Some people blaze trails loudly; others, like Billy Dee Williams--dubbed the Black Clark Gable when he first made his name--do the job more quietly. His "method of activism," he writes in the bighearted but sobering What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life, is "taking in ideas and sharing them through my work."
Born in 1937, Williams grew up in a loving family in Harlem, where he was "relatively sheltered from the racism that would be hard to ignore later in life." While studying painting at the National Academy of Design, he tried acting on a whim. Following some success on the New York stage, Williams moved to Los Angeles, where he became Hollywood's first Black romantic leading man. His legacy was secured with his turn as Lando Calrissian in 1980's Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. The character addressed the franchise's blind spot: the previous Star Wars movie "teemed with every imaginable form of life except for one--Black people."
What Have We Here? is a priceless showbiz record. Williams reports avidly on his early years in the business: he took an acting workshop with a just-taking-off Sidney Poitier and befriended James Baldwin, who wanted Williams to play Malcolm X in the writer's unrealized screenplay. With his memoir, Williams may well achieve what he set out to do as an actor: share "a point of view that hopefully has helped people toward a more sympathetic understanding of who we are and what we share as human beings." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer