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
Hours after President Barack Obama’s inauguration, Rock sat down to talk about his Sundance entry, “Good Hair,” a hilarious examination of the cultural pressures that prod blacks into costly, often painful methods to care for their hair.
The idea first hit Rock in the mid-1990s on a standup tour through Atlanta, where he came across the Bronner brothers hair show, a glitzy convention for black stylists.
“I thought, wow, this would make a great movie, but that was like 15 years ago, and no one was making funny documentaries 15 years ago,” Rock said in an interview Tuesday alongside Nia Long, one of many actresses and other celebrities Rock interviews in the film.
“So you cut to now, and I have daughters, and I’m really dealing with them and their hair a lot, and my friends have daughters, and we talk about our daughters’ hair issues. I kind of saw where to go at it, and now people are making funny documentaries,” he said.
“Good Hair,” one of 16 films in Sundance’s U.S. documentary competition, follows Rock from the Bronner brothers show to neighborhood salons, businesses dealing in hair-care products and the streets of India, where human hair is a huge export industry for hair weaves.
“I was kind of scared to come to Sundance in a sense, because I think this is the blackest movie ever made,” said Rock, a producer and co-writer on the film. “So I was kind of scared to come to Utah, because it’s so white.”
But Rock said Sundance crowds have given “Good Hair” an enthusiastic reception, bolstering his hopes that it can find a broad audience. Produced by HBO, “Good Hair” eventually will air on the cable channel, but Rock and his collaborators are considering a theatrical release first.
While loaded with the 43-year-old actor-comedian’s wisecracking humor, “Good Hair” also raises serious questions about identity and equality among black women who feel they need long, straight, silky hair to fit into white society.
“It’s this whole thing about approval. That approval is not simply, ‘I want white people to love me.’ It’s like, ‘I need a job. I want to move forward, and if I have a hairstyle that is somewhat intimidating, that’s going to stop me from moving forward,’” said Nelson George, executive producer of “Good Hair.”
Rock interviews women who undergo hair-relaxing treatments with chemicals that burn their scalps and others who pay thousands of dollars for hair weaves. Along the way, he trades witty, insightful observations with such figures as Maya Angelou, the Rev. Al Sharpton, actresses Raven-Symone and Tracie Thoms, and singers Eve and Ice-T.
Long talks candidly in the film about her own perms and weaves, but in the interview with Rock, she also speaks hopefully about how Obama, his wife and their two daughters can help blacks overcome the cultural inferiority complex that prompts them to change their hair.
“Just seeing that family photo and seeing the daughters with their hair in cornrows sometimes, it resonates for me in such a huge way,” Long said. “I just feel finally we have an image that’s the most powerful image in our country that actually is a part of who I am.”
Rock also reveled in Obama’s inauguration, but he joked about another hurdle still facing blacks.
“Excellent black people have always been compensated for excellence. Always,” Rock said. “The real equality is when we can have a black president as dumb as George Bush. That’s when we’re really equal. That’s when the dream has come true.”
Source: Sundance
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.
Keepin’ It Real
The Original Shock Jock
l’ll tell it to the hot; I’ll tell it to the cold; I’ll tell it to the young; I’ll tell it to the old. I don’t want no laughin’, I don’t want no cryin’, and most of all, no signifyin’-Petey Greene.
As radio deejay, television personality and activist, Ralph Waldo Petey Greene Jr. (1931-1984) was a vital force for two decades in the Black community of Washington, D.C. known as Chocolate City or the other Washington. Petey spoke out about social injustices and spoke up for racial pride during a period of unprecedented change in America.
Born and raised in Washington, D.C., his childhood @23rd and L Streets NW was one of depression era-poverty. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother, Maggie Ant Pig Floyd, and attended Stevens Elementary School. But as a teen he started breaking the law and drinking and doing drugs. Arrests and reformatory time quickly followed. While still a teenager, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, and later served in the Korean War. Upon his return home, he began drinking heavily. In 1960, a conviction for armed robbery landed him in jail.
In Virginias Lorton Prison, Peteys life began to change for the better. He honed his disc jockey (a.k.a. deejay, a.k.a. dj) skills in Lortons work program. His grandmother sent him records to play in prison, but died while he was still incarcerated. Petey was allowed to address his fellow prisoners over the P.A. system in morning and night shifts of 20 minutes apiece. He found that he was good at deejaying and sensed that this was something he could pursue upon his release.
