Gordon Heath, who lived an expatriate life in Paris after winning critical praise on Broadway in 1945 for his performance in "Deep Are the Roots," died on Tuesday at the Clinique Edouard Rie in Paris. He was 72 years old.

He died after a long illness, said Alain Woisson, his longtime companion.

In "Deep Are the Roots," written by Arnaud d'Usseau and James Gow and directed by Elia Kazan, Mr. Heath played a young black lieutenant who returns from World War II to find little changed in the Deep South. He cannot marry the white girl (Barbara Bel Geddes) whom he loves.

"I guess you still couldn't do that in a place like Memphis," Mr. Heath said in a 1970 interview in New York. He was in town to play the title role in an adaptation of Sophocles' "Oedipus" at the Roundabout Theater, his first performance in New York in more than two decades.

Mr. Heath appeared in "Deep Are the Roots" for 14 months on Broadway and then for six months in the West End of London. In Paris, he discovered "a free air and a free people," congenial for blacks, and by 1948 he had made it his home.

The next year he and Lee Payant, whom he had met in the United States, opened a nightclub called L'Abbaye. They played guitar and sang American and French folk songs there for some 30 years, until Mr. Payant's death from cancer in 1976.

Mr. Heath also acted in Paris, in French and English, and in London, where he played Othello on stage in 1950 and later for BBC Television. For 10 years, starting in the 1960's, he directed an English-speaking production company, the Studio Theater of Paris.

Reviewing "Oedipus" in The New York Times in 1970, Clive Barnes wrote, "A man born to play the prince, Mr. Heath has an instinctive nobility and moves and talks with all the natural authority of a classic hero." The actor returned to the Roundabout in 1977 to play Hamm in Beckett's "Endgame."

An autobiography, "Deep Are the Roots: Memoirs of a Black Expatriate," is to be published by the University of Massachusetts Press next spring.

There are no immediate survivors.

If you grew up in Britain in the 1960s or 1970s then you probably remember the 13-part series Robinson Crusoe on BBC Television. This French production was shown many times between 1965 and the early 1980s, often during school holidays.

Featuring handsome Robert Hoffman, people remember the programme for the music, which was composed by Robert Mellin and Gian-Pero Reverberi, and for the distinctive dubbed English language narration. However most would be hard-pressed to name the actor who spoke those words and even fewer know of the love story behind the screen credit.

By the mid-1980s, political correctness was taking hold at the BBC and some people were unhappy about the portrayal of Man Friday in the series. Some of this criticism was justified. Friday is portrayed as a cannibal and in one ‘humorous’ scene he encounters a talking parrot for the first time.

Years later, this scene would be satirised in an advertisement in which Friday gains the upper hand and cooks the bird.

Also the series had been made in black and white.

Apparently someone at the BBC decided that Robinson Crusoe wouldn’t be shown again and, with a complete disregard for what this series meant to a whole generation of people, the reels of 35mm film were destroyed. Exactly when this happened is unclear. But a large amount of archive childrens’ TV — including Play School, Rentaghost and Vision On — was disposed of around 1993.

Soon after, it emerged that the French company that had made the series had long since gone out of business and, for a while, it looked as if the BBC had disposed of the only surviving English-language copy. Fortunately, later, 16mm prints were discovered in a French film archive and these inferior quality copies are what we are left with today.

In an ironic twist, the BBC had come close to destroying some of the best work by a man who represented the complete opposite of racism and intolerance.

THE NARRATOR OF ROBINSON CRUSOE

Robinson Crusoe was made in 1964 and the english language narration was recorded by a white American called Lee Payant.

In the early 1940s Payant was a struggling actor in New York. There he met a fellow actor — an African American man called Gordon Heath.

Heath was not a man to hide his attraction to other men. In fact he was ‘overtly homosexual’ according to those who knew him.

In his autobiography ‘Deep Are the Roots: Memoirs of a Black Expatriate’, large parts of which you can read at Google Books, he describes how he wooed the target of his affections with poetry and coffee.

Eventually Payant stopped playing hard to get and they ended up being a couple for 30 years. Heath always called him by his full christian name: Leroy.

By all accounts, Gordon Heath was by far the more successful of the two. He was New York’s first African American radio announcer and played many roles on radio, often white characters, with audiences none the wiser.

In 1945 and 1946 he appeared in one of the top ten Broadway plays of the season: ‘Deep Are the Roots’, directed by Elia Kazan, and also starring Barbara Bel Geddes (who later played Miss Ellie in ‘Dallas’).

Audiences were shocked to see a black man on stage with a white woman. At this time, in some US states it was illegal for a married heterosexual couple to share a bed if they were of different races. Even in New York theatre land the oppression must have felt absolutely stifling for Payant and Heath who were of different races and in a same-sex relationship.

PARIS

After a fourteen-month run on Broadway, the production moved to London’s West End, where it again received critical acclaim. After this, Heath and Payant decided they wouldn’t return to the United States and settled in Paris instead.

There, the two of them became co-owners of a club called L’Abbaye and, for nearly three decades, they entertained audiences by playing guitar and singing duets of folk songs. They released a series of records.

Abbaye Anniversary Album - Gordon Heath and Lee Payant

Abbaye Anniversary Album - Gordon Heath and Lee Payant

An Evening At the Abbaye - Gordon Heath and Lee Payant

Radio Times front cover showing Gordon Heath in a BBC production of OthelloBRITISH TV & FILM

Gordon Heath performed in the theatre in Britain and appeared in plays and other programmes on BBC Television and Radio.

‘Deep Are the Roots’ and ‘The Emperor Jones’ were both first performed on radio and then as plays on television a year or two later. On 15 December 1955 Gordon Heath reprised his stage role as ‘Othello’ in a BBC Television production that was directed by Tony Richardson and he featured on the front cover of Radio Times magazine.

Gordon Heath in the film Sapphire

Gordon Heath in the 1959 film “Sapphire”.

A rare film appearances was as a ‘dandy’ in ‘Sapphire’ — a 1959 crime drama based around racial tensions in London’s Notting Hill. He also narrated the British animated film ‘Animal Farm’ (1954). Lee Payant provided character voices in ‘Asterix et Cleopatre’ (1968) and the two of them dubbed many films together.

Leading roles in films didn’t materialise for Heath and it’s easy to guess at two of the reasons why. However when, finally, I managed to see “Sapphire” I was surprised by how theatrical his performance seemed. Perhaps not ideal for the medium of film? To the modern eye the latter part of his appearance is spoilt by some rather poor back projection too.

LOCKED AWAY

Recordings of some of the TV plays may not exist — either because they were broadcast live or the tapes were later wiped or junked by the TV companies. But many of these 1950s productions remain locked away in the archives.

Isn’t it ironic that we are denied the chance to see the work of black actors who took the only roles that were open to them 50 years ago: often exploring themes such as racial hated and mixed marriages, in productions that were filled with uncomfortable attitudes, the kind of words that squeamish television executives don’t want to screen now and yes sometimes an approach that is flawed from a modern perspective.

Discriminated against during their careers and now denied a screening. Consequently we are unable to watch most of Gordon Heath’s performances. But here he is in a tiny role as a postman in the 1969 film ‘Staircase’.

Even this gay-themed film is never seen on British television nowadays. Probably because having straight actors playing campy characters in an argumentative gay relationship, one of them awaiting a summons from the magistrates court for “cottaging”, doesn’t fit the modern agenda. The last broadcast on terrestrial TV seems to have been on Channel 4 in 1992. Nor is the film available on DVD.

It’s tempting to think that Gordon Heath might have taken this role because of the groundbreaking (for the time) gay storyline of the film. But it turns out that it was shot in Paris because Richard Burton and Rex Harrison didn’t want to fall foul of Britain’s punitive tax regime at the time.

Heath was a local in Paris and no doubt knew the Caribbean accent only too well, as his father was from Barbados.

Gordon Heath's autobiography

Gordon Heath’s autobiography. Photo of Paris courtesy of Richard Ley.

