Tommy Lane, an actor and stuntman who worked in films including Cotton Comes to Harlem, Live and Let Die and Shaft, has died. He was 83.
Lane died Monday at Florida Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale after a long bout with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his daughter Kamala Lane announced.
Lane also appeared in such other films as Shamus (1973), starring Burt Reynolds; The Pilot (1980), directed by and starring Cliff Robertson; and Eureka (1983), helmed by Nicolas Roeg.
In Gordon Parks’ Shaft (1971), Lane played a gangster named Leroy employed by Harlem crime boss Bumpy (Moses Gunn) who winds up falling out of an office window to his death during a fight with Richard Roundtree’s private detective.
“That’s some cold shit, throwing my man Leroy out the window. Just picked my man up and threw him out the goddamn window,” says Bumpy associate Willy (Drew Bundini Brown).
Born on Dec. 17, 1937, in the Liberty City section of Miami, Lane appeared on episodes of NBC’s Flipper, filmed in Florida, in 1964 and ’66, then played a guy known as “44” in Ossie Davis’ Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970).
In addition to Live and Let Die (1973), Lane’s credits included Come Back Charleston Blue (1972), Ganja & Hess (1973), Blue Skies Again (1983) and TV’s Simon & Simon.
He also was a jazz musician who played trumpet and flugelhorn at the Blue Note in New York in the 1980s.
Survivors include his wife, Raquel Bastias-Lane; seven children; a stepson; grandchildren and great-grandchildren.