Once out of Lorton, he headed for a rededicated existence back in the Washington he knew as his home. Dewey Hughes, the program director for radio station WOL-AM, took a chance on Petey. Dewey had first met Petey in Lorton as a fellow inmate of Deweys brother, and put Petey-who had already done a stand-up act at venues around the city-on the air. Rapping with Petey Greene became a lightning rod for the community. WOL reached metropolitan listeners not only in Washington, D.C. but also in Maryland and Virginia.
Dewey continued managing Petey for years before (in 1980) buying WOL, which then became the foundation for Radio One, Inc. (now the U.S. seventh-largest radio broadcasting company, and the largest primarily for Black and urban listeners).
Petey did not only advocate from the airwaves. Never to sit on the sidelines again after his prison time, Petey was a fully engaged and visible citizen, exhorting his community to think and to act for a Cool City; as in, getting proper job training (through the Washington Concentrated Employment Program) and education (If you cant read, you cant do anything, he would say) and registering to vote.
Almost immediately upon his release from prison, he co-founded the volunteer-driven Efforts for Ex-Convicts, formed to provide shelter, counseling, and job support for D.C. ex-cons during the first few months of their release; for example, he would encourage those with convictions for stealing or shoplifting to channel that expertise into legitimate work as store detectives. Petey also addressed youth groups and school assemblies to discourage children and teens from starting down the path to incarceration. He also worked as a YMCA job counselor, and kept at his stand-up act as well.
With his Ph.D. in poverty, he would encourage community attention be specifically paid to the needs of the poor and the old; he was not afraid to name names and provide addresses for his listeners to agitate for change.
Petey had grown up just a few blocks from the White House, and in March 1978 he finally got to visit his neighbors when he attended a dinner (for the President of Yugoslavia) as the guest of an invitee. While there, he took the opportunity to speak with President Jimmy Carter and he claimed steal a spoon. From the jail house to the White House, he noted.
Concurrent with his radio career, television was another natural outlet for Petey. He co-hosted the local show Where Its At, which addressed employment issues and opportunities. Subsequently, his public access program Petey Greenes Washington (also later the name of his radio show) aired in the city for years, providing an expanded forum for his community outreach, commentary, and humor. Adjust the color of your television was his intro to the program. Among the thousands of listeners and/or viewers whom he made an impact on were future radio and television personalities.
One of them was a Washington, D.C. disc jockey named Howard Stern, who caused a stir with his guest appearances on Petey’s television show. In one (with longtime colleague Robin Quivers in the studio audience), Howard told Petey, I’ve learned more from your show I listen to your show and I go on and use your material. Petey mused, They might not like us, but they don’t change the dial.
In paving the way for other deejays, some might say that Petey was an original shock jock, but his own history and commitment to his community combined to make him more of a trailblazer in talk radio. Petey won two local Emmy Awards in the 1970s.
In his later years, Petey turned to religion more than he had prior and was finally able to quit drinking. He died of cancer in January 1984. Scores of D.C. residents, at least 10,000, and some estimates were double that amount paid their respects in below-freezing temperatures later that month at a memorial service, which was the largest gathering for a non-government official in D.C. history.
The nonprofit United Planning Organization (formed to provide human services to the people of D.C.), where Petey worked as an employee and community advocate/consultant beginning in the late 1960s, later named its Congress Heights office (in southeastern D.C.) the Ralph Waldo Petey Greene Community Service Center. The Center still stands today, at 2907 Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE.
Peteys life story, as he told it to Lurma Rackley in the early 1980s, was published in 2003 as Laugh If You Like, Ain’t a Damn Thing Funny.
He was portrayed by Don Cheadle in the 2007 film Talk To Me, which is based on his life.
PBS recently broadcasted the documentary Adjust Your Color: The Truth of Petey Greene. The documentary was written and directed by Loren Mendell and narrated by Don Cheadle.
Source: Emanuel Levy
Palestine native Ralph Bakshi was raised in Brooklyn, New York. A talented artist, Bakshi worked at the Terrytoons animation studio, directed episodes of Deputy Dawg and James Hound and worked on the Hekyll and Jekyll and Mighty Mouse cartoons. In 1965, he put together The Mighty Heroes “superhero” TV cartoon series, featuring some of the most ridiculous superguys in history: Tornado Man, Cuckooman, Ropeman, Strongman, and Diaper Baby. Bakshi’s also worked on the Spiderman series.
