Lynda Gravátt, Esteemed New York Stage Actress, Dies at 76

Lynda Gravátt, the Harlem-born actress who starred on New York stages in such productions as 45 Seconds From Broadway, Doubt, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Old Settler and Intimate Apparel, has died. She was 76.

Gravátt died Friday at a hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, her son David Gravátt told The Hollywood Reporter.

A founding member of Robert Alexander’s Living Stage at the famed Washington-based Arena Stage company, Gravátt received a 1999 Theatre World trophy for her performance as 1940s Harlem resident Quilly McGrath in The Old Settler and a AUDELCO prize in 2004 for her turn as the bossy landlady Mrs. Dickson in Intimate Apparel.

On Broadway in 2001, she stood by for Leslie Uggams as Ruby in August Wilson’s King Hedley II and portrayed Bessie James in Neil Simon’s 45 Seconds From Broadway, then appeared as Mrs. Muller in 2016 in the original Broadway production of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt.

Her final Broadway appearance came when she understudied the role of Big Mama in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opposite James Earl Jones in 2008.

“If I’m employed, I’m happy,” she told Backstage in a 2019 interview. “I always wanted to be the ingénue, but I’m usually cast as the pragmatic grandmother, even when I was young.”

She also had a big fan in Oscar winner Viola Davis:

Gravátt was born in Harlem on May 24, 1947. Her birth father was tap dancer and comedian James “Stump” Cross, but she was raised by adopted parents.

She appeared on Broadway at age 4 in the original Broadway production of The King and I, starring Yul Brynner and Gertrude Lawrence, and performed in recitals at Carnegie Hall when she was 9.

Gravátt attended Fairmont Heights High in Capitol Heights, Maryland, and then Howard University, where she appeared in numerous productions before graduating in 1971. While in college, she also acted at the Living Stage, which launched in 1966.

Her stage résumé included productions of A Raisin in the Sun, Crowns, Miss Witherspoon, The Little Foxes, Skeleton Crew, The House That Will Not Stand and, in her final theater appearance in 2018, The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll’d at The Duke in New York.

For television, Gravátt was a regular on the 1999-2000 Showtime series The Hoop Life, guest-starred on three Law & Order series and appeared on Sex and the City, The Good Wife, 30 Rock, Elementary, Madam Secretary, Ramy and East New York.

And she could be seen on the big screen in The Bounty Hunter (2010), Delivery Man (2013), Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017) and The Outside Story (2020).

Gravátt was a founding faculty member at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, and she taught at Howard and Rutgers University as well.

Survivors include her sons, David (a former journalist at NBC News) and Oge; her grandchildren, Josephine, Lucas, Ishmale, Ishana and Isabella; and her half-sister, Peabody Award-winning documentarian June Cross.