Lou Myers was born on this date in 1935. He was a Black actor.
Lou Leabengula Myers was born in Chesapeake, West Virginia, the son of Dorothy Jeffries Brown. Myers guest-starred on a variety of TV shows, from “NYPD Blue” to “Touched by an Angel,” but he was best known for his five-season stint on the “Cosby Show” spinoff as Vernon Gaines, owner of The Pit and curmudgeonly father figure to the students of Hillman College where he played restaurant owner Mr. Gaines on “A Different World.”
Myers won an NAACP Image Award for his role as the Stool Pigeon in the August Wilson play, King Hedley II. He also won the Off-Broadway AUDELCO Award for his role in the play, Fat Tuesday. In 2005 the Appalachian Education Initiative listed Myers as one of 50 “Outstanding Creative Artists” from the State of West Virginia and featured him in their coffee table book “Art & Soul”.
Lou Myers died on February 20, 2013, at the Charleston Area Medical Center in West Virginia after battling pneumonia for several months; he was 76 years old.
Written by Dianne Washington