Bakski is best known, however, for his work on several animated films that featured Black characters. In 1972, Bakshi produced his first theatrical animated feature, a down-and-dirty X-rated adaptation of Robert Crumb’s “underground” comic strip Fritz the Cat. While Crumb hated the finished product, Fritz proved to be a success on the midnight-movie market.
Bakshi’s next feature, Heavy Traffic, was even more outrageous than Fritz; many cartoon aficionados consider this nihilistic, highly scatological tale of a young New York artist’s drawing-board fantasies to be Bakshi’s finest work.
His next was Coonskin (1975), a savage attack on Hollywood racial stereotypes — so savage, in fact, that the film was picketed by CORE and Bakshi was accused of being a racist himself.
Next came Hey, Good Lookin’, a nostalgic glance at 1950s street gangs, which was completed in 1975, but held back from release until 1982.
Coonskin
A multi-layered satire of race relations in America. America is represented as a volumuous white women in the film.
Sampson (Barry White) and the Preacherman (Charles Gordone) rush to help their friend, Randy (Philip Michael Thomas) escape from prison, but are stopped by a roadblock and wind up in a shootout with the police. While waiting for them, Randy unwillingly listens to fellow escapee Pappy (Scatman Crothers), as he begins to tell Randy a story about “three guys [I used to know] just like you and your friends”. Pappy’s story is told in animation set against live-action background photos and footage.
Brother Rabbit, Preacher Fox and Brother Bear
Brother Rabbit (voice of Thomas), Brother Bear (voice of White), and Preacher Fox (voice of Gordone) decide to pack up and leave their southern settings after the bank mortgages their home and sells it to a man who turns it into a brothel. Arriving in Harlem, Rabbit, Bear, and Fox find that it isn’t all that it’s made out to be.
They encounter a con man named Simple Savior, a phony revolutionary leader who purports to be the “cousin” of Black Jesus, and that he gives his followers “the strength to kill whites“. In a flashy stage performance in his “church”, Savior acts out being brutalized by symbols of black oppression—represented by images of John Wayne, Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon, before asking his parishioners for “donations”. When Rabbit attempts to stir up anti-revolutionary sentiment, Savior tries to have him killed. After Rabbit saves his life via reverse psychology, he and Bear kill Savior. This allows Rabbit to take over Savior’s racket, putting him in line to become the head of all organized crime in Harlem. But first, he has to get rid of a few other opponents. Savior’s former partners tell Rabbit that if he can’t kill his opponents, then they’ll kill him instead.
Rabbit first goes up against Madigan, a virulently racist and homophobic white police officer and bagman for the Mafia, who demonstrates his contempt for Blacks in various ways, including a refusal to bathe before an anticipated encounter with them (he believes they’re not worth it). When Madigan finds out that Rabbit has been taking his payoffs, he and his cohorts, Ruby and Bobby, are led to a nightclub called “The Cottontail”. A Black stripper distracts him while an LSD sugar cube is dropped into his drink. Madigan, while under the influence of his spiked drink, is then maneuvered into a sexual liaison with a stereotypically effeminate gay man, and then shoved into women’s clothing representative of the mammy archetype, adorned in blackface, and finally shoved out the back of the club where he discovers that Ruby and Bobby are dead. Then, while recovering from his delirium of being drugged, shoots his gun around randomly, and is shot to death by the police after shooting one of them.
Rabbit’s final targets are the Godfather (voice of an uncredited Al Lewis) and the Mafia, who live in the subway. The contract for killing Rabbit is given to Sonny (voice of Richard Paul). Showing up outside Rabbit’s nightclub in blackface and clothing representative of minstrel show stereotypes, Sonny winds up shot multiple times by Rabbit before dying in an explosion caused by a car crash. His body is cremated and taken back home, where his mother weeps over his ashes. Bear becomes torn between staying with Rabbit, or starting a new, crime-free life. Bear decides to look for Fox in order to seek his advice. Upon arriving at Fox’s newly acquired brothel, Bear is “married” to a girl he, Fox, and Rabbit met during the fight with Savior’s men. Under the advisement of Fox, Bear becomes a boxer for the Mafia. During one of Bear’s fights, Rabbit sets up a melting imitation of himself made out of tar. As the Mafiosos take turns stabbing at the “tar rabbit”, they become stuck together. Rabbit, Bear, Fox and the opponent boxer rush out of the boxing arena as it blows up. The live-action story ends with Randy and Pappy escaping while being shot at by various white cops, but managing to make it out alive.
The New York Times Review
Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic helmer Ralph Bakshi subsequently directed the über-controversial animated feature Coonskin (aka Streetfight, 1975). Bakshi opens and closes the film with a live-action tale that stars Scatman Crothers, Miami Vice’s Philip Michael Thomas, Charles Gordone, and Barry White; it recounts the adventures of three Black men who escape from prison and are later gathered up. In between, an animated tale has animal characters with stereotypically black traits — Brother Rabbit (voiced by Thomas), Brother Fox (voiced by Gordone), and Brother Bear (voiced by White) — entering a white-dominated ghetto environment and diverging into different paths; one becomes a crime overlord, the second sells the first out to La Cosa Nostra, and the third establishes himself as a media-exploited sports icon. Completely misread as a racist work upon release, the film actually entails Bakshi’s satirical excoriation of bigotry via the tongue-in-cheek use of Black urban stereotypes. The director laces the film with profane ghetto dialogue and street slang; though animated, this is not a picture for children. Variety wrote of the work, “Beyond Bakshi’s cinematic style, his stories seem haunted by a worldliness that is torn between cynicism and tortured humanism. There is heart in his plots, so superficial putdown is totally absent. What is present [is] the evidently sincere empathy of a social surgeon.” The legendary Albert S. Ruddy (The Godfather, Cloud Nine) produced. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
Acting Credits
Barry White - Samson
Barry White - Brother Bear
Charles Gordone - Preacher
Charles Gordone - Brother Fox
Scatman Crothers - Old Man Bone
Scatman Crothers - Pappy
Philip Michael Thomas - Randy
Philip Michael Thomas - Brother Rabbit
Production Credits
Director - Ralph Bakshi
Screenplay - Ralph Bakshi
Producer - Albert S. Ruddy
Stills - Ralph Bakshi
Director of Photography - William A. Fraker
Stills - Johnnie Vita
Editor - Donald W. Ernst
Animation Photography - Ted C. Bemiller
Music - Chico Hamilton
Assistant Director - James Roden
The status of Antonio Fargas is legendary. Since his initiation into the world of film at the age of fourteen, when his exceptional interpretative skills led to a role in Shirley Clark’s Cool World, he has been noted for the unforgettable characters he creates, most famously through his role as the incorrigible and loveable ‘Huggy Bear’ in TV’s Starsky & Hutch.
Whether perfecting outrageously comedic characters as in Robert Downey’s Putney Swope and Keenan Ivory Wayan’s I’m Going to Git You Sucka, or chilling the audience through a convincing rendition of a ninety year old witch doctor, as in the Broadway play, The Great White Hope, Antonio’s performances have generated a near endless array of enthusiastic acclaim from some of the industry’s most respected critics of film, television and stage.
Antonio’s stage career is most extensive with appearances both on and off Broadway, these include Melvin Van Peeples’ Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death, the on-Broadway production of The Great White Hope, North Carolina Repertory’s The Contract, Stage West’s The Rainmaker and The Emperor Jones, and numerous other productions.
Antonio Fargas is also a partner in his own production company, Granada Entertainment. The company specializes in the writing and production of new film and television products and currently have a television series in development for British television. Antonio is currently partnering with a number of other artists in a tribute to urban art forms, the focus of his tribute is a twelve city tour of Calling All Saints, a gospel musical stage play about the threats to marriage and family.
His commitment to theatre is further exemplified by his position on the boards of Rhode Island’s Langston Hughes Centre for the Arts, and the Martin Luther King Center of Newport. He is Chairman of the Board of the Mount Vernon Open Case Theatre, and Honorary Board Chair on the Progressive Symphony’s Academy of the Arts, an organization by Maestra Yvetter Devereaux.
1970’s Filmography:
Pretty Baby (1978) …. Professor
Car Wash (1976) …. Lindy
Cornbread, Earl and Me (1975) …. One-Eye
… aka Hit the Open Man
The Gambler (1974) …. Pimp
Foxy Brown (1974) ….Link Brown
Conrack (1974) …. Quickfellow
Busting (1974) …. Stephen
Cleopatra Jones (1973) …. Doodlebug Simkins
Across 110th Street (1972) …. Henry J. Jackson
Cisco Pike (1972) …. Buffalo
Believe in Me (1971) …. Boy
Shaft (1971) …. Bunky
Pound (1970) …. Greyhound
