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Vonetta Mcgee

July 15, 2010 by · Comments Off on Vonetta Mcgee 

Vonetta McGeeVonetta Mcