In quiet dignity, Boseman’s career soared while his life was being cruelly cut away

The world grieves for movie pioneer Chadwick Boseman who was much more than a star.

Chadwick Boseman in the press room during the 2019 American Music Awards at the Microsoft theatre in Los Angeles Picture: AFP

The surprise news of actor Chadwick Boseman’s death at age 43 left fans and industry peers struggling to take stock of a meteoric career cut short, and the impact of an actor whose work shone a light on black history and culture.

His acting career began in television in the early 2000s, but the legacy he left on screen largely rests on a streak of movies released in a five-year period, starting in 2013, in which he portrayed a series of black icons: Jackie Robinson (42), James Brown (Get On Up), Thurgood Marshall (Marshall), and the fantastical role that resonated most widely, T’Challa, the King of Wakanda and title hero of Black Panther. The 2018 release from Disney’s Marvel earned $US1.3bn at the global box office. It was the first blockbuster superhero movie led by a black cast.

In this range of roles “he was not only a conduit to the past and the way African-Americans persevered and pushed through so many challenges, he also represented brightness and the promise of tomorrow” in Black Panther, says Rhea Combs, curator of photography and film at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, which has one of Boseman’s Black Panther costumes in its collection.

Recent projects of Boseman’s and new ones he had put in motion offer glimpses of his unfulfilled potential in Hollywood. Following his performance in Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods as a Vietnam War soldier whose death bonds his comrades, Boseman will be seen in an adaptation of the August Wilson play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which Netflix plans to release later this year. He starred as a trumpeter in a band led by the title character, played by Viola Davis. She was among the actor’s many co-stars and admirers who paid tribute, including Denzel Washington, who once helped pay for the former Howard University student to attend an acting program at Oxford.

Many expressed astonishment at what Boseman accomplished while fighting what proved to be a fatal disease; in announcing his death, his family revealed he had been diagnosed with colon cancer in 2016. Former president Barack Obama recalled a visit to the White House by Boseman to work with children around the time he played Jackie Robinson. “To be young, gifted and black; to use that power to give them heroes to look up to; to do it all while in pain — what a use of his years,” Obama said in a message on Twitter.

Henry McMaster, Governor of South Carolina, where Boseman was born, ordered flags in the state house in Columbia to fly at half mast.

It was announced last year that Boseman had signed on to star as a samurai warrior in an action movie set in the 16th century, a project he was also producing. He seemed poised to exert additional influence from behind the camera.

Over the weekend, social media platforms transformed into a flowing memorial to Boseman, with fans posting images of a cross-armed salute from Black Panther, and pledging to dive into his movies.

Frederick Joseph, who led a charitable campaign that began with his idea for sending children in Harlem to free showings of Black Panther, says he has so far turned down invitations to participate in any memorial viewings of the Marvel movie. The loss feels too raw for him to see the actor on screen just yet, in any role.

He says Boseman was unhesitating in his support of the #BlackPantherChallenge, which was aimed at helping black children see characters who looked like them on screen as larger-than-life heroes, and involved about 2000 screenings and raised $US1m.

The release of Black Panther not only marked a celebratory event for audiences in black communities, its success spurred the development of other tentpole movies built around heroes of colour. “That renaissance has ripple effects. We got all of that thanks to Black Panther and Chadwick,” Joseph says, citing movies such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and a coming Marvel movie about the comic book character Shang-Chi.

As his career took off, Boseman always seemed mindful of the broader significance of his performances.

Black actors “all know what it’s like to be told that there is not a place for you to be featured”, he said early last year, surrounded by his Black Panther co-stars as they accepted the award for best ensemble cast in a movie at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. “We knew we had something special that we wanted to give the world, that we could be full human beings in the roles that we were playing, that we could create a world that exemplified a world that we wanted to see.”

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL