For
culture vultures of a certain age, George Spell's is a very familiar
face, despite having a relatively brief film and television career.
In
the '60s and early '70s, Spell, a Chicago native, was THE Black kid
cast in serial television comedies and dramas. He made a few film
appearances, too: Sidney Poitier's son in They Call Me Mister Tibbs!
(1970) and The Organization (1971) and opposite Johnny Whittaker in The
Biscuit Eater (1972).
A piano prodigy who performed with the Los
Angeles Symphony as a teenager, Spell appeared in my favorite That Girl
episode, The Defiant One (1969). He was a young boy named David,
befriended by the soft-hearted Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas), who believes
David, whom she caught stealing in a corner grocer, was impoverished and
desperate.
She brings him home to her apartment and tries to
get him help but eventually discovers David comes from a wealthy family
on the Upper East Side. He weaves tales of woe to mess with people. The
unstated implication is "mess with white people."
I like this
episode a lot because -- aside from its message about racial assumptions
and "liberal guilt" and its homage to the Poitier/Tony Curtis
prison-escape film The Defiant Ones (1958) -- Spell is a warm character
from a time when television was taking steps -- small and sometimes
unsteady -- toward inclusion, if not full acceptance and equality. In a
way, Spell was a trailblazer.
Spell, who neither married nor had
children, always landed on his mark. I bought what he was doing, why he
was in the role, what he meant to the story, and, even when I was young,
what he meant to those of us in the audience who needed to see and hear
him.
Spell's last acting credit was 40 years ago. He died in 2022, after a bought with cancer. He was 64.
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