Robin Harris, 36; Comedian on the Rise

Robin Harris, the rotund comedian known locally for his pillorying of famous blacks and nationally as Sweet Dick Willie in the movie “Do the Right Thing,” has died in Chicago.

His manager, Bill Gross, said his friend and client had completed a performance before a sold-out crowd of 2,400 at Chicago’s Regal Theater on Saturday night, returned to his room at the Four Seasons Hotel, and was found dead in bed sometime later.

A spokesman for the Cook County medical examiner’s office said Sunday a cause of death had not been determined pending an autopsy today.

Harris, 36, seemed poised for a major breakthrough in his career.

A Times article last August had called him “one of the unheralded pleasures of the black community. . . .”

He was then emceeing a lineup of comedians at the Comedy Act Theater on 43rd Street in Los Angeles’ Crenshaw District.

To that club came members of the Lakers basketball team after home games, former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson and various black film and TV stars.

All were treated with equal irreverence by Harris.

He was a little-known presence outside the black community when Spike Lee cast him as Sweet Dick Willie last year. The character was part of the modern-day Greek Chorus in “Do the Right Thing” that provided a street-smart philosophical underpinning to the film’s biting commentary about white and black relationships.

Willie was the memorable braggart among the three black men hanging about on a street corner (“Mike Tyson ain’t nothin’. If I fought Tyson I’d drop him like a bad habit.”)

His success in that role placed him in Lee’s next film, “Love Supreme,” and in Lee’s “Variations on the Mo’ Bettah Blues,” which is yet to be released.

He also was featured in the recently released film “House Party,” Eddie Murphy’s “Harlem Nights” and had cut a comedy album. And he was being courted by several television producers.

But it was at the Comedy Act Theater that he had become likened to a black Don Rickles, commenting on customers’ wearing apparel (“Like that suit, brother. It might come back in style.”), their trips to the restroom, or on his conversation with a white cop who stopped him one night (“You got a gun in the car?” Harris said the cop asked, to which he replied, “No, it’s home with the dope.”)

Harris prided himself on maintaining his roots. He rode the bus around town and frequently stopped to chat with people on the street.

“I don’t want to get out of touch with buddies,” he said last year as his successes mounted.

Harris was born in Chicago and his family moved to Los Angeles when he was 8. Here, he said, he was encouraged to follow his dreams.

Although he weighed more than 200 pounds at his death, Harris once ran a 4:18 mile and went to Ottawa University in Kansas on a track scholarship after graduating from Manual Arts High School.

He came back to Los Angeles, worked a series of odd jobs and then gradually realized that what he did best was make people laugh. (“I may have had a two-bit job at the bank, but everybody wanted to sit with me at lunch.”)

He played a series of Los Angeles nightclubs before Lee and others helped make him a part of the national comedy scene.

Lee said he gave Harris a lot of latitude in his role as Sweet Dick Willie. “I couldn’t write that character as funny as Robin could,” said Lee.

Survivors include his wife, Exetta, a son, his parents and a brother and sister.