When we think of iconic actress, Cicely Tyson, we can think of many wonderful words to describe her: the beautiful, wise, charismatic, bold, remarkable actress who brought to life some of the most emotional characters in the history of film, but never would we think of her as having a Muhammad Ali/George Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle” moment.

If you recall, Cicely and late jazz icon, Miles Davis, were married from 1981 to 1988. It was during that time, according to Davis, that Ms. Tyson ended up losing her cool…ultimately beating the brakes off of a woman while she was at the height of her career!

WAIT ‘TIL U SEE WHAT MILES DAVIS REVEALED…

Below are the details of the Cicely Tyson beat-down incident Miles Davis described in his book, “Miles”:

Cicely’s ‘fist fight’:

Mikes Davis wrote, “Things started to get really bad with Cicely over an incident with a woman, a white woman, who was just a friend of mine. I had met her one day in the elevator of the building where Cicely and I lived on Fifth Avenue and 79th Street. It was in 1984, and I was on crutches from my hip operation. We just started talking and became friends. That was it. I would say hello and stop to talk with her whenever I saw her. Gradually Cicely got jealous of her. Finally one day she jumped the woman in broad daylight and beat her up. The woman had her seven-year-old son with her. Cicely thought I was going with the woman. But I wasn’t.”

Miles says Cicely pulled out his weave:

“Sometime later in 1986, right before a concert I was playing with B.B. King at the Beacon Theater in New York, Cicely and I had an argument and she jumped on my back and pulled my hair weave right out of my head. That was the last straw. We couldn’t stay together and even go out after that, but now when I look back on everything, I knew that was the beginning of the end. That shit got so crazy that someone, and I believe it was Cicely, called the National Enquirer and told them that I was having an affair with this woman that Cicely had beat up. The Enquirer called up my friend, but she wouldn’t talk to them. Cicely herself even tried to call up my friend, acting like a reporter from the Enquirer. Man, that sh*t got sick.”

It seems they made up soon after that, here’s what Miles did next:

“After a while, Cicely had to go to Africa, first to make a film, and then because she was Chairperson of the United Nations Children’s Fund 1985-86 and she had to tour the drought stricken areas over there. I bought her a Rolls Royce automobile as a present when she returned. When they delivered it, she couldn’t believe it. She thought someone was playing a joke on her.”
Now, before we make assumptions about Ms. Tyson’s temper, there is more to this story. They had a history of problems prior to this event. Miles explained that here…

“On Thanksgiving Day in 1981 Cicely and I got married at Bill Cosby’s house in Massachusetts by Andrew Young…It was a nice ceremony but if you look at the pictures of that wedding, you can see I was “real sick. I had that gray look of almost-death in my face. Cicely saw it. I told her I felt like I could die at any minute. During the summer, I had shot some dope in my leg and it had fucked it up…I even went to bed with a woman I knew five days after Cicely and I were married, because I didn’t feel that sex thing for Cicely anymore. I respected her as a woman and felt like she was a good friend to me, but I also needed that sex thing that I couldn’t get from her. So I got it in other places.”

Miles also said he loved Cicely very much and that he knew she loved him deeply. In fact, he said that she always was there to help him through his addictions to heroin, cocaine and alcohol. She was the person he leaned on for support, but there was still jealously on both ends.

Miles described incident that involved the police being called to their home:

“Cicely was especially jealous of a woman taking her place in my life, but after a while she didn’t have no place in my life, even though she turned down a lot of movie offers just to stay around me. Cicely’s like two different women, one nice, the other one totally fu*ked up. For example, she used to bring her friends around any time she wanted, but she didn’t want my friends coming around. And she had some friends who I couldn’t stand. One time we argued about one friend in particular, and I just slapped the shit out of her. She called the cops and went down into the basement and was hiding there. When the police came they asked me where she was. I said, “She’s around here somewhere. Look down in the basement.” The cop looked in the basement and came back and said, “Miles, nobody’s down there but a woman, and she won’t talk to me. She won’t say nothing.”

“So I said, ‘That’s her, and she’s doing the greatest acting job ever.’ Then the cop said he understood-she didn’t look like she was hurt or nothing. I said, ‘Well, she ain’t hurt bad, I just slapped her once.’ The cop said, “Well Miles, you know when we get these calls we have to investigate.”
‘Well, is she’s beating my ass you gonna come with your guns ready too?’ I asked him.
They just laughed and left. Then I went down and told Cicely, ‘I told you to tell your friend not to call over here no more. Now if you don’t tell him, I’m gonna tell him.’ She ran to the phone and called him and told him, “Miles don’t want me talking to you anymore.” Before I knew it I slapped her again. So she never did pull that kind of shit on me again.”
[Source: “Miles” by Miles Davis, Quincy Troupe]

As you can see, they’re relationship was filled with turmoil. Cicely Tyson had to endure a lot of hardships at the hands of Miles Davis. It was likely wise for Cicely and Miles to divorce…maybe they were better off as friends and Ms. Tyson summed up their relationship best (which she referred to as ‘tumultuous’) in this interview with CNN’s Don Lemon:

Although they are two of the greatest entertainers to have ever lived, that does not automatically qualify them as being perfect in every aspect of their lives, nor should they have been expected to be, because that is simply unrealistic.