From the Los Angeles Times:
Trevor Rhone, a leading Caribbean playwright and screenwriter who co-wrote the 1972 film “The Harder They Come,” which helped introduce reggae music and urban Jamaican culture to international audiences, died Sept. 15 at a hospital in Kingston, Jamaica, after a heart attack. He was 69. “The Harder They Come” starred reggae performer Jimmy Cliff as an aspiring singer who becomes a hero to the poor after killing a police officer. The film, co-written with director Perry Henzell, was drawn from the story of a Jamaican criminal killed by police in 1948.
For many American audience members, the film was their first view of urban Jamaican life and culture. It featured reggae by Cliff, who sings the title song; Toots and the Maytals; Desmond Dekker and others, and remained an art house staple in the United States for several years after its initial release. It also broke Jamaica’s box office records, but did not enrich Rhone. “It made money for somebody, I would imagine,” he told the New York Times. “Not me.”
Toots and the Maytals follows below with The Harder They Come‘s Sweet & Dandy: