Today I ventured to the Wizard World Philadelphia Comic Con with three goals in mind. To meet Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree and Billy Dee Williams. As my business partner and I made our trek, we talked about our continued love of the 1970′s, the films, the animation from the Saturday morning cartoons and the comics. We even discussed how this could be a small turning point in our lives as we continue to follow our passion by meeting these 1970′s film icons.
Once we arrived at the Philadelphia Convention Center I saw Pam Grier with her manager crossing the street heading toward the center. I shouted out “THERE’S PAM GRIER” and startled my business partner. I acted like I was a crazed fan screaming “WHERE’S THE CAMERA”…it was one of my funnier moments. I was reminded that I came here to take a picture with her and may have a chance to talk to her.
We parked the car and walked to the Convention Center, turned the corner and BAM, people with and without tickets were stacked up in the same line, all the way around the block waiting to get in. The process for entry was a nightmare…a 35 minute wait once I was in the Convention Center, and this was with tickets that I pre-ordered and paid for over the internet. When we finally arrived for the picture Pam Grier was gone. Well as anyone who PAID to have their picture taken at these events in hopes of having a 1 to 2 minute conversation would have been…I was ticked off. But I kept my cool and demanded my photo, since the Convention Center was ridiculously slow in processing my intake, which prevented me from seeing Pam on time.
Finally after much complaining a photographer escorted me to Pam’s booth and I was introduced to her. She was ever so gracious and kind. She shook my hand and for what felt like an eternity we stood arm in arm and I had my photo taken. I took a minute to gain my composure and I walked over to her booth and had a chance to talk to her about The Museum of UnCut Funk (MOUF), it’s mission and how we would love to do an interview with her. She expressed an interest and gave us a timeframe that would be good. I thanked her again and proceeded to pick up my Pam Grier and Billy Dee Williams photos.
There was as lag in time to pick up photos so we visited Richard Roundtree at his booth. He too was kind and gracious. I told him about the MOUF and our collection, especially items related to him and his body of work. Like Pam Grier he expressed interest in being interviewed. My photo of Richard will be mailed to me due to a back log in processing photos.
Billy Dee Williams was more reserved and since I had taken a photo with him earlier I introduced myself and shared with him our mission at The Museum of UnCut Funk. He too took my card and like the others seemed interested in an interview.
I can’t tell you if or when these interviews will come to fruition. We will certainly do our best to make them happen. But what I will tell you is that yesterday was one of the best days I have had while pursuing my passion.
Sista ToFunky
Clarice Taylor, the actress and comedian best known for playing grandmothers on “The Cosby Show” and “Sesame Street,” has died at the age of 93. Taylor died of congestive heart failure in her home in Englewood, N.J., on Monday, said her son, William Taylor.
During a career that spanned five decades, Taylor performed on radio and TV, in film and on stage, including in the original Broadway cast of the musical “The Wiz.”
Her films included the 1971 Clint Eastwood thriller “Play Misty for Me” and, besides “The Cosby Show,” she had another recurring TV role on “Sesame Street,” where she was grandmother to the character David.
Both Taylor and Earle Hyman, who played her husband on “The Cosby Show,” received Emmy nominations in 1986 for their roles as Anna and Russell Huxtable, parents of Bill Cosby’s character and grandparents of the Huxtable youngsters.
While touring with “The Wiz,” she roomed with Phylicia Rashad, who played Cosby’s wife on the “The Cosby Show.” She told The Associated Press in a 1987 interview that she decided to audition to play Rashad’s mother.
The Wiz broadway window card is a part of The Museum of UnCut Funk Collection
“I spent three hours making up my face and putting on my tight clothes,” Taylor said. “I didn’t want to look too old to be her mother.” She didn’t get the part.
Later, however, she was asked to audition for the part of Cosby’s mother. “I put on a gray wig, a bandana over that, flat-heeled shoes and a long dress with no shape to it,” she told the AP. “Bill saw through my act. I read five lines and he said, ‘If you’re going to go through all of this – you’ve got the part.’”
In 1987, she played the pioneering black female comedian Jackie “Moms” Mabley in an original off-Broadway play, “Moms,” with future “Law & Order” regular S. Epatha Merkerson also in the cast. Taylor later toured as Mabley in a one-woman show.
The Clarice Taylor as “Moms” Broadway window cards is a part of The Museum of UnCut Funk Collection
She also played the role of Addaperle, the Good Witch of the North, in the stage version of “The Wiz,” which opened in 1975. Taylor began her acting career with Harlem’s American Negro Theatre, and in the late 1960s was one of the original members of the New York-based Negro Ensemble Company.
Born Sept. 20, 1917, in Buckingham County, Va., she grew up in Harlem, where she skipped school to watch the sassy comedian Moms Mabley perform at the Apollo Theater. Taylor told the AP she portrayed Mabley in “Moms” because she was determined that the world not forget her. “She was so special and so wonderful,” she said in the 1987 interview. “Here’s a Black woman born in the last century who made a living at her craft. She never cleaned house or picked cotton. She went through a lot but she stuck with it.”
Taylor is survived by two sons, William and James, and four grandchildren.
Source: Associated Press
Emmy, Tony and Oscar winning production, set and costume designer Tony Walton (All That Jazz, Mary Poppins and Broadway’s Pippin just to name a few) shared his Oscar nominated set and costume work for the 1978 film The Wiz. The film was the adaptation of the hit Broadway musical of the seventies and the Black version of the L. Frank Baum classic The Wizard of Oz. Directed by Sidney Lumet, it featured Diana Ross as Dorothy, Nipsey Russell as the Tinman, Richard Pryor as The Wiz and a young Michael Jackson as The Scarecrow. Lena Horne played Glinda the Good Witch.
Universal spent a record $24 million on the production, making the movie the must expensive musical made up until that time. Studio execs were worried Ross was too old to effectively play Dorothy and rumor had it she won the coveted role by promising to deliver the pop sensation as The Scarecrow. Sadly Jackson’s dance skills were never fully utilized in the film. And even sadder for his fans, he had only one solo number, “You Can’t Win” which was at the film’s end.
The multi-talented Walton designed the sets along with Philip Rosenberg, creating a yellow brick road out of Congoleum at the Astoria studios in Queens. Apparently the flooring company came out with a style called Yellow Brick Road in their collection shortly after the film premiered. Many of the film’s special effects were created with matte paintings, as evidenced by the Manhattan skyline scenes below, by the Hollywood master Albert Whitlock.
The 1970s produced the film genre that would become known as ‘Blaxploitation’. These films were made specifically with an urban Black audience in mind. These movies were larger-than-life, action-packed and full of funk and soul music. These films also incorporated progressive social and political commentary. From Pam Grier to Bill Cosby, check out who delved into this genre and what the actors have been doing since the 1970s.
Pam Grier’s fame grew in the 1970s when she starred in several Blaxploitation films like ‘Coffy’ and ‘Foxy Brown’. Grier revitalized her career and paid homage to the ’70s genre in 1997 when she appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Jackie Brown.’ Her role as Jackie Brown earned her a Golden Globe nod for Best Actress.
Grier played Louis Williams in ‘Mars Attacks!’ in 1996 and Carol in ‘Holy Smoke’ in 1999. Grier’s acting resume is extensive and lately she’s hit the television screen. She played Kit Porter on ‘The L Word’ for 5 years and appeared in ‘Smallville’ in 2010.
Richard Roundtree is known as a leading man in many Blaxploitation movies. His private detective role as John Shaft, in the movie ‘Shaft’ in 1971) earned him notoriety and sequels in ‘Shaft’s Big Score’ and ‘Shaft in Africa’. He even starred in a television series dedicated to the character.
Roundtree played John Shaft’s uncle in the film interpration of ‘Shaft’ in 2000 and more recently and the character Mr. Shaw on ‘Desperate Housewives’ in 2005. In 2011 he popped up on an episode of ‘The Mentalist,’ though he’s better known for roles in the movies ‘Se7en’ and ‘George of the Jungle.’
Football legend, Jim Brown, is not only known for being one of the greatest players in the NFL, but he was also an integral part of the Blaxploitation genre. Pictured here, Brown played Gunn in ‘Black Gunn’ (1972). The star of the movie, Brown plays an LA nightclub owner who’s after the mob.
Brown is known for his role as Robert Jefferson in ‘The Dirty Dozen’ (1967). After the ’70s, he appeared in numerous films like ‘Mars Attacks!’ alongside Pam Grier and ‘Any Given Sunday.’ But he wasn’t the only NFL star to hit the big screen during this decade.
Fred ‘The Hammer’ Williamson starred in ‘Black Caesar’ in 1973, paying homage to previous gangster movies. The former defensive back also hit the big screen in the ’70s with ‘Black Eye’ and ‘MASH.’ In 1973, Williamson posed nude for ‘Playgirl’ magazine.
Since his Blaxploitation days, Williamson has continued his acting career. He starred as Nick in ‘Vigilante’ in ’83 and was in ‘From Dust Til Dawn’ in 1996. A well balanced actor, Williamson’s appeared in films like ‘Starsky & Hutch’ and ‘Pushing Daisies.’ He’s also done work on the other side of the camera. He produced and directed ‘Mean Johnny Barrows’ and has gone on to produce over a dozen more films.
Judy Pace starred as Iris in ‘Cotton Comes to Harlem’ (1970). A prominent actress during the decade, Pace has come to be known as one of the most beautiful women to ever appear on screen.
After being dubbed the personification of Black Beauty in the ’70s, Pace’s career continued to thrive. She’s been in dozen’s of TV series from ‘Kung Fu’ to ‘Sanford and Son’ to ‘Bewitched.’
Nichelle Nichols popped up during the ’70s in ‘Truck Turner.’ Her career began before this decade, when she played Lt. Uhura on ‘Star Trek.’ She became one of the first black women to be featured in a strong role on a TV series. Her inter-racial kiss with William Shatner’s Captain Kirk character earned her even more notoriety.
Since her role- alongside Isaac Hayes in ‘Truck Turner,’ Nichols has continued to act. Recently she was on the series, ‘Heroes’ in the role of Nana Dawson. She’s also been in numerous ‘Star Trek’ spin-offs. Nichols has volunteered time and worked for NASA.
Billy Dee Williams starred in two Blaxploitation films, ‘The Take’ and ‘Hit!’ in the early ’70s. But, he’s most widely known for his role of Lando Calrissian in numerous ‘Star Wars’ installments. In the intense film, ‘Hit!,’ Williams plays a federal agent, out to destroy a drug ring. He is also known for his great work in Lady Sings the Blues and Mohgany starring Diana Ross.
Williams played Brady Lloyd in the 80′s series ‘Dynasty’, and has had recurring roles on ‘General Hospital’ and ‘Dairy of a Single Mom.’ He also recently made an appearance on ‘White Collar’.
Trina Parks popped up in the ’70s as an actress with a few roles. Most notably, she played Syreena in ‘Darktown Strutters’ and Thumper in ‘Diamonds are Forever.’
Parks hasn’t acted since the ’70s, but her claim to fame remains the fact that she was the first Black woman to be a Bond Girl. In 2002, she was part of the ‘Bond Girls Are Forever’ TV documentary.
Jim Kelly appeared in a handful of Blaxploitation films in the ’70s. They include ‘Black Belt Jones’ (top l.) and ‘Enter the Dragon’ (bottom l.). In ‘Black Belt,’ Kelly used his martial arts skills to play a Kung Fu expert who kicks apart the Mafia. He became a top martial arts film star of the early ’70s with his distinguishable, funky Afro hairstyle.
In ‘Enter the Dragon,’ Kelly appeared alongside Bruce Lee. But his roles since the Blaxploitation days have been limited. Kelly had a small role in the series, ‘Highway to Heaven’ and he popped up in ‘Ultimatum’ in 1994.
Antonio Fargas was a big name back in the Blaxploitation days. He had roles in ‘Cleopatra Jones’ and ‘Foxy Brown.’ Fargas became best known for his role as Huggy Bear in the ‘Starsky and Hutch’ series. He also appeared in two Wayans brothers parodies, ‘I’m Gonna Git You Sucka’ (1988) and ‘Don’t Be a Menance’ (1996). Lately he’s appeared in a recurring role, Doc, on ‘Everybody Hates Chris’ and he’s had one-off roles on series like ‘Brothers’ and ‘Numb3rs.’
Melvin ‘Block’ Van Peebles is a well known director from the ’70s, his most popular film being ‘Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.’ This movie helped create the Blaxploitation genre.
Melvin Van Peebles is also an actor and has appeared as Elmo in ‘Black, White and Blues’ and on ‘All My Children’ as Melvin Woods. His son is actor Mario Van Peebles, started his acting career in ‘Sweet Sweetback’s.’
The younger Van Peebles appeared in ’The Cotton Club’ during the 1980′s. He is better known as Malcolm X from ‘Ali’ and Samuel Woods on ‘All My Children.’ In 2003, the father and son teamed up again to produce and star in ‘Baadasssss!’.
Source: Roseanne Salvatore and Partrick Montero at www.nydailynews.com
Janet MacLachlan, who played the compassionate schoolteacher in Martin Ritt’s Oscar-nominated “Sounder” (1972), has died at age 77. A highly respected stage, film and television actress, Maclachlan was known for a serious, no-nonsense style that led her to be often cast as a judge, nurse, doctor, psychiatrist, teacher or social worker. She was highly visible during the transitional period of the 1960s and 70s, when African-Americans fought against negative stereotypes on screen and began to make significant inroads in front of and behind the cameras.
MacLachlan died Monday, October 11 at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Hollywood. She had been admitted two days earlier suffering from cardiac symptoms, family members said.
She was born Janet Angel MacLachlan in Harlem on August 27, 1933, to James and Ruby MacLachlan, both Jamaican immigrants. She attended the all-girl Julia Richman High School and excelled in math, graduating in 1950. According to a New York Times interview, it was in high school that Maclachlan “felt black” for the first time, as there were only three other African-American students on campus. “It was very strange because I had come from an all-black school and I didn’t know how to deal with it,” she said.
MacLachlan’s first acting experience was in a Harlem Boys Club play, as a teen. Later, while she was attending Hunter College, she studied drama in a private class taught by Sidney Poitier, who instilled in her not only the importance of refining her craft but also of developing a point of view. “He had a tendency to lecture me because I had no attitudes and no beliefs and I was very wishy-washy,” she once recalled. “He wanted me to help find out who I was and not to let people tell me what to do.”
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1955, MacLachlan worked at clerical jobs while studying acting at the Harlem YMCA, the Herbert Berghof Acting Studio and the Little Theatre of Harlem. After a few years she had worked her way up to become an executive secretary and office manager for a New York public relations firm, but the business world was unsatisfying and she felt the calling of the stage. In 1961, MacLachlan impulsively gave up her job and its then-decent salary of $175 per week and traded it for a $5-a-week stipend to understudy Cicely Tyson in two productions simultaneously: “Moon on a Rainbow Shawl” and Jean Genet’s controversial off-Broadway play, “The Blacks: A Clown Show.” After Tyson’s departure from “The Blacks,” MacLachlan played the role of Virtue, the prostitute, for six weeks, working alongside such acclaimed and established actors as James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Jr., Maya Angelou and Roscoe Lee Browne. Suddenly her acting career was off and running. That same year she appeared in the parody “Raisin’ Hell in the Son” and was called the “most memorable member of the cast” by a New York Times reviewer.
Robert Hooks, who portrayed Deodatus Village (a role first played by James Earl Jones) in “The Blacks,” remembered MacLachlan as “…a brilliant woman and a great individual and super talent. I always admired her acting ability, and just as a strong black woman she was there all the way. Not necessarily a feminist but just a strong black woman with strong beliefs about feminism. There was a pridefulness in her work, and she refused to do the silly stuff.
“She played the role of Virtue, a role that Cicely Tyson originated, and that’s when I got so taken with her,” Hooks continued. “It was probably the meatiest role she’s ever done, because she was one of those actresses who never really got the big shot, the Cicely Tyson-type shot as an artist, but when she did do the roles she mastered them. We had a wonderful time, because most of our scenes were together. I witnessed the depth of her character study, and I was right there on the stage with her when she was doing it.”
MacLachlan made her Broadway debut in December 1962 in Peter Feibleman’s “Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright” at the Booth Theater; the cast featured an array of established and up-and-coming black thespians from the New York stage, including Roscoe Lee Browne, Al Freeman Jr., Rudy Challenger, Ellen Holly, Diana Sands, Claudia McNeil, as well as Tyson and Hooks. MacLachlan then spent time with the repertory company at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, honing her craft by appearing in “Hamlet,” “Death of a Salesman” and “The Miser.”
By 1964 she had moved to Hollywood and was signed by Universal as a contract player. MacLachlan had one-shot parts on TV series such as “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” “Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater,” “The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.” and “The Fugitive.” Through the late 1960s and early 70s she appeared on “The Invaders,” “The FBI,” “Ironside,” “The Mod Squad,” The Name of the Game” and other series. Two of her best TV roles, both of which aired in 1967, are an African girl in an episode of “I Spy” with Bill Cosby, which was shot on location in Greece, and a first-season episode of “Star Trek” in which MacLachlan played an Enterprise crewmember named Lt. Charlene Masters.
MacLachlan made her feature film debut in “Up Tight” (1968), a remake of John Ford’s “The Informer” with the Irish Republican Army’s struggle against the British replaced by a faction of the black power movement in a Cleveland ghetto. This politically charged, controversial film was released shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (it begins with documentary footage of King’s funeral procession) and depicted the struggle between groups advocating nonviolent and armed resistance. It was the first American-made film by director Jules Dassin since his blacklisting and exile in Europe, and its cast was a virtual who’s-who of black Hollywood in the late 1960s, including Ruby Dee, Roscoe Lee Browne, Frank Silvera, Max Julien, and Raymond St. Jacques. MacLachlan played Jeannie, girlfriend of the leader of a militant gang (St. Jacques).
Dick Anthony Williams (actor, “Up Tight”): “She was a great teacher and a solid, grounded actress. We had great, great respect for each other. We’d been in a number of things together: “Up Tight,” “The Sophisticated Gents” and other things. She quietly went about her work; she didn’t go for a great deal of fanfare like some actors. She was a very fine actress and fine person, and she’ll be terribly missed.”
Although MacLachlan was not always outspoken about her political beliefs, she did not hesitate to express her views on the status of African-Americans in Hollywood. In a 1968 interview with Soul magazine, she said, “There really hasn’t been, say on television, a truthful honest black character on any show in a continuing role … 99 percent of the writers are white. And they don’t really know. So what they are doing is writing white roles for black people. The only way to correct that is to have black writers.”
During the early 1970s, MacLachlan avoided the Blaxploitation pictures that were in fashion and instead focused on film roles reflecting her desire to bring credible African-American characters to the screen. In “Change of Mind” (1969), a bizarre sci-fi-drama wherein a white man’s brain is transplanted into a black man’s skull, she played the dead black man’s confused and conflicted widow. In “Halls of Anger” (1970) she was Lorraine Nash, a no-nonsense high school teacher who counsels a fellow educator (Calvin Lockhart) whose classroom is a tempest of racial tensions. “…tick… tick… tick…” (1970) had MacLachlan playing a rather thankless role as the wife of a black sheriff (Jim Brown) in a small, racially divided southern town. “The Man” (1972), based on an Irving Wallace novel and scripted by Rod Serling, cast MacLachlan as the rebellious daughter of the first African-American president of the United States, played by James Earl Jones.
Paul Bogart (director, “Halls of Anger”): “She was a serious actress, and she didn’t have a lot of attitude, which was easy for black actors at that time to have. She was devoted to her craft. All I know is that I liked her a lot, and I depended on her and I was grateful when I had her.”
Contributor: Steve Ryfle
The Movie Posters featured in this article are from the archives of The Museum of UnCut Funk.
Comedy has always been a tool for artists to ease the pain of social issues, stereotypes and racial injustice. It has also brought front and center the positive transformation of pain into humor. Perhaps no ethnic group has displayed this with such commercial success as Blacks, but this transformation has not come without great struggle and criticism from forces both internal and external of their cultural experience. It is without dispute, Black humor has left a distinct impression not only in our society but in the greater world experience as well.
Please visit The Museum of UnCut Funk to see our current exhibition on Black Comedians who paved they way for today’s comics.
Eartha Kitt established herself in film, theater, cabaret, music and on television. By the time she was 20, Eartha was a featured dancer and vocalist in the Katherine Dunham Dance Company Troupe and was touring Europe where she was seen by Orson Wells who was
Eartha Kitt and James Dean circa 1955 At Katherine Dunham studios.
quoted as calling her ”the most exciting woman in the world”. Wells hired her to play Helen of Troy in his production of Dr. Faust. When she returned to the States she was seen by Leonard Stillman, who included her in his production of New Faces of 1952. The run lasted for a year and ended up leading to her landing recording contracts. Some of her more famous songs were Love for Sale, I Want to Be Evil and Santa Baby.
Kitt made her film debut in 1957 in The Mark of the Hawk with Sidney Poitier. Her other movies during this time were Anna Lucasta with Sammy Davis, Jr. and St Louis Blues with Nat King Cole. During this time Kitt also published her first autobiography called Thursday’s Child. Then in 1967, Kitt became the third actress to play Catwoman after Julie Newmar was unable to continue for the third season of Batman.
In 1968, during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kitt encountered a significant professional setback after she made anti-war statements during a White House luncheon. Kitt was invited to a White House luncheon and was asked by Lady Bird Johnson about the Vietnam War. She replied: “You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot.” The remark reportedly caused Mrs. Johnson to burst into tears and led to the derailment of Ms. Kitt’s career. The public reaction to Kitt’s statements was extreme, both pro and con. Publicly ostracized in the US, she devoted her energies to performances in Europe and Asia. After which she was pretty much banned from performing in the United States and ended up having to travel overseas for work. Eartha didn’t return to the States until 1974 with a concert in Carneige Hall. In 1976 she published her second autobiography called Alone With Me. Her third autobiography was published in 1989, I’m Still Here: Confessions of a Sex Kitten.
In 2001, she released her fitness and positive attitude book called Rejuvenate (It’s Never Too Late). Eartha’s first love was always live theater so over the next few years she did a lot of Broadway shows such as George Wolfe’s The Wild Party, National Tours The Wizard of Oz and Rogers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella along with a few appearances in movies like Boomerang with Eddie Murphy and Harriet The Spy. She also did voice over work in animated shows like The Emperor’s New Groove, The Emperor’s New Groove 2: Kronk’s New Groove, The Emperor’s New School, The Jungle Book and My Life As A Teenage Robot to name a few.
On December 25, 2008, Eartha Kitt passed away at home from colon cancer, leaving behind her daughter Kitt from her marriage to William MacDonald from 1960 – 1964 and 2 grandchildren.
Contributors: New York Times
Rosalind Cash was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on December 31, 1938. As a young woman, she took off with only $20 in her pocket to seek her fame and fortune in New York City. At first things were difficult: “I had a cold-water one-room apartment in Harlem sharing a kitchen I didn’t dare use because of the rats,” she told The Guardian. But Cash attended the City College of New York, and managed to ferret out the first stirrings of independent black theater in the city. She made her stage debut in 1958 in a production at the Harlem YMCA, performing in a play by Langston Hughes called Soul Gone Home.
In 1968 she landed a role in Washington, D.C., in a production of The Great White Hope, a play about the career of Black boxer Jack Johnson. The part was a choice one, but at the same time an even better opportunity opened up: a slot with the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC), a pioneering organization devoted to presenting plays by Black writers and furthering the careers of Black actors and theater personnel. Cash pulled out of the Washington production, having to turn over two weeks’ salary to the theater involved, so that she could return to New York and join the NEC. She was one of the company’s founding members.
Cash emerged as a star of the company, appearing in several productions her first year, including a play called Kongi’s Harvest by the South African writer. The following year she played the lead in a production of Lonne Elder’s Ceremonies of Dark Old Men, one of the most-performed Black theatrical works of the day. Cash would reprise the role in a 1975 television version of the play. She continued to appear with the NEC through the 1970s, and also landed high-profile roles with other theatrical organizations; in 1973 she took on the role of Goneril in Shakespeare’s King Lear in a New York Shakespeare Festival production. That role, too, she would later play on national television.
Hollywood had its eye on the talented young actress, however, and the focus of Cash’s efforts gradually shifted in that direction. After a small part in 1971′s Klute, she broke through with the female lead role in the science-fiction action thriller The Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston. The role, in one of the first Hollywood action films to feature a Black lead character, was one that several leading Black actresses of the day had set their sights on. Cash not only won the role, but blew audiences away with her powerful performance. “Her first appearance in the film is ,” noted writer Stephen Bourne in The Independent. “Strong and aggressive, she looked ready to steal the film form under Heston’s nose…” The second half of the film, unfortunately, toned down Cash’s character. Still, she was named to the annual Top Ten Stars of Tomorrow list compiled by the industry firm Quigley Publications, the first Black named since the list had been created in 1941.
For several years, other lead roles came Cash’s way. In the Black-oriented murder mystery Melinda (1972), she had, in the words of film historian, “her best role of this period as a woman on the edge, holding on for dear life, struggling to keep a relationship with a man who hardly seemed her equal.” She also landed roles in mainstream hits like The New Centurions (1972) and Uptown Saturday Night (1974), but these came at a price. Cash was cast as a good-natured ; the role did not appeal to her, but like other serious Black actresses of the 1970s, she found that parts suited to her talents were very hard to come by.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Cash turned her attention to television, winning guest slots on such series as “Starsky and Hutch,” “Police Woman,” “Kojak,” and “Hill Street Blues.” In 1977 she appeared opposite O.J. Simpson in the made-for-television movie A Killing Affair, in which Simpson played a police officer who has an affair with a white coworker. She chose her film roles carefully, appearing mostly in projects that she found significant. In Wrong Is Right (1982), she played the first Black woman to become U.S. Vice President. That year she was also featured in Sister, Sister, a film written by poet Maya Angelou that drew on her full range as an actress perhaps more than any other; she co-starred with and Irene Cara in a story of the reunion of three adult sisters. Sister, Sister earned Cash a nomination for an NAACP Image Award, as did Go Tell It On the Mountain (1986), based on a novel by James Baldwin.
Cash gradually gained greater recognition in the late 1980s and early 1990s, winning induction into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1992. Television work continued to come steadily, with appearances on The Cosby Show, thirtysomething, and other series. The onetime cold-water-flat-dweller finally found steady employment with a recurring role on the daytime soap opera General Hospital, on which she played the of an extended Black family. On October 31, 1995 Rosalind died of cancer at the age of 56 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Rosalind’s Filmography:
Klute, 1971.
The Omega Man, 1971.
The New Centurions, 1972.
Melinda, 1972.
Hickey and Boggs, 1972.
The All American Boy, 1973.
Amazing Grace, 1974.
Uptown Saturday Night, 1974.
Cornbread, Earl and Me, 1975.
Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, 1975 (made for television).
Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde, 1976.
The Monkey Hustle, 1977.
A Killing Affair, 1977 (made for television).
The Class of Miss MacMichael, 1979.
Wrong Is Right, 1982.
Sister, Sister, 1982 (made for television).
Go Tell It On the Mountain, 1984 (made for television).
The Offspring, 1987.
Forced March, 1990.
Second Coming, 1992.
A Dangerous Affair, 1995 (made for television).
Tales from the Hood, 1995.
The Movie Posters are from the collection of The Museum of UnCut Funk.
Juanita Moore started her acting career in the early ’50s, a time during which very few Black actresses were given roles of substance in major-studio films. Fortunately, Juanita’s roles began improving as Hollywood tentatively developed a social consciousness toward the end of the decade. In 1959, she received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in Imitation of Life (1959), a glossy updating of a once-controversial Fannie Hurst novel about racial inequity.
Within the next decade Hollywood underwent several sociological upheavals, and Juanita Moore was one of the beneficiaries; she became a fixture in Blaxploitation films of the ’70s. She appeared in the following films:
Uptight 1969 is from the collection of The Museum of UnCut Funk
The Skin Game 1971 is from the collection of The Museum of UnCut Funk
The Mack 1973 is from the collection of The Museum of UnCut Funk
Fox Style 1973
Thomasine and Bushrod 1974 is from the collection of The Museum of UnCut Funk
The Zebra Killer 1974 is from the collection of The Museum of UnCut Funk
Abby 1974 is from the collection of The Museum of UnCut Funk
The Museum of UnCut Funk salutes Juanita Moore, a Blaxploitation Icon.
Lena Horne, whose striking beauty and magnetic sex appeal often overshadowed her talent and artistry, was remarkably candid about the underlying reason for her success: “I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept,” she once said. “I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.”
In the 1940s, Horne was one of the first black performers hired to sing with a major white band, the first to play the Copacabana nightclub in New York City and when she signed with MGM, she was among a handful of black actors to have a contract with a major Hollywood studio.
In 1943, MGM Studios loaned her to 20th Century-Fox to play the role of Selina Rogers in the all-black movie musical “Stormy Weather.” Her rendition of the title song became a major hit and her most famous tune.
Stormy Weather Movie Poster is from the private collection of Mr. Gordon Bussey
On screen, on recordings and in nightclubs and concert halls, Horne was at home vocally with a wide musical range, from blues and jazz to the sophistication of Rodgers and Hart in such songs as “The Lady Is a Tramp” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.” In 1942′s “Panama Hattie,” her first movie with MGM, she sang Cole Porter‘s “Just One of Those Things,” winning critical acclaim.
In her first big Broadway success, as the star of “Jamaica” in 1957, reviewer Richard Watts Jr. called her “one of the incomparable performers of our time.” Songwriter Buddy de Sylva dubbed her “the best female singer of songs.”
But Horne was perpetually frustrated with the public humiliation of racism.
“I was always battling the system to try to get to be with my people. Finally, I wouldn’t work for places that kept us out. … It was a damn fight everywhere I was, every place I worked, in New York, in Hollywood, all over the world,” she said in Brian Lanker’s book “I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America.”
While at MGM, she starred in the all-black “Cabin in the Sky,” in 1943, but in most of her other movies, she appeared only in musical numbers that could be cut in the racially insensitive South without affecting the story. These included the Red Skelton comedy “I Dood It,” “Thousands Cheer” and “Swing Fever,” all in 1943; “Broadway Rhythm” in 1944; and “Ziegfeld Follies” in 1946.
Bronze Venus is from the collection of The Museum of UnCut Funk
One of the most glaring exclusions, though, was the MGM remake of “Show Boat.” Horne, who had appeared in the role of Julie in a “Show Boat” scene in a 1946 movie about Jerome Kern, seemed a logical choice for the 1951 movie, but the part went to a white actress, Ava Gardner, who did not sing.
Cabin In The Sky is from the collection of Separate Cinema
“Metro’s cowardice deprived the musical of one of the great singing actresses,” film historian John Kobal wrote.
“She was a very angry woman,” film critic-author-documentarian Richard Schickel, who worked with Horne on her 1965 autobiography, said Monday.
“It’s something that shaped her life to a very high degree. She was a woman who had a very powerful desire to lead her own life, to not be cautious and to speak out. And she was a woman, also, who felt in her career that she had been held back by the issue of race. So she had a lot of anger and disappointment about that. I’m talking particularly about her movie career.”
Early in her career, Horne cultivated an aloof style out of self-preservation, becoming “a woman the audience can’t reach and therefore can’t hurt,” she once said.
Later, she embraced activism, breaking loose as a voice for civil rights and as an artist. In the last decades of her life, she rode a new wave of popularity as a revered icon of American popular music.
Her 1981 one-woman Broadway show, “Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music,” won a special Tony Award. In it, the 64-year-old singer used two renditions — one straight and the other gut-wrenching — of “Stormy Weather” to give audiences a glimpse of the spiritual odyssey of her five-decade career.
Broadway Window Card from the collection of The Museum of UnCut Funk
A sometimes savage critic, John Simon, wrote that she was “ageless … tempered like steel, baked like clay, annealed like glass; life has chiseled, burnished, refined her.”
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was born in Brooklyn on June 30, 1917, to a leading family in black society. Her daughter,Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote in her 1986 book “The Hornes: An American Family” that among their relatives was Frank Horne, an adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
She was largely raised by her grandparents as her mother, Edna Horne, pursued a career in show business. Lena Horne dropped out of high school at age 16 and joined the chorus line at the Cotton Club, the fabledHarlem night spot where the entertainers were black and the clientele white. She left the club in 1935 to tour with Noble Sissle‘s orchestra, billed as Helena Horne, the name she continued using when she joined Charlie Barnet’s white orchestra in 1940.
A movie offer from MGM came when she headlined a show at the Little Troc nightclub with the Katherine Dunham dancers in 1942.
Her success led some blacks to accuse Horne of trying to “pass” in a white world with her light complexion.Max Factor even developed an “Egyptian” makeup shade especially for the budding actress while she was at MGM. But she refused to go along with the studio’s efforts to portray her as an exotic Latin American.
“I don’t have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become,” Horne once said. “I’m me, and I’m like nobody else.”
Horne was only 2 when her grandmother, a prominent member of the Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, enrolled her in the NAACP. But she avoided activism until 1945 when she was entertaining at an Army base and saw German prisoners of war sitting up front while black American soldiers were consigned to the rear.
That pivotal moment channeled her anger into something useful.
She got involved in various social and political organizations and — along with her friendship with singer-actor-activist Paul Robeson — got her name onto blacklists during the red-hunting McCarthy era.
By the 1960s, Horne was one of the most visible celebrities in the civil rights movement, once throwing a lamp at a customer who made a racial slur in a Beverly Hills restaurant and, in 1963, joining 250,000 others in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. Horne also spoke at a rally that year with another civil rights leader, Medgar Evers, just days before his assassination.
The next decade brought her first to a low point, then to a fresh burst of artistry. She appeared in her last movie in 1978, playing Glinda the Good in “The Wiz,” directed by her son-in-law, Sidney Lumet.
Horne had married MGM music director Lennie Hayton, a white man, in Paris in 1947 after her first overseas engagements in France and England. An earlier marriage to Louis J. Jones had ended in divorce in 1944 after producing daughter Gail and a son, Teddy.
In the 2009 biography “Stormy Weather,” author James Gavin recounts that when Horne was asked by a lover why she had married a white man, she replied: “To get even with him.”
Her father, her son and her husband, Hayton, all died in 1970 and 1971, and the grief-stricken singer secluded herself, refusing to perform or even see anyone but her closest friends. One of them, comedian Alan King, took months persuading her to return to the stage, with results that surprised her.
“I looked out and saw a family of brothers and sisters,” she said. “It was a long time, but when it came I truly began to live.”
And she discovered that time had mellowed her bitterness.
“I wouldn’t trade my life for anything,” she said, “because being black made me understand.”
Contributor: The Associated Press
The Museum of UnCut Funk: Rest in peace Ms. Lena you will be missed but your spirit will live on.
Orfeu Nefro is part of the collection of The Museum of UnCut Funk.
Marpessa Dawn was directed by Marcel Camus and based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, “Orfeu Negro,” as it is called in Portuguese, brings together an innocent country girl, played by Ms. Dawn, and a trolley car motorman and gifted guitarist, portrayed by Mr. Mello. They meet amid the frenzy of Rio’s carnival and are soon swaying to a provocative samba among the crowds. But Eurydice is stalked by a man in a skeleton costume. Eventually, Orpheus finds her in the morgue. In the end, bearing her body in his arms, he falls to his death from a cliff.
“Black Orpheus” became renowned for its soundtrack by the bossa nova legends Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá, with songs like “Manhã de Carnaval” and “A Felicidade.” It won the Palme d’Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for best foreign film in 1960.
Gypsy Marpessa Dawn Menor was born near Pittsburgh on Jan. 3, 1934. As a teenager, she moved to England, where she had bit parts on television, and later to France, where she worked as a governess and danced and sang in nightclubs.
After her role in “Black Orpheus,” Ms. Dawn appeared in several less successful movies and on French television. She also starred in several plays, including “Chérie Noire,” a comedy that toured France, Belgium, Switzerland, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.
Marpessa Dawn, died on Aug. 25, 2008 at her home in Paris. She was 74. The cause was a heart attack, her daughter Dhyana Kluth said. Ms. Dawn’s death followed by 41 days that of her “Black Orpheus” co-star, Breno Mello, who played the title role.
Without question, one of the most breathtaking beauties to emerge out of the 70′s ”Blaxploitation” era was actress Vonetta McGee. This lovely sister, born in San Francisco on January 14, 1945, possessed the complete package; looks, talent and determination which should have made her a marquee name in Hollywood. Instead, this tantalizing, tan, and talented lady found herself in in the land of Blaxploitation, where her some would considerable her talents were laid to waste.
Although the air was thick with civil and social issues, still, a beauty such as Vonetta’s would rarely go unnoticed. She was encouraged to participate in the Miss Bronze California beauty contest, where she walked away with the crown. A film career followed and Vonetta took off for Europe where she earned small roles in several low-budget movies. She returned to the States in 1969 and won a small part in the film The Lost Man, which starred Black screen icon, Sidney Poitier. The film got her some notice, but it would be three long years before she would get her first major movie role.
The Lost Man Movie Poster is a part of The Museum of UnCut Funk collection
In 1972, Vonetta was cast in the murder mystery Melinda, playing the title character. Although her part was small (she is murdered early on in the film), it was vital, earning her rave reviews from both the New York Times and Village Voice, which both proclaimed her “the most beautiful woman in film!”
Melinda Movie Poster is a part of The Museum of UnCut Funk collection
Over the next few years, Vonetta’s resume would fill up with leading lady roles in “blaxploitation classics” such as Blacula, Shaft in Africa and Detroit 9000. She was working steadily but the roles were far from challenging. More often than not, she was cast as the supportive, understanding girlfriend, whose primary lot in life was to look cute and not get in the way of their super-macho male co-stars. Whereas Pam Grier, at the same time, was cementing herself as Hollywood’s first Black Super-Woman, Vonetta was still waiting for the meaty role which would make her a household name. Ironically, she had lost an opportunity to play a super-heroine herself when the lead role in the 1973 film Cleopatra Jones, which was written by her then boyfriend, Max (Julien of The Mack fame), went instead to super model Tamara Dobson.
Blacula, Shaft in Africa and Detroit 9000 Movie Posters are a part of The Museum of UnCut Funk collection
Throughout the period, Vonetta continued to work but had yet to see an A-Budget script. In 1975, that changed when Clint Eastwood chose her to star alongside him in The Eiger Sanction, which he also directed. It was a bit of cinematic history, being that it was the first time a Black actress had been cast as the female lead in a mainstream Hollywood film opposite a white actor. Sadly, the role gave Vonetta about as much to do as her “Blaxploitation” films had, leaving her still knocking at stardom’s door by Hollywood’s standards.
More of Vonette’s Filmography in Movie Poster Art Form:
1968: Faustina
1984: Repo Man
1990: To Sleep with Anger
Contributor: Keith Brooks
The Museum of UnCut Funk is shocked and sadden at the passing of Vonetta McGee on July 9, 2010.
Some would argue that if there was one actress that threatened Pam Grier’s reign as America’s Black glamour queen of the 70′s, it was the bewitching bronze beauty Judy Pace. A former Ebony Magazine model, Judy was a modern day Queen Neferteri, with sexy bedroom eyes, pouting full lips, all gloriously displayed on a petite chestnut brown frame. In color-conscious Hollywood, Judy became one of the first dark-skinned dramatic actresses to be recognized as a sex-symbol. The Daily Variety once referred to her as The most beautiful woman in Hollywood.
Southern California born and bred, Judy was one of five kids raised in a middle-class Los Angeles environment. After graduating from high school, she attended Los Angeles City College where she majored in sociology. She was enticed away from college with an offer to join the prestigious Ebony Fashion Fair. Judy harbored no aspirations for a film career, until one pratically fell into her lap. Director William Castle (House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler ) saw her pictures in Ebony and chose her for a part in his film 13 Frightened Girls. Upon completion of the film, young Judy was now smitten with the Hollywood bug. She wanted to be taken seriously so she began taking acting classes, and performing in L.A. theater. Small parts on television and films developed, leading up to Judy’s first major role in the 1968 film Three in the Cellar.
