Before They Were Stars: Bob Hoskins in “If There Weren’t Any Blacks, You’d Have to Invent Them”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C0k3Fncf8o

As you’ve no doubt heard, the legendary Bob Hoskins recently succumbed to pneumonia at the age of 71. During the 1970s, Hoskins worked very steadily as a character actor on stage and screen until a fantastic lead performance in the underrated The Long Good Friday put him on the map for good. Before that, Hoskins had a wide variety of credits on his resume, including a production called If There Weren’t Any Blacks, You’d Have to Invent Them. Yes, that is a real title and it’s very amusing to visualize Bob Hoskins saying that phrase in his thick Cockney accent. If There Weren’t Any Blacks, You’d Have to Invent Them is a British stage play about a blind man who mistakenly believes that a white man is black and uses this plot as a springboard to examine issues of race. In 1974, ITV did a television adaptation of the play and Hoskins played a character who functioned as the story’s narrator. R.I.P.

This entry was posted in Before They Were Stars, TV. Bookmark the permalink.