While many Hollywood legends may arrive for their Hollywood Walk of Fame inductions in a limo, veteran actor Glynn Turman rode into town on horseback.
On Thursday, July 10, the 78-year-old actor saddled up, with cowboy hat and all, to receive his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame during a ceremony that brought out plenty of other Black Hollywood legends, including Ava DuVernay, Don Cheadle, Kim Fields, and more.
“We’ve held each other up in difficult times, you know? We’ve been there for one another, you know? And so, here it shows,” said Turman, per ABC 7.
Turman’s career, which began at the age of 12 when he starred as Travis Younger in the original Broadway production of “A Raisin in the Sun,” has spanned over 66 years across the stage, film, and television. The Emmy and NAACP Image Award-winning actor has starred in many major films and shows, including “Cooley High,” “A Different World,” “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” “The Wire,” and most recently “Queen Sugar” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”
Thursday’s ceremony was hosted by Access Hollywood’s Scott Evans and featured heartfelt tributes from DuVernay and Cheadle.
“I don’t call him Glynn. I call him Mr. Turman because I just can’t,” DuVernay began. “Because there are artists and then there are architects.”
“Creative human beings who don’t only perform,” she continued. “But who build, who shape, who carve paths, who create structures that others walk through and dwell in long after the curtain is lowered and the cameras stop rolling. On this gorgeous summertime day we gather to celebrate such an architect, a master builder of culture, a man whose name alone conjures not only memories of performances, but entire eras of the nation’s history, its beauty, its bruises, its pain, its poetry. Glynn Turman is an American institution.”
The producer and director shared that as she was writing “Queen Sugar” there was only one actor she would consider for the role of Ernest, the father figure in the series, and that she was over the moon when he said yes to the part.
“He didn’t just play Ernest Bordelon. He made him live and linger, even after he was gone from the screen,” she added. “That’s what an institution does. Shapes everything around it, defines the space, commands reverence, not because it shouts, but because it stands. And Glynn Turman stood for us for more than 60 years, not only on stages and screens but in the arena of life. A cowboy, a horseman, an educator, a mentor; this is an American institution, because he is a man who’s done what institutions are meant to do, preserve what is sacred, pass down what is vital, protect what is beautiful and Black.”
From the looks of footage uploaded to Instagram by Fields, celebrations following the ceremony quickly turned into a joyous family reunion of sorts for Black Hollywood.
“The Family Reunion that broke out at [Glynn Turman’s] Hollywood Walk Of Fame Star Celebration,” she wrote in the caption of the video that showed her greeting many Black notables, including Tisha Campbell and Anthony Anderson.
She added, “Fam Roll Call in this (and this aint even er’ybody!) sisters brothers uncles aunts cousins and the grands … I love you all.”
