Ivan Dixon

Ivan Nathaniel Dixon III (April 6, 1931 – March 16, 2008) was an American actor, director, and producer whose career spanned stage, film, and television across several decades. Born in Harlem, Manhattan, he was the son of a grocery store owner and his wife, who later operated a bakery together. His parents separated when he was young, and he divided his time between his mother's apartment and his father's grocery store. The family resided in a brownstone at 518 West 150th Street in Harlem, on the same block as folk singer Josh White, writer Ralph Ellison, and tap-dancing brothers Gregory and Maurice Hines. His father, also named Ivan, had served with distinction in World War I and was literate in Yiddish.

Dixon received his secondary education at Lincoln Academy, a private Black boarding school in Gaston County, North Carolina, and went on to earn a drama degree in 1954 from North Carolina Central University (NCCU), a historically Black college. While there, he joined the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. NCCU's theater troupe was later renamed the Ivan Dixon Players in his honor. He continued his dramatic training at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and subsequently at the American Theatre Wing upon returning to New York City.

His Broadway career ran from 1957 to 1959. He made his Broadway debut in William Saroyan's The Cave Dwellers in 1957, and two years later appeared in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Both productions were staged during a period when Dixon was also building his screen presence. In 1958, he worked as a stunt double for Sidney Poitier in the film The Defiant Ones. He appeared in two episodes of The Twilight Zone, leading the primarily Black cast of "The Big Tall Wish" and taking a key supporting role in "I Am the Night—Color Me Black." In 1962, he co-starred with Dorothy Dandridge in the "Blues for a Junkman" episode of Cain's Hundred, the highest-rated episode of that series; an expanded version was released theatrically in Europe as The Murder Men and marked Dandridge's final screen appearance.

Dixon's most prominent acting role came with the television sitcom Hogan's Heroes, in which he played Staff Sergeant James "Kinch" Kinchloe from 1965 to 1970. Kinchloe served as the unit's communications specialist, a translator of German, and Colonel Hogan's default second-in-command. Dixon was the only long-running cast member who did not remain for the show's entire run; Kenneth Washington replaced him in the final season, playing a different character in a similar capacity. Prior to Hogan's Heroes, Dixon had starred in the 1964 independent drama Nothing But a Man, written and directed by Michael Roemer, a performance Dixon himself identified as his finest work. He received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Drama for the 1967 television film The Final War of Olly Winter. He also earned a National Black Theatre Award and the Paul Robeson Pioneer Award from the Black American Cinema Society.

Beginning in 1970, Dixon transitioned primarily to directing, working on television series including The Waltons, The Rockford Files, The Bionic Woman, The Eddie Capra Mysteries, Magnum, P.I., and The A-Team, a practice he continued through 1993. His first feature film as director was the blaxploitation thriller Trouble Man. He also directed the 1973 feature The Spook Who Sat by the Door, based on Sam Greenlee's 1969 novel of the same name, which depicted the first Black CIA agent applying his espionage training to lead a guerrilla operation in Chicago. The film generated controversy, and its theatrical run was cut short with suppression facilitated by the FBI, though it later acquired cult status as a bootleg video before receiving an official DVD release in 2004. Dixon continued to take occasional acting roles during this period, including the character Lonnie, a straw boss, in the 1976 film Car Wash, and a doctor and guerrilla leader in the 1987 ABC miniseries Amerika. In 1978, he served as Chairman of the Expansion Arts Advisory Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Dixon was active in the civil rights movement from 1961 and served as president of Negro Actors for Action. In 1954, the same year he graduated from NCCU, he married theater student Berlie Ray. The couple had four children: sons Ivan IV, N'Gai Christopher, and Alan Kimara Dixon, and daughter Doris Nomathande Dixon. After his performing and directing career concluded, Dixon became the owner-operator of radio station KONI (FM) on the Hawaiian island of Maui, which he sold in 2002 after leaving Hawaii for health reasons in 2001. He died on March 16, 2008, at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, of complications from kidney failure, at the age of 76, predeceased by sons Ivan Dixon IV and N'Gai Christopher Dixon. His widow, Berlie Ray Dixon, died on February 9, 2019, in Charlotte, at the age of 88.