Judy followed up her success in Three in the Attic with another groundbreaking role, this time on the small screen. After losing out to Diahann Carroll for the role of Julia, Judy won a nice consolation prize, landing a part on the popular 60′s night time soap Payton Place. Judy played Vickie Fletcher televison’s first Black female antagonist. Judy’s Vicki character was bad to the bone, manipulative, a liar, Vicki basically ruined the lives of just about everyone she touched. When Payton Placewas finally canceled in 1969, Judy was offered the lead in a new, “hip” made-for-TV film called The Young Lawyers. With a very ”60′s,” theme, Judy plays one of three young lawyers who take on cases dealing with the poor and oppressed. The film would later be turned into a weekly series, with Judy reprising her role.
Judy continued to shake things up on the big screen when in 1970, she starred in the first Hollywood produced and financed film directed by a Black, Cotton Comes to Harlem. Directed by actor Ossie Davis, Cotton Comes to Harlem was derived from the writings of Black novelist Chester Himes. Given a main stream budget, the film became the first Black action block buster paving the way for what would later be deemed Hollywood’s blaxploitation film era of the early 1970′s. In many ways Cotton Comes to Harlem was very stereotypical in its depiction of Blacks. However it succeds because it is able to give off that certain “coolness” and vibe which are indicative of the Black experience in America. The film is centered on charlatan black leader Rev. Deke O’Malley (played by Calvin Lockhart), who plans to steal the money of poor Blacks with a bogus back to Africa movement. With an all-star cast that included Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, Redd Foxx, Clevon Little and Lockhart, Judy more then held her own. Playing Iris, O’Malley’s sexy, hot-tempered girlfriend, Judy nearly steals the movie as she vamps, seduces, and even commits murder for the man she loves.
Cotton Come to Harlem Movie Poster is from the The Museum of UnCut Funk collection
Cotton Comes to Harlem appeared to be the vehicle that would launch Judy into superstardom, but in reality, it would be her last major role. The blaxploitation era she helped to usher in created roles for Black male actors, but very few films gave Black women, with the exception of Pam Grier, much to do. Hollywood completely missed the message of Cotton Comes to Harlem by assuming that Black audiences wanted shoot-em-up action flicks with Black super-heroes. In a nutshell, Black audiences wanted the same thing white audiences wanted, good movies.
Movie Poster art from Judy Pace Filmography:
1970: Three In The Cellar
1973: Cool Breeze
1972: Frogs
1973: The Slams
Cool Breeze and The Slams Movie Posters are from The Museum of UnCut Funk collection
Contributor: Keith Brooks
“She’s the Godmother of them all…The Baddest One-Chick Hit Squad that ever hit town!” So promised the 1973 promotional poster for the American International Pictures release of Coffy; whose star was a luscious afro-sporting, gun toting, buxom Nubian princess named Pam Grier.
The definitive sex symbol of the 1970′s, Pam single-handedly changed the image of females in film; from helpless victim to that of independent tough heroine. She was Wonder Woman without the red,white and blue tights. She was a female warrioress, who didn’t need to butch it up, when it was time to get mean (a la the shaved head Demi Moore in G.I. Jane), or take enough steroids to outflex Arnold (ya hear me Terminator’s Linda Hamilton). Pam was a bad ass avenging angel, who always exuded femininity, confidence and sexuality.
Born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Pam was the daughter of U.S. Air Force mechanic Clarence Grier and his nurse wife Gwendolyn. As a child, Pam lived the typical nomadic existence of a military brat. The family finally settled down in Denver, Colorado, where Pam graduated from high school. She later attended college as a pre-med student. Not a rich girl, Pam entered several local beauty contests to earn extra money for tuition. It was during one of the pageants, that she was spotted by a Hollywood film agent who felt she had the natural beauty to make it as an actress. Reluctant initially, Pam eventually gave in to the lure of potential stardom and moved to Los Angeles, California. Working as a switchboard operator to pay the bills, Pam enrolled at UCLA, where she began studying acting.
In 1970, Pam made her screen debut in the Russ Meyer bizarre cult classic, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. That film would however, lead to bigger roles in a series of exploitive B-Movies such as The Big Doll House, Women in Cages (both released in 1971), Hit Man(1972) and The Twilight People (1973). The films were pure camp, with plenty of naked bodies on display, Pam’s delicious curves being one of them. After three years in Hollywood, Pam Grier was nowhere near a marquee name, however she was beginning to make waves. While the movies she was featured in were Z-grade at best, her performances in these films made them at least watchable. It would be her next film, Coffy, which would carry her from wannabe to the Queen of American International Pictures (AIP).
Big Doll House, Women in Chains, Hitman and Twilight People Movie Posters are a part of The Museum of UnCut Funk collection
Coffy was a jagged-edged, low-budget film about a nurse, who after witnessing her sister becomes strung out on drugs, metamorphoses into a single-minded vigilante bent on waging a one-woman war against the city’s drug lords. Coffy is not afraid to use any and all means necessary, including her voluptuous body, to extract her bloody vengeance on the mobsters, crooked cops and dirty politicians behind the endless flow of narcotics on the streets. Many Hollywood film critics quickly wrote Coffy off as cheap, exploitative B-movie fare. However, what they failed to factor into the equation was the effect this unexpected keg of dynamite named Pam Grier would have on her audiences. Despite the paper thin plot, Pam danced through the role of Coffy with such conviction and fire, that you find it impossible to not only enjoy her performance, but believe it as well. In the hands of a lesser actress, the film’s shallowness would have been exploited in droves. However, Pam had the grittiness, sex appeal and toughness of mind to ensure that in a forgettable film, she was definitely not a forgettable actress.
“Coffy” is from The Museum of UnCut Funk collection
Pam continued down her path to stardom, recreating her Super Soul Sister role several times in films such as Foxy Brown and The Arena which were both released in 1974, followed by Sheba Baby, Bucktown and Friday Foster the following year. Unfortunately, the quality of the films continued to be taken from the so-called blaxploitation fountain that flowed freely out of Hollywood. Still, it was hard to deny her obvious feminine charms and appeal. New York Magazine went so far as to dub her “Sex Goddess of the Seventies!” While Pam continued to build up a strong (predominately male) audience; her radical film image had not yet attracted a female following. In fact, Pam became the object of criticism from some feminists, as well as from the Black community. Women in the seventies, particularly Black women, had a hard time accepting and identifying with Pam’s gun toting, blouse dropping, sharp tongue super-heroines. The Black media also found it difficult to anoint the brazen Ms. Grier as the successor to Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge. Instead of viewing her as a maverick, a glamour queen of the times, Blacks turned their back on Pam box office success, viewing her not as a trendsetter and pioneer, but as a cinematic freak show performer.
Foxy Brown, The Arena, Sheba Baby, Bucktown and Friday Foster Movie Posters are a part of The Museum of UnCut Funk collection
Pam’s image problems stemmed from the fact that she was walking on untested ground for Black women (and in many ways, women in general). In the history of American film, there had never been a Black woman portrayed with so much raw sexuality and fiery independence. Pam’s characters had male lovers, but they were never defined by them, nor controlled by them. Pam’s Coffy and Foxy Brown characters did not stay behind while their men (Jim Brown or Fred Williamson) stomped on the bad guys, nor were they the kind who would be just whisked up in a man’s arms and taken to bed. Pam’s Friday Foster and Sheba Baby characters were just as adept at butt kicking as any macho man on screen. And as far as the bedroom was concerned, she always had the final sayso on who entered it and when. Interestingly, among Pam’s few female admirers at the time, was Gloria Steinem, publisher of the ultra-feminist Ms. Magazine, who saw Pam for what she was, a strong independent woman; going so far as to label her “Super Sass!”
As the decade closed, American International Pictures, the house that Pam built, dropped her like a bad habit. Formerly one of the busiest actresses in Hollywood, Pam’s career became tepid at best. Her career would get a critical boost in the 1980’s for her mesmerizing performance as a psychotic hooker in 1981’s Fort Apache The Bronx. Unfortunately, roles such as that were few and far between for Pam. By the nineties, her career had practically come to a halt; it would take a maverick director, with a fetish for 70’s cult movies to bring the black queen of action films back to relevance. Quentin Tarantino had set Hollywood on fire with two violent, twisted, yet masterfully intriguing films; Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994). Combining the stylish film noir of the 1940’s and 50’s with the uninhibited, gore of 60’s-70’s grindhouse, Tarantino had injected Hollywood with much needed creativity and originality. His next masterpiece would be the resurrection of the blaxploitation film, and to do this, Tarantino knew he needed an actress bigger than life. He needed Pam Grier.
