Reflecting on Oscars with Ruby Dee, Hal Holbrook

LOS ANGELES — Ruby Dee and Hal Holbrook have rarely crossed paths in their acting careers, but they have much in common.

Both were born in Cleveland a few months apart in the 1920s. Both developed an early passion for literature. Both shaped early professional lives largely on the stage, then gradually built venerable half-century careers in film and television.

Both have won Emmys, yet inclusion in the highest honors in show business, the Academy Awards, eluded them until this year, when Dee became the second-oldest actor and Holbrook the third-oldest ever nominated.

Dee is up for supporting actress as Mama Lucas, the mother of Denzel Washington's Harlem drug lord in Ridley Scott's "American Gangster," while Holbrook is nominated for supporting actor as Ron Franz, a lonely widower living in the desert who befriends Emile Hirsch's free-spirited wanderer in Sean Penn's "Into the Wild." The Academy Awards ceremony is scheduled for Feb. 24.

Recently, the two spoke together with a reporter in Los Angeles. Neither feels slighted that they never received an Oscar nomination before now. They gave up such dreams long ago, saying the roles they were able to land were not the stuff Oscars are made of; Dee because of her race, Holbrook because of his typecasting as an attorney or corporate suit.

"It was an exclusive club as far as African Americans were concerned, and also Asians and Indians and other groups," said Dee, 83, whose "American Gangster" role earned her the supporting-actress trophy at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. "I didn't have the kind of talent or personality that kept me dreaming about Hollywood. They don't hire little colored girls to do this or that. After I got that in my head, I took another direction."

Holbrook, whose 83rd birthday falls one week before the Feb. 24 Oscars, said he'd given up on an Academy Award.

"The chances were none," he said, "because I was at a point in my career before Sean gave me this wonderful role where I was playing pretty predictable guys in pinstriped suits mostly, which is not natural to me, to tell you the truth. I don't know lawyers very well. I don't even want to know lawyers very well. I'm an outdoors person."

Growing up in Harlem after her family left Cleveland for New York, Dee developed a taste for poetry and joined the American Negro Theater while studying at Hunter College. She worked extensively in theater and television and co-starred in such films as "The Jackie Robinson Story" and "A Raisin in the Sun."

Dee and husband Ossie Davis, who died in 2005, worked together so often on stage, television and film that they were almost a package deal. Their credits include Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" and "Jungle Fever," and the stage and film versions of Davis' play "Purlie Victorious."

After studying drama in college, Holbrook toured in theater, was a regular on the 1950s soap opera "The Brighter Day" and debuted his best-known character in 1959 with the one-man show "Mark Twain, Tonight."

Holbrook has played the author in thousands of performances and did a TV version of the show in 1967. A five-time Emmy winner for such parts as the title roles in the political drama "The Senator" and "Sandburg's Lincoln," Holbrook had a recurring part on the 1980s sitcom "Designing Women," which co-starred his wife, Dixie Carter.

Though Holbrook had a memorable role as Deep Throat in "All the President's Men," he rarely found big-screen parts worthy of his talents.

Despite their ages, Dee and Holbrook said the awards attention "American Gangster" and "Into the Wild" have gained them bring new career prospects. Dee also figures her late husband still is looking out for her.

"Suddenly, I'm doing project after project since Ossie has been gone, and I'm going, mmm hmm, there is something to this life after. He's up there picketing or pulling strings or something," Dee said, speaking on the third anniversary of his death. "Both of us always believed in the strange power of the eternal life. Life can't die. It's a contradiction. So he's still working up there."