Film & TV / Theatre & dance
Ernie Hudson
born 1945 · actor, playwright
Ghostbusters' Winston Zeddemore, who came to Detroit as a young man, wrote plays for the Black theater company Concept East and graduated from Wayne State in 1973.
- Born
Benton Harbor, Michigan
age 80- Birth name
- Earnest Lee Hudson
- Detroit years
- late 1960s–1973
- Field
- Film & TV, Theatre & dance
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Ernie Hudson grew up in Benton Harbor in southwest Michigan and joined the Marine Corps after high school, but was discharged within months because of asthma. He then moved to Detroit, where the city's Black arts scene gave him his first creative home: he became resident playwright at Concept East, a pioneering Black theater company founded in Detroit in 1962. To sharpen his writing and acting he enrolled at Wayne State University, graduating in 1973, and went on to graduate study at the University of Minnesota and the Yale School of Drama. Film and television roles followed from the late 1970s, and in 1984 he joined Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis as the fourth Ghostbuster, Winston Zeddemore, a role he has reprised for four decades. Television viewers also know him as Warden Leo Glynn in HBO's Oz, where he worked alongside another Detroit-area native, J. K. Simmons.
Highlights
- Winston Zeddemore in Ghostbusters (1984) and its sequels
- Warden Leo Glynn in HBO's Oz (1997–2003)
- Resident playwright at Detroit's Concept East theater
- Wayne State University graduate, 1973
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · late 1960s
Concept East Theatre
Status being checked
Detroit Black theater company co-founded in 1962 by Woodie King Jr. and others; Hudson was its resident playwright. Venue address and current status not verified.
Studied here · until 1973
Wayne State University
Hudson studied writing and acting here and graduated in 1973.