ALONE

In December 1976 Lee Payant died from cancer. He was only 52 years old. Anguished, Gordon Heath couldn’t face being in Paris alone and moved to the United States, where he spent five years acting and directing. But eventually he returned to France and met a new partner there.

Gordon Heath, from the back of his autobiography

Sadly, as with so many gay histories of the late twentieth century, you can guess the ending to this story. In 1991 Gordon Heath died in Paris due to an AIDS-related illness. He was aged 72. Some newspaper obituaries, such as the one published by the Chicago Tribune, mentioned Lee Payant but not that they were gay and partners.

But once you know this story and listen again to Lee Payant’s moving and passionate narration as Robinson Crusoe, you can’t help but smile. Above all you wonder what might have been going through his mind as he recorded it, considering his own relationship.

‘It’s been months now since I was shipwrecked on a desert island where I took refuge, the only survivor of the wreck. I’ve been able to live since then by struggling for my life each day, in a solitude that’s not without its advantages. There is no war, no epidemics and no talkative women.’

To finish here’s the ad spoof from 2004 which is for Nestle Rolos. The end slogan is “do you love anyone enough [to give them your last Rolo?”

LINKS

About the Robinson Crusoe TV series

Bio of Gordon Heath

UPDATES

1 July 2017 – photo from “Sapphire” added and more information about that and Heath’s BBC Radio and TV work.

20 February 2019 – a collection of letters, articles, photographs and cuttings about Heath and Payant at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a list of his papers held.

And an article about Gordon Heath’s appearance in the BBC’s Othello.

A multi-talented performer, the African American expatriate Gordon Heath was variously a stage and film actor, musician, director, producer, founder of the Studio Theater of Paris, and co-owner of the Parisian nightclub L’Abbaye. Born in New York City, Heath became involved in acting as a teenager and enjoyed a career that spanned post-World War II Broadway to the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s. In addition to his many roles on film and stage, he and his partner Lee Payant enjoyed success as recording artists in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Heath collection includes personal and professional correspondence, scrapbooks containing photos and clippings from assorted television and film productions in addition to songs, poetry, and reviews of plays or playbills from productions he attended. The Papers also contain art work, sheet music, personal and production photographs, and drafts of his memoirs.

Background on Gordon Heath

A multi-talented performer, Seifield Gordon Heath was born in the San Juan Hill district of Manhattan on September 20, 1918.1 Heath and his half-sister Bernice were raised in a family of relatively recent immigrants: his mother, Harriette (Hattie), was a second generation American of African and Indian descent while his father Cyril Gordon Heath came originally from Barbados. As a steward for the Hudson River Night Line, Cyril had steady employment and in his later years, he was a devoted public servant, active in the local YMCA, neighborhood associations, and church-sponsored groups.

While studying at the Ethical Culture Society School in Manhattan and later at the Hampton Institute, Heath was drawn to the theater. As a child, he sang in St. Cyprian’s Church choir and learned to play the violin and the viola with some skill, but the acclaim for his music was soon overshadowed by the attention he received on the stage. Winning a state-wide drama competition while still in high school, Heath began to get serious about acting, perhaps in reaction to his father’s aspirations for music. In 1938, Gordon began to write and perform sketches for radio station WNYC and about the same time, he began training with a group of African American actors under the guidance of Marian Wallace. While in college at Hampton, he acted in several plays under the direction of his childhood friend Owen Dodson.

Heath landed his first Broadway role in 1943, playing the second lead in Lee Strasberg’s South Pacific. Two years later, while working as a radio announcer, he was chosen for the lead in Elia Kazan’s Deep Are the Roots, a provocative Broadway “race play.” Playing the role of Brett Charles, an African American war hero who returns home to find that the “fight for democracy” in Europe had done little to change race relations in the Jim Crow South, Heath enjoyed a fourteen-month run in New York followed by five-months in London in 1947. In between, Heath made his directorial debut in the off-Broadway Family Portrait, in which he also played the lead. Widely acclaimed for his performances, Heath was soon lauded as “the next Paul Robeson.”

Despite the success of Deep Are the Roots, Heath found that he and Brett Charles mirrored one another when it came to American race relations. After returning to the States from his time in London, Heath discovered the cold reality that racism limited his access to the types of roles he desired, and his nascent affection for Europe began to grow accordingly. Having met the man who would become his partner, an actor from Seattle named Leroy Payant, Heath left the U.S. in 1948 to try his luck in Britain. There, too, he was regularly passed over for coveted roles in favor of British actors, later remarking that in London, “each time, for each part… was a hustle.”2

In search of “continuity in the theater,” Heath relocated to the more congenial confines of Paris, where he and Payant established a nightclub called L’Abbaye. There, the two performed folksongs, spirituals, and the blues in an intimate setting, and soon discovered that their original aim of providing a living between acting gigs was selling themselves short. L’Abbaye quickly caught on in Paris, appealing especially to the community of expatriates and artists, and it remained a popular for 27 years.

From his base in Paris, Heath and Payant translated the popularity they enjoyed at L’Abbaye into at least three record albums and several tours through Europe and the Middle East. His efforts to build his career as an actor, however, proved somewhat less successful. He appeared fairly often on radio and television in Europe and took roles — mostly supporting roles — in films including Sapphire (1959), the Nun’s Story (1959), and The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969) while doing narration for the animated Animal Farm (1954) and other productions. On stage, whether in England, France, or the United States, Heath continued to find it difficult to achieve the artistic freedom and types of roles that he desired. As Helen Gary Bishop explained:

The French were only casting him black roles and, in their nationalistic zeal, would not give an American, however talented, a directing job – certainly not in any subsidized theater. There were even quotas on the number of American and English plays, which could be done in the commercial theater. And in England it appeared that he was being typecast as a West Indian.3

In the 1960s, Heath attempted to circumvent the racism he faced by founding the Studio Theater of Paris (STP), an English-speaking theatrical workshop and troupe comprised largely of expatriates from England and the U.S. During its ten years of operation, Heath’s led the STP performers in such plays as the Glass Menagerie, After the Fall, The Skin of Our Teeth, In White America, The Slave and the Toilet, and Kennedy’s Children. Heath served not only as director, but as an all-purpose impresario, creating the playbills and posters, working publicity, and booking venues for the performances through the American Church of Paris and other locations. STP also served as a forum for lectures from visiting professors and critics, and for round table discussions, and they sponsored Martin Luther King, who preached at the American Church during one of his visits. Although never defined solely by their racially- and politically-conscious productions, nor by the charge that they performed “art for politics sake,” the STP lost much of its vigor after the progressive leader of the American Church was replaced by a more moderate successor.

In the 1970s, Heath began performing more frequently in the United States. He returned home for five months in 1970 to play the lead in Oedipus at the Roundabout Theater, and later that year he and Payant performed Dr. Faustus in Washington D.C. The changes affecting the American theater, and Black theater in particular, left him with mixed emotions. “Black theater was a reality,” he noted, “off and off-off Broadway were healthy, and government subsidies and funding seemed abundant.”4 At the same time, he feared that the younger generation of Black actors were rejecting their social past, the political past, and the theatrical past. Still, the turbulence of the time and the positive changes affected him deeply: “The fact of Negroes playing with public approbation, a general public…,” he wrote, “playing these parts we never thought we’d get a crack at (such as Lear) is so exciting I can’t tell you.”5

Although a generation older than most of the artists associated with the Black Arts Movement, Heath developed a working relationship with artists such as the director Woodie King and writer A.B. Spellman. After Payant’s death in 1976 and the subsequent shuttering of L’Abbaye, Heath appeared more regularly in the U.S., and even temporarily settled in New York, leavening his acting with politics by organizing a community group and a leading rent strike to improve conditions in the building in which he had grown up. Although he returned to Paris to live, he continued to perform on both sides of the Atlantic for the rest of his career. His final performance, a production of Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel done in conjunction with the choreographer Pearl Primus, with whom Heath had worked forty years earlier, was staged at the University of Massachusetts in 1987.

The memoir that Heath was writing at the time of his death on August 31, 1991, was published by the UMass Press in 1992 as Deep Are The Roots: Memoirs of a Black Expatriate.

Footnotes

As Heath reports in his memoirs, his “father and his genteel cohorts” had had the district renamed “Columbus Hill” during Gordon’s youth. Gordon Heath, Deep Are the Roots: the Memoirs of a Black Expatriate (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992) p.11.

Encore American & Worldwide News, April 5, 1976.

Helen Gary Bishop, “Gordon Heath – American Actor Between Two Continents,” The Soho Weekly News, April 21, 1977.

Ibid.

“The Two Worlds of Gordon Heath,” Encore American & Worldwide News, April 5, 1976.

Chronology of Gordon Heath’s Life

1918 Birth, September 20, 1918; Columbus Hill, New York City

1936-1940 Worked for the National Youth Administration’s (NYA) Brooklyn branch

1938-1946 Script writer and performer on radio stations (WNYC & WMCA) in New York

1943 First Broadway performance; South Pacific, directed by Lee Strasberg

1945-1947

Became New York’s first African American radio announcer (WMCA)

Starred in Elia Kazan’s controversial wartime Broadway hit, Deep Are the Roots

1947

Directed first professional play; Family Portrait

Starred in five month London run of Deep Are the Roots, directed by Daphne Rye

1948 Moved to Paris to escape the limitations and typecasting faced by Black actors in the U.S.

1949-1976 Opened l’Abbaye, a nightclub in Paris’s Left Bank where he and life partner and business associate Leroy Payant performed spirituals, the blues, and folk songs for their loyal following for more than twenty-five years. Heath closed l’Abbaye following Payant’s death from cancer in 1976

1957-1958 Co-starred in movie, A Nun’s Story, with Audrey Hepburn

1965-1979 Founded/directed the Studio Theater of Paris (STP)

1987 Final performance; The Lion and the Jewel, directed by Richard Trousdell, Amherst, Ma.

1991 Death, October 31, 1991; Paris, France

1992 Publication of Deep Are the Roots: Memoirs of a Black Expatriate

Born in New York, USA in 1918, Gordon Heath came to London in 1947 to star in a West End production of Deep are the Roots, a role which he had performed to great success on New York's Broadway, directed by Elia Kazan. When the play was adapted for television in 1950, Heath again played the lead role. In 1950, he played Othello in a touring Kenneth Tynan production and in 1955 played the character again in Tony Richardson's BBC television version.

Despite extraordinary good looks and glowing reviews for his stage work, Heath played only a few roles on television and film: for example a dandy in Sapphire (d. Basil Dearden, 1959), a coroner in Passionate Summer (d. Rudolph Cartier, 1958) and a folk singer in The Mad Woman of Chaillot (d. Bryan Forbes, 1969). Racism was a factor but so was his overt homosexuality, in an age when this was taboo.

Heath settled in Paris in 1948 where he and his partner Lee Payant, also an American actor, owned the Left-Bank nightclub, L'Abbaye (The Abbey). It was here that Heath achieved his greatest recognition as an entertainer and folk singer. For nearly 30 years he and Pavant performed American and French folk songs and recorded several albums.

In December 1976 Payant died of cancer aged 52. Devastated by his loss, Heath returned to the United States. However, five years later he returned to Europe. Heath died in Paris on 28 August 1991 of an AIDS-related illness.

Gordon Heath (September 20, 1918 – August 27, 1991) was an American actor and musician who narrated the animated feature film Animal Farm (1954) and appeared in the title role of The Emperor Jones (1953) and Othello (1955), both live BBC telecasts, respectively directed by Alvin Rakoff and Tony Richardson.

Contents

1 Biography

2 Filmography

3 Select discography

4 References

5 Bibliography

6 External links

Biography

Heath was born in New York City, his parents' only child. His father Cyril Gordon Heath had emigrated from Barbados to the US, where he met and married Hattie Hooper.[1] Gordon Heath showed an early talent for both music and art, but opted to pursue an acting career, working on stage and radio.[1] Joining the New York radio station WMCA in 1945 he became the first black staff announcer employed by a major US radio station.[1] In 1945 he appeared on Broadway to great success in the play Deep Are the Roots, written by Arnaud d'Usseau and James Gow, directed by Elia Kazan, and starring Barbara Bel Geddes. The play ran for 447 performances, and when it was subsequently produced in London's West End, Heath reprised his co-starring role in it.[1] After the six-month London run, Heath decided to settle in Paris, France, in 1948.[2]

He also acted in Paris, and in 1950 in London he played Othello on stage and later for BBC Television. He directed an English-speaking production company, the Studio Theater of Paris, for 10 years, from the 1960s.[2]

He and his music and life partner Lee Payant operated a Left Bank café in Paris called L'Abbaye, whose clientele included the actress Rita Hayworth and other celebrities of the era, and Heath and Payant were the entertainers.[3] Many of the duo's folk albums were recorded there, from the 1950s,[3] and released on various international labels, including Elektra Records. Payant died on December 14, 1976.

Heath died in Paris after a lengthy illness on August 27, 1991.[2]

Filmography

Year Title Role Notes

1953 The Emperor Jones Emperor Brutus Jones TV movie

1950-1954 BBC Sunday-Night Theatre Rev. Ezekiel Selby / Stanley Atlas / Brett Charles 3 episodes

1954 Animal Farm Narrator Voice

1955 Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion Charlie Episode: "The Prayer Rug"

1955 Mr. Arkadin Pianist Uncredited

1955 Heroes and Sinners Sidney

1955 Othello Othello TV movie

1956 Le secret de soeur Angèle Le trompettiste

1956 Man of Africa Narrator Voice

1958 Storm Over Jamaica Coroner

1959 Sapphire Paul Slade

1961 My Baby is Black! Daniel

1962 My Uncle from Texas

1966 Lost Command Dia

1969 Staircase Postman

1969 The Madwoman of Chaillot The Folksinger

1970 Aladin et la lampe merveilleuse English version, Voice

1972 La nuit Bulgare

1972 L'aventure, c'est l'aventure Le général africain

1983 L'africain Le ministre

1985 Asterix Versus Caesar Caesar English version, Voice

1986 Asterix in Britain

1989 Samuel Fuller's Street of No Return Black Bum (final film role)

Select discography

Gordon Heath and Lee Payant Sing Songs of the Abbaye ‒ Elektra (1954)

Chants Tradionnels des Etats-Unis – Editions de la Boite à Musique LD 313 (1955)

Gordon Heath and Lee Payant Sing Encores from the Abbaye ‒ Elektra (1955)

Folksongs and Footnotes – Abbaye Record 1 (1956)

An Evening at L'Abbaye – Elektra (1957)

Abbaye Anniversary Album – Abbaye Record 2 (1959)

Gordon Heath Sings Spirituals – Abbaye Record 3 (1961)

Born in New York, he first came to prominence with his critically acclaimed appearance in the Bradway play Deep Are the Roots (1945). In 1947 Heath went to London's West End with the production and received more critical acclaim. Deciding to stay in Europe, Heath enjoyed popularity in Britain and France.

Payant & Heath

From the late 1940s, Heath lived in Paris with his lover, Lee Payant. For many years the two men ran a popular Left Bank café called "L'Abbaye". One of their friends, Leslie Schenk, remembers:

In 1949 Gordon's partner Lee Payant joined him in Paris. They'd been having a relationship in America for seven years. Lee was a wonderful guy. A sweetheart. He gave up his life for Gordon. They had a great deal of love for each other and they both liked Paris. It was such an exciting place in those days and, when it came to race and your private life, you were left completely alone. So Gordon taught Lee a few chords and songs, and they stayed in Paris, singing duets in L'Abbaye, a "club" they eventually took over. It became an institution.

...

As for his acting career, here were very few roles worthy of his attention and that is why he eventually became a theatre director in Paris, doing American plays by people like Arthur Miller.

...

