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Robert Downey Jr’s Father Is a Prince Who Directed Putney Swope
My friends and I loved Robert Downey Sr. with the fire of a thousand suns
Robert Downey Sr. (a prince!) wrote and directed “Putney Swope.”
It was a comedic satire of a music director at a Madison Avenue ad agency. The only black man on the board, Putney Swope, becomes chairman after the sudden death of the former boss.
That film would become a pivotal part of my cultural DNA and that of every cool black kid I have ever met.
Robert Downey Sr. passed away July 7 at the age of 85. On that day, all of my friends stopped and paid our respects. We traded our favorite lines and recounted great times together with Mr. Downey.
Consider this a message in a bottle so that someone passing this way might understand why this mattered so much to us then and still does today.
I knew he was quality
The first time I laid eyes on his film, I had zero idea who he was. All I knew was that his film was on WETA, Channel 26 in Washington DC.
It was the same place I saw “Seven Samurai,” Monty Python, and a British TV series called The Prisoner. I stopped watching regular TV around then. The only movie before this with black…
