Later Career
After Blazing Saddles, Little appeared in many less successful films, such as Greased Lightning, FM, High Risk, Scavenger Hunt, Jimmy the Kid, Surf II and Toy Soldiers. Little also made guest appearances on The Mod Squad, The Waltons, The Rookies, Police Story,The Rockford Files, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, ABC Afterschool Specials, The Fall Guy and ALF.
In 1989, he appeared in the Dear John episode "Dear John", for which he won the Outstanding Guest Actor Emmy, defeating Robert Picardo, Jack Gilford, Leslie Nielsen and Sammy Davis, Jr.
Little had a part in Fletch Lives, the sequel to 1985's Fletch. He co-starred opposite Lauren Hutton and Jim Carrey in the 1985 horror comedy Once Bitten.
Little was slated to star in the TV series Mr. Dugan, where he was to play a black Congressman, but that series was poorly received by real black Congressmen and was canceled before making it to air. He replaced Frankie Faison as Ronald Freeman, a black dentist married to Ellen Freeman, a white housewife, on the short-lived FOX sitcom True Colors.
In 1988, Little returned to Broadway to appear as Midge in Herb Gardner's Tony Award-winning play I'm Not Rappaport, reuniting with Dear John star Judd Hirsch in New York and later on tour. The Broadway cast also featured Jace Alexander and Mercedes Ruehl.
In 1991, Little was cast as a civil rights lawyer in the TV docudrama, Separate But Equal, starring Sidney Poitier, who portrayed the first black U. S. Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, NAACP lead attorney in the 1954 Supreme Court case desegregating public schools. He also appeared in the TV series MacGyver as Frank Colton, half of a bounty hunter brother duo.
Read more about this topic: Cleavon Little
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