Hari Rhodes - Acting, and Racism's Effect On His Writing

Acting, and Racism's Effect On His Writing

Rhodes first television role was in a 1957 episode of Zane Grey Theater that starred Sammy Davis Jr. The role came just one year after Rhodes had received a rude lesson in racial prejudice.

"I read about a training program a major studio had for grooming people for 'stardom.' Being naive about the system, I got on the phone and called the man in charge and asked if he would interview me, and he told me to come around to the studio," Rhodes told TV Guide in 1968. "I said, 'By the way, I think I should tell you that I am a Negro.' He said, 'Don't waste your time — we don't take Negroes in this program.' I hung up the phone. Almost tore the cradle off the thing."

Rhodes channeled his anger into a novel, A Chosen Few, which was published in a paperback edition. A Chosen Few was described as "an explosive personal portrait of what (Rhodes) saw and lived through in the heart of the South in the last all-Negro Marine boot camp." The novel's uneducated hero remarks, "Bitterness … is a consuming, cancerous quality out of which comes nothing but self-destruction, while out of an anger can come many constructive things, if nothing more than the drive to get something done."

Rhodes later penned two unpublished novels: Harambee, about a man with a plan to liquidate the world's entire Caucasian population, and Land of Odds, about Hollywood.

Rhodes told TV Guide that writing served as his safety valve. "I'd rather be writing my own than reading somebody else's. I have no need for it." Rhodes said.