Farewell to a damn fine actor

Brock Peters, best remembered for his performance as Tom Robinson in "To Kill a Mockingbird," passed away after battling pancreatic cancer.

It seems all the really talented actors are dying off and leaving us with only the crappy ones.

Brock Peters, "To Kill a Mockingbird" actor, dies

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Brock Peters, the deep-voiced American actor who portrayed a black man wrongly accused of rape in the classic film "To Kill a Mockingbird," has died at 78.

Peters died at his Los Angeles area home on Tuesday after a battle with pancreatic cancer, the Los Angeles Times reported. He was diagnosed with the disease in January and had been undergoing chemotherapy.

"He was a fine and powerful singer and actor," Miles Kreuger, president of the Los Angeles-based Institute of the American Musical, told the Times. "But more than that, he was a majestic human being."

Although the versatile Peters began acting on Broadway as a teenager and worked in show business for six decades, he was best known as Tom Robinson in "Mockingbird," a black man accused of raping a white girl who is defended by Gregory Peck's idealistic lawyer, Atticus Finch, in Depression-era Alabama.

The 1962 film earned two Academy Awards, including a best-actor Oscar for Peck. Peters was not nominated for his role but later won lifetime achievement awards from the Screen Actors Guild and the National Film Society.

Peters was born George Fisher in New York's Harlem neighborhood in 1927 and decided to be an actor at a young age. His distinctive resonant voice landed him early jobs -- he sang backup on Harry Belafonte's "Banana Boat" -- and would serve him well throughout his long career.

Peters' film debut came in the 1954 musical "Carmen Jones," which starred Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge.

In later years Fisher lent his voice to a number of film and television roles, including "The Wild Thornberrys Movie" and "Star Trek: Starfleet Command III."