Edmund Cambridge

Edmund James Cambridge Jr., born September 18, 1920, in Harlem, New York, was an American actor and director whose career on Broadway spanned from 1947 to 1992. A founding member of both the Negro Ensemble Company and the Kilpatrick-Cambridge Theater Arts School, Cambridge made significant contributions to American theater as a performer and a director. He died on August 18, 2001, in New York, New York, from injuries sustained in a fall.

Cambridge's professional life in the theater began at age fifteen, when he took a job as a chorus boy at Swan's Paradise in Harlem. That early engagement came to an end after his mother discovered he had been sneaking out of bed to perform. His Broadway credits as an actor include Our Lan', The Taming of the Shrew, Two Trains Running, and Inacent Black. He also served as President of the Original Cambridge Players, the company that brought The Amen Corner to Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in April 1965, in what was the play's Los Angeles premiere transferred to New York. Founding member Juanita Moore, who was acquainted with both Marlon Brando and James Baldwin, arranged for Brando to contribute seventy-five dollars to fund Baldwin's writing of the play.

In 1968, Cambridge joined Robert Hooks, Douglas Turner Ward, and other actors in founding the Negro Ensemble Company. Among the earliest productions he directed there was Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, a play by Lonne Elder III that went on to receive a Drama Desk Award for its author. Cambridge also directed Steve Carter's drama Eden at the NEC, a production that earned him the 1980 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Direction. His directing credits additionally include Far from the Tree in 1987 and Country Cousins in 1988. A longtime resident of Los Angeles, Cambridge maintained deep ties to the New York theater world throughout his life.