Who plays the lion in the wiz

NBC's live production of the Broadway classic The Wiz is really taking shape.

Comedian David Alan Grier is joining the cast of The Wiz Live!, and is set to take on the role of the Cowardly Lion who joins Dorothy on her trip drown the yellow brick road.

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Grier is the latest addition to the cast after Queen Latifah and Mary J. Blige came on board in late July. Latifah is set to star as the eponymous wizard while Blige will star as Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West.

The Wiz, which is based on the classic L. Frank Baum novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was first staged on Broadway in 1975, and went on to win seven Tony awards.

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The work was further popularized by the 1978 film adaptation starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Lena Horne, Nipsey Russell, and Richard Pryor.

NBC's live production of The Wizis set to air Dec. 3.

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Theodore “Ted” Ross Roberts was an American actor best-known for his role as the Lion in The Wiz. Roberts won a Tony Award for the original 1975 Broadway production and later recreated the role in the 1978 film version with Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and Nipsey Russell.

Roberts was born in Zanesville, Ohio on June 30, 1934 to Elizabeth Russell a nightclub singer during the 1920s and 1930s. Roberts loved the club life. Roberts while just in junior high school, would dress up and walk right into the Owl Club and The Palace Theater’s Midnight Rambles to see famous entertainers.

He later dropped out of high school in 1950 and enlisted in the United States Air Force. At the age of eighteen, Ross entered an amateur night contest at the Top Hat bar. He sang Judy Garland’s “Over the Rainbow” and won 5 dollars.

Ross worked his way from Great Falls, Montana, to a strip bar in Los Angeles as a singer and MC. There he landed his first stage role in Oscar Brown Jr.’s “Bigtime Buck White”.

The musical began as a workshop in Watts and moved to New York City in 1968. He starred in The Wiz and other Broadway productions, such as Purlie, Ain’t Misbehavin, and Raisin in the Sun. His first film was The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings, a baseball movie starring James Earl Jones and Richard Pryor. Ted Ross Roberts suffered a stroke in 1998 and died 2002 from complications.

source:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0743874/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Ross

James Monroe Iglehart and Ted Ross
(Photo by Emilio Madrid for Broadway.com; Graphic by Ryan Casey for Broadway.com)

In honor of Black History Month, Broadway.com asked actors, directors and playwrights to tell us about black theater-makers who inspired them. Stars jumped at the chance to honor those who came before them, and in the process, taught us about the fundamental contributions of black artists to the American theater. To read the other entries in this series, click here.

James Monroe Iglehart won a Tony in 2014 for originating the role of Genie in Aladdin on Broadway. He also originated the role of Bobby in Memphis (2009) and is currently playing Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton. When asked what black theater artist inspired him, Iglehart said Ted Ross, the Tony-winning actor who originated the role of the Lion on Broadway in The Wiz. 

Ross, who was born in Ohio in 1934, made his Broadway debut in Oscar Brown Jr’s Buck White (1969). He appeared in Purlie (1970, 1972), Raisin (1973) and, in 1975, joined the original cast of The Wiz on Broadway. He won a Tony for that role and reprised his Lion in the 1978 film version starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Richard Pryor and Nipsey Russell. On television, he’s remembered for appearing in sitcoms like Benson, The Jeffersons, What’s Happening Now, The Cosby Show and A Different World. He died in Dayton, Ohio, where he grew up, in 2002 at the age of 68.

"Even now, whenever I get fearful or whenever I feel down, I still listen to, 'Be a Lion.'"

Iglehart on Ross: "When I was little, I watched this movie called The Wiz. There was Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Richard Pryor, but the guy who changed everything for me was Ted Ross. I loved him. I would even recreate The Wiz at my elementary school. Most kids were playing basketball or football, and I had conned my friends into playing The Wiz. I always played the Lion because I wanted to be like Ted. My mom even made a lion costume for me, and I sang, 'I'm a Mean Old Lion' at my church talent show. He was one of the first people I saw that made me say, 'Oh, wow. I really want to do something like that.'"

"I never got to meet him; he passed away before I got to Broadway. But I got to play the Lion in 2009 at the New York City Center. It was a dream come true. Every night I was basically a kid. They'd put the lion makeup on me, and I was living this dream I once had. It felt right. André De Shields came backstage and said, 'You, sir, remind me of Ted,' and I almost lost my mind."

"There was a swagger that Ted had to him. Ted wasn't a small guy, and for him to be floating on stage effortlessly let me know that I could do this, that there's room for me to be a big guy and do what I do. When Ted did The Wiz, nobody expected it to work. We talk about multiculturalism today, and we get so caught up in the amount of color that we see on Broadway. But just imagine: Back in 1974, it was just The Wiz. They broke the door down. And the fact that The Wiz was able to turn The Wizard of Oz on its head and say, 'Home is in you. Home is wherever you go,' as a black kid, that meant everything. Sometimes we have to uproot ourselves to go live our dream. Sometimes as an African American you feel isolated, and the sentiment that, 'You take home with you' will always have a special place. Even now, whenever I get fearful or whenever I feel down, I still listen to, 'Be a Lion.'"

The Cowardly Lion is a major character in The Wiz. The late Ted Ross portrayed him in both the play and movie. He was banished from the jungle for being a coward and joins Dorothy and her friends to get courage from The Wiz.

History

In the musical version, the Lion is played by Ted Ross . He is a senstive and poetic beast. Ted Ross won a Tony Award for the performance. In the movie version Ted Ross revived the role once more. This lion was banished from the jungle, He later relocated at a library disgusing himself as a statue, Once Dorothy and her friends come about, he leaps off the pedistal and scares them, but after Toto bites his paw, they soon realize he's a coward. They invite him to see the Wiz with them. Despite being a coward, he shows some bravery by saving his friends from a peddler and his subway monsters and even tells Dorothy not to give Evillene the Silver Slippers despite being strung up by his tail.

Unlike the original story, the Lion's real name is Fleetwood Coupe DeVille.

Obituaries Ted Ross, Tony-Winner as The Lion in The Wiz, Is Dead at 68 Ted Ross, the big-voiced actor who won a Tony Award for playing The Cowardly Lion in the Broadway musical, The Wiz, died Sept. 3 at a Dayton, OH, hospital, according to The Associated Press.

Ted Ross, the big-voiced actor who won a Tony Award for playing The Cowardly Lion in the Broadway musical, The Wiz, died Sept. 3 at a Dayton, OH, hospital, according to The Associated Press.

Mr. Ross, who also worked in film and TV, was 68 years old and had lived in a nursing home following a stroke in 1998.

His 1975 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical helped land him the role in the 1978 film version of the stage show, a blues-and-gospel take of the L. Frank Baum classic, "The Wizard of Oz."

According to the wire service, Mr. Ross moved to Dayton from Zanesville when he was seven. At age 18, he won $5 in an amateur-night contest, singing (ironically) "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (heard in the classic film, "The Wizard of Oz").

His films include "Arthur" (he was Dudley Moore's chauffeur, Bitterman), "Ragtime," "Police Academy," "Stealing Home" and "The Fisher King." He was a recurring character, Dean Harris, on "The Cosby Show" and "A Different World" and was seen on series such as "Benson,""The Jeffersons" and "The Equalizer."