Gordon and Payant were together for a very long time, over twenty years. But when Lee died in 1976, it was a terrible blow for Gordon. In fact he decided he couldn't continue with L'Abbaye.

African-American actor, director, and folk-singer Gordon Heath became a fixture on the Parisian cabaret

scene from 1949 until 1976. After an early success on Broadway in the play Deep Are the Roots (1945), he

went to Europe, where he spent most of the rest of his life. He settled in Paris, where he and his partner

Lee Payant owned and entertained at a Left Bank nightclub. Heath performed in theater, film, television,

and radio productions and also recorded several albums of folk music.

Heath's father, Cyril Gordon Heath, emigrated from Barbados to the United States. He settled in New York

City, where he married Hattie Hooper. Gordon Heath, born September 20, 1918, was the couple's only child.

Heath's musical education began at age eight, when an aunt gave him violin lessons. He studied other

instruments as well, but was most drawn to the guitar, finding it "friendly and sympathetic . . . to the

touch."

As a youngster Heath also showed a talent for drawing, winning prizes for both art and music in high school.

He began performing in amateur theater groups and took first prize in a municipal drama competition.

Heath earned scholarships to two music schools and briefly attended the Dalcroze Institute but decided to

pursue an acting career instead. He worked on stage and in radio. When he joined radio station WMCA (New

York) in 1945, he became the first black staff announcer at a major radio station in America.

In 1945 Heath scored a major success on Broadway in the play Deep Are the Roots by Arnaud d'Assue and

James Gow. Heath starred as a military hero facing racism when he returns to the deep South after World

War II and falls in love with one of the daughters in a wealthy family for whom his mother works as a

housekeeper. Heath's electrifying performance won praise from the critics.

When the play closed on Broadway after a fourteen-month run, Heath went to London and reprised his role

in a West-End production, again receiving critical acclaim.

When the run there ended, Heath decided not to return to America. In 1948 he settled in Paris, which he

considered more hospitable to blacks and more accepting of his relationship with his white lover, Lee

Payant, a fellow actor whom he had met in New York in the early 1940s. Like many other American

expatriates fleeing racism and homophobia, Heath found a haven in cosmopolitan Paris.

In 1949 Heath and Payant became co-owners of a Paris club called L'Abbaye, so named because it was

behind the abbey church of St Germain des Prés. For nearly thirty years the two entertained appreciative

audiences, playing guitar and singing duets of American and French folk songs.

In 1957 Elektra Records released an album of their duets, An Evening at L'Abbaye, comprising seventeen

songs, five of them in French. Heath and Payant also recorded an album entitled French Canadian Folk

Songs in 1954, and the same year Heath had a self-titled solo album.

Even after acquiring L'Abbaye, Heath continued to act. He toured in Britain in 1950 as the title character in

Shakespeare's Othello, a role that he repeated in Tony Richardson's 1955 version of the play on BBC.

Heath appeared in other British television productions, again playing the lead in Deep Are the Roots in

1950. He starred in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones in 1953, and appeared in a television adaptation of

Alan Paton's novel Cry, the Beloved Country in 1958.

Despite the positive reception of his performances on stage and television, Heath did not receive offers for

major parts in movies. He narrated John Halas and Joy Batchelor's animated film of George Orwell's Animal

Farm in 1956, and contributed supporting roles in a number of movies, including Les héros sont fatigués

(1955, directed by Yves Ciampi), The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969, directed by Bryan Forbes), and

L'Africain (1983, directed by Philippe de Broca). He and Payant also dubbed many films.

In the 1960s Heath turned his talents to directing, working for a decade with the Studio Theater of Paris, an

English-language company that staged plays by Thornton Wilder, Arthur Miller, and Bertolt Brecht, among

others. Payant acted in many of the plays.

In December 1976 Payant died of cancer at age fifty-two. Devastated by his loss, Heath could not bear

continuing to work at L'Abbaye alone. He returned to the United States, where he spent five years doing

some acting and directing.

Eventually, however, he decided to go back to France, and there he found a new partner, Alain Woisson.

Heath died in Paris on August 28, 1991, of an AIDS-related illness