications four years later at good samaritan hospital .