Jackie Brown was tailor made for the comeback of the former Queen of AIP. Playing a struggling airline stewardess who gets caught in the violent world of drug trafficking, Pam’s Jackie is a survivor, able to give as good as she gets. The film wasn’t the critical success of Tarantino’s other films, but it did bring in a hefty $70 million worldwide. Pam Grier was back, and roles, worthy of this fiery, independent actress soon begin to flow in. Pam would go on to star in the films Jawbreaker (1999) and Snow Day (2000), and even got her own short-lived television show, Linc’s in 1998. In 2004, she became a cast member on the highly successful Showtime series The L Word.
For Pam Grier, the more than thirty year struggle to find that elusive glass slipper seems over. Today, her old films are enjoying a huge cult following among men, as well as attracting a new generation of female viewers who can now identify and appreciate her strong, independent characters. While recognition as a powerful actress, role model, sex symbol and pioneer was more often then not, a frustrating journey; Pam, like the super-hero she always portrayed, eventually won in the end.
Contributor: Keith Brooks
The Museum of UnCut Funk celebrates the movie poster art of John Solie. John’s legendary skill for depicting “dead-on likenesses” of famous people has kept him in demand by major Hollywood movie studios, television networks, book publishers and magazine editors. He has created over two hundred movie posters and painted Blaxploitation movie stars such as Trina Parks, Billy Dee Williams, Jeanne Bell, Richard Roundtree and Jimmy Cliff for movies such as DarkTown Strutters, Blast, TNT Jackson, the Shaft sequals and The Harder They Come.
John’s work spans much farther than Hollywood. As a talented sculptor as well as illustrator and portrait artist, John was commissioned by CBS Television Network to create a bronze sculpture of “the most trusted man in America,” Mr. Walter Cronkite, which is on display in the lobby of the CBS Building in New York.
Solie is a proud member of the NASA Art Team and has paintings on display at the Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center.
The Museum of UnCut Funk salutes John Solie and his many achievements and his contributions to one of the most exciting times in Black film history.
Roxie Roker may best be remembered for playing outspoken Helen Willis for ten years on the popular television sitcom The Jeffersons. Along with her TV husband Franklin Cover, they comprised the first interracial married couple on network television. In addition to television, Roxie had also found success on stage and in the occasional feature film.
Born on August 28, 1929 in Miami and raised in Brooklyn, Roxie is the alumni of Howard University and with a drama degree Roxie flew to England to study at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-on-Avon. In the 1960s, Roker supported herself with a secretarial job at NBC’s New York office while trying to find acting jobs. Roxie launched her drama career off-Broadway in productions such as Jean Genet‘s The Blacks.
During the 1960’s, Roxie hosted a local community television show, but that wasn’t close enough to acting, so she quit to practice her craft full time. With the Negro Ensemble Company she appeared in Ododo and Rosalie Pritchet. In 1974, she earned an Obie and a Tony nomination for The River Niger. In 1975, shortly after moving to Los Angeles, Norman Lear cast Roker in The Jeffersons.
Roxie occasionally guest-starred on other series and appeared in television movies. Her feature-film appearances were rare. In 1974, she made her debut in Claudine as Mrs. Winston. In the ’90s, Roker resumed her stage career, appearing in a theatrical version of The Jeffersons and then touring opposite Mary Martin and Carol Channing in Legends. Roxie’s son, Lenny Kravitz is a rock musician and record producer and Roxie’s cousin The Today Show weatherman and TV producer Al Roker.
Roxie Roker died on December 2, 1995 in Los Angeles of breast cancer.
Sources: IMBD, Wikipedia, Ask.com
Actress and producer Sheila Elaine Frazier was born on November 13, 1948 in the Bronx, New York to Dorothy Dennis and Eugene Cole Frazier. Frazier grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City until the age of ten, when she moved with her mother to Englewood, New Jersey.
There, her neighbors included stars and future stars like Clyde McPhatter, Van McCoy, The Isley Brothers and Dolly and Jackie McClean. Frazier attended P.S. 97 in New York City and Liberty School in New Jersey. At Englewood’s Dwight Morrow High School, her classmates were Margaret Travolta and Hazel Smith.
Inspired by Susan Hayward’s performance in the film, I’ll Cry Tomorrow, Frazier longed to be an actress, but was hampered by a speech impediment. Graduating in 1966, Frazier moved to New York City where she served in various clerical positions with Allied Stores, Boutique magazine and the United Negro College Fund.
Recruited by the noted Negro Ensemble Company photographer Bert Andrews, Frazier became acquainted with the New York arts community. She studied acting at HB (Herbert Berkoff) Studios in New York under the direction of Bill Hickey and Uta Hagen. Then, actor Richard Roundtree encouraged her to take acting
lessons from Gilbert Moses at the Negro Ensemble Company which led to additional training with Dick Anthony Williams at the New Federal Theatre. Frazier, then working for a real estate company, had done some industrial films and commercials before Roundtree helped her get anauditionwith Gordon Parks, who was casting for a new film, Super Fly. In the film, Frazier plays the sultry girlfriend, “Georgia,” of the hustler, “Priest,” portrayed by Ron O’Neal. The tremendous box office success of Super Fly and her instant street recognition surprised Frazier, as she was and still is admired as an iconic beauty in the black community. She appeared in Super Fly T.N.T., the sequel to Super Fly and other black genre films of the 1970s including Three The Hard Way with Jim Brown and The Super Cops.
Frazier appeared in a number of film but by 1980, Frazier was hosting a community affairs show on KNXT-TV in Los Angeles. In 1982, she was hired as a story editor by Richard Pryor’s Indigo Productions. She was coordinating producer for Essence magazine’s television series in 1985 and produced BET’s Live from L.A. with Tonya Hart. Frazier worked with the talent on BET’s Screen Scene from 1992 to 1999 and headed up the Talent Department for BET for thirteen years.
As founding director of Frazier Multimedia Group in 2003, Frazier provides talent grooming and field production. Her 2008 documentary film on African American intergenerational wisdom transmission is entitled You Don’t Get Old by Being A Fool.
Frazier lives in Los Angeles. She is married to John Atchison and has two sons. Her oldest son is music producer, Derek McKeith.
New York Times Interview 2007
Sheila Frazier is a star of the 1972 film “Super Fly.” She discussed how her acting career came about with the column’s author, Devan Sipher.
Did you plan to be an actress from a young age?
Sheila Frazier I always loved acting, but I grew up as a stutterer. I never enjoyed standing up in front of people saying anything, because I could barely speak. In elementary school, a teacher said he would help me. He made me get up and recite a story I wrote in front of sixth-grade assembly. He made an announcement: “I don’t want any laughter. Sheila’s a stutterer. I don’t want any laughter.” It was the most painful thing I ever went through in my life. I didn’t want to go to college. The idea of having to speak publicly in any classroom just horrified me.
[At 17, she left her home in Englewood, N.J., and moved to New York, where she lived with her godmother and worked as a secretary.]
How did you end up in movies?
S.F. One day I was on the train going home, and this guy approached me saying: “Have you ever thought about modeling? I would really like to take some photographs of you.”
And you trusted him?
S.F. I was naïve. Something struck me as legitimate. I went to his studio, and his boss was a well-known photographer, Bert Andrews. Bert chronicled black theater on Broadway and became a lifelong friend of mine. We took pictures, and I did some runway modeling. But I never liked it. Also did some print work. Never really liked that either. Too much focus of attention on me. As a stutterer, it becomes difficult if there is that intensive focus on you. Then I met Richard Roundtree. He had just come off the road doing “The Great White Hope.” I said I always wanted to act, but I had this stutter.
[Mr. Roundtree suggested she audition to study at the Negro Ensemble Company.]
S.F. I prepared this monologue. I remember standing there. I was petrified. I was talking to myself like “What are you doing?” But I remembered Richard said to focus on the piece. When I started the piece a part of me stood outside of myself, and I didn’t stutter. I didn’t stutter once. It amazed me. I realized there’s something in the brain you can switch off. You can choose to be somebody else. I chose not to be a stutterer.
Five months after being with the Negro Ensemble Company I read that Gordon Parks Jr. was directing his first film, called “Super Fly.” I ran into Richard and asked if he could help me get an audition.
[And he did.]
S.F. All these great stars I had seen on television and in movies were there. I remember thinking they’re not even going to look at me. Richard said, “Sheila, when you walk in there, you have to have the attitude that no one else can do the job but you.” I put my feet up on the director’s desk and said, “You can send everyone else home, because no one else can do this job but me.”
As a religious woman, how did you handle working in the film industry?
S.F. When I first came to Hollywood I kept that very private. I thought if anyone saw me reading the Bible on the set they would tease me. I didn’t want to be teased.
I was working on a film with Jim Brown and Fred Williamson, and I was in the makeup trailer and I was reading my Bible. The makeup artist came in, and I tried to hide it. She said “Why are you hiding it?” She taught me never to hide it. But I wasn’t there preaching. I wasn’t trying to influence anyone on what was right or wrong for their lives. This is just where I got strength.
Film Credits:
“Super Fly” (1972)
“Super Fly T.N.T.” (1973)
“Three the Hard Way” (1974)
“California Suite” (1978)
“The Hitter” (1979)
“Two of a Kind” (1983)
“All About You” (2001)
“The Last Stand” (2006)
Television Guest Appearances:
“Starsky and Hutch” (1977)
“King” (1978) television mini-series
“Lou Grant” (1981)
“Dallas” (1982)
“The Love Boat” (1982)
“Gimme a Break!”(1985)
“Magnum, P.I.” (1985)
“Cagney & Lacey” (1986)
“227″ (1988)
“The West Wing” (1999)
“The District” (2000)
“Navy NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service” (2004)
My Son - An interview with Kam Williams
DeSuperfly’s girlfriend in the 1972 film is none other than the beautiful and talented Sheila Frazier. She came out recently to NYC’s Sweet Rhythm with her son Derek McKeith, to help congratulate him and spread the word about his new release.
In an interview with Kam Williams she spoke of her son saying, “Talk about talent! I’m really proud of Derek. He’s a music performer, writer and producer. He has a band with a unique sound. Whenever I’ve had the opportunity to see him perform I can only think, ‘Wow, he’s better than I could have ever been.’ It seems that his audiences think so, too.”
Sources: The New York Times, Bean Soup Times and Ask.com
Above is a short called “Trek Turner”, a remix of the cartoon version featuring Lieutenant Uhura from the Star Trek animated series, dubbed over with Nichelle Nichols’ dialogue from the 1974 blaxploitation film “Truck Turner”. Below is Nichols delivering the same dialogue in “Truck Turner”. Animated or live action, that’s one Bad Ass Bitch!
Nichelle Nichols was born in Robbins, Illinois, near Chicago. Her father was both the town mayor of Robbins and its chief magistrate. She has studied in Chicago as well as New York and Los Angeles. During her time in New York, Nichelle appeared at the famous Blue Angel and Playboy Clubs as a singer. She also appeared in the role of Carmen for a Chicago stock company production of “Carmen Jones.”
She has twice been nominated for the Sara Siddon Award as best actress and is an accomplished dancer and singer. Her first Siddon nomination was for her portrayal of Hazel Sharp in “Kicks and Co.,” and the second for her performance in “The Blacks.”
Nichelle toured the United States, Canada and Europe as a singer with the Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton bands. On the West Coast, she appeared in “Roar of the Grease Paint, Smell of the Crowd,” “For My People,” and garnered high praise for her performance in the James Baldwin play, “Blues for Mr. Charlie.”
Prior to being cast as Lt. Uhura in Star Trek, Nichelle had starred on Gene Roddenberry’s first series, The Lieutenant.
Nichelle started as Lt. Uhura on Star Trek in 1966. At the end of Star Trek’s first season, Nichelle was thinking seriously of leaving the show, but a chance and moving meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr. changed her mind. He told her she couldn’t give up…she was a vital role model for young Black women in America. Needless to say, Nichelle stayed with the show and has appeared in first six Star Trek movies.
She also provided the voice for Lt. Uhura on the Star Trek animated series in 1974-75.
Prior to starring in Star Trek, Nichelle appeared in films like, “Mister Buddwing,” “Made in Paris,” “Porgy and Bess,” and “Doctor, You’ve Got to be Kidding!” After the cancellation of Star Trek, Nichols played Dorinda in “Truck Turner” in 1974.
Turning her sights toward her music, Nichelle released a single, “Shoop Shoop,” on 20th Century Records and often sings at her convention appearances. She has also released an album, “Dark Side of the Moon,” which includes the song she wrote in tribute to Gene Roddenberry, “Gene.” Nichelle sang the song at Roddenberry’s memorial service.
Always interested in space travel, Nichelle flew aboard the C-141 Astronomy Observatory, which analyzed the atmospheres of Mars and Saturn, on an eight hour, high altitude mission. She was also special guest at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena on July 17, 1976 to view the Viking probe’s soft landing on Mars. Along with the other cast members from the original Star Trek, Nichelle attended the christening of the first space shuttle, Enterprise, at Cape Canaveral. Nichelle also spends much time recruiting minorities for NASA. Those recruited include Dr. Mae Jemison, the first American female astronaut and United States Air Force Col. Guion Bluford, the first Black astronaut, as well as Dr. Judith Resnik and Dr. Ronald McNair, who both flew successful missions during the space shuttle program before their deaths in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986.
A few years ago, Nichelle toured in a one-woman play where she portrayed many famous black female singers of the 20th century. Some of her hobbies are oil painting, designing her own clothes, reading science fiction and sculpting. She has also acted as spokesperson for her favorite charity, “The Kwanzaa Foundation.” Her biography, “Beyond Uhura,” was published in 1994.
Nichelle has two projects in production, David and The Bitter Earth, scheduled to be released in late 2009.
It All Started With The Comic Strip…
The Friday Foster comic strip debuted on January 18, 1970 and ran until 1974. Friday Foster was the first mainstream syndicated comic strip to feature a Black woman in the lead role. Prior to this, other than a handful of broadly stereotyped caricatures from the industry’s very early days and a few series aimed solely at Black newspapers, no American comic strip had ever borne the name of a Black lead character.
Friday Foster was a former fashion model who became an assistant to a world-famous photographer, and the strip was about her comings and goings in the modeling and magazine / publishing worlds.
The strip was created by writer Jim Lawrence, illustrated by artist Jorje Longeron, and syndicated by The Chicago Tribune Syndicate to twenty-five newspapers across the country.
Which Then Became A Comic Book…
In 1972, Dell created a one-of-a-kind Friday Foster comic book edition, as no further comics were issued for this character. In the comic, Friday Foster is an assistant to world famous fashion photographer Shawn North.
Then Came The Movie…and Pam Grier
In 1975, Friday Foster was made into a feature film. The film was written and directed by Arthur Marks and starred Pam Grier in the lead role. Yaphet Kotto and Eartha Kitt also co-starred.
The Plot:
Friday Foster is a magazine photographer who refuses to heed her boss’s admonitions against becoming involved in the stories to which she is assigned. After witnessing an assassination attempt on the nation’s wealthiest Black and then seeing her best friend murdered, Friday finds herself targeted for death. She teams up with private detective Colt Hawkins to investigate, and soon, the two are hot on the trail of plot to eliminate the country’s Black political leadership.
In addition to the standard blaxploitation plot elements, the film also dealt with the themes of the power and importance of Black political unity and the potential threat posed not only by the perceived white power structure, but also by those Blacks willing to betray that goal in search of reward from that establishment.
Tagline: Wham! Bam! Here comes Pam!
And Now Finally There Is The Doll…
In 2009, Robert Tonner created a doll collection based on the Friday Foster comic character. The collection includes five different versions of Friday Foster, marking the first time that Robert Tonner has explored the style of the 1970s in a primary fashion doll collection.
