Hollywood actors Georg Stanford Brown and Tyne Daly didn’t date for long – just five months – before they knew they wanted to be together forever.
They fell in love in the 1960s, a time when interracial marriage was looked down upon and even illegal.
They got married on June 1, 1966, just a year before interracial marriage became legal everywhere in the U.S. Back in 1960, interracial marriage was against the law in 31 states in the U.S.
Georg Stanford Brown moved from Havana to Harlem when he was just 7 years old. Later, he moved to LA when he was 17 and finished his education there, focusing on theater arts.
At first, Georg Stanford Brown picked theater arts because he thought it would be an easy choice. But he ended up liking it a lot. He went back to New York to study at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. To pay for school, he worked as a janitor and earned $80 a week.
While studying there, he met Tyne Daly, his future wife. They both learned from Philip Burton, who was Richard Burton’s mentor.
Brown is most famous for playing Officer Terry Webster on the ABC TV show “The Rookies.” The show aired from 1972 to 1976.
In addition to his role on “The Rookies,” Georg Stanford Brown was famous for playing Tom Harvey in the mini-series “Roots.”
Throughout his acting and directing career, Brown took on many different roles in films. He played Henri Philipot in “The Comedians” and Dr. Willard in “Bullitt.” In 1984, he starred in “The Jesse Owens Story” as Lew Gilbert.
When Brown married American singer and actress Tyne Daly, she was already well-known for her role as Mary Beth Lacey in the popular show “Cagney and Lacey.” Mary Beth Lacey was a tough cop who was also a mom, and the show was a big hit.
When the couple got married they faced racial prejudice but chose to ignore it – until they appeared on an episode of “The Rookies” together and shared their first on-screen interracial kiss.
Network censors wanted the scene deleted, but the couple stood their grounds, taped, and aired the segment without any issues from those closest to them.
In an interview with the Washington Post in 1985, Daly said she never saw being married to Brown as interracial. She does not, she says, “like pigeonholes.”
She is married to “another member of the human race. I gave up categories a long time ago,” she added.
The couple, Georg Stanford Brown and Tyne Daly, have three daughters. Their names are Alisabeth Brown, born on December 12, 1967; Kathryne Dora Brown, born on February 10, 1971; and Alyxandra Beatris Brown, born on October 1, 1985.
When their youngest daughter, Alyxandra, was born, Tyne Daly said something interesting. She said, “On her birth certificate, under ‘race,’ we put ‘human’; under ‘sex’ we put ‘yes,’ and under ethnic origin, we put ‘citizen of the world.’”
Describing her marriage to Brown, Daly said, “I have a good and interesting marriage that has gone on for quite some time. H
Brown transitioned into directing, and in 1986, he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Best Director in a Drama Series. He won this award for directing the final episode of “Cagney & Lacey.”
Meanwhile, Daly continued her acting career. She starred in many Broadway shows. Some of her notable roles include Madame Arkadina in “The Seagull” in 1992, Cynthia Nixon in the 2006 comedy “Rabbit Hole,” and Maria Callas in “Master Class” in 2011.
Unfortunately, in 1990, after being married for 24 years, Brown and Daly filed for divorce. Even though they had been together for a long time, they had to end their marriage because they couldn’t resolve their differences.
Even though this couple divorced after being together for over twenty years, their love and their determination to overcome prejudice is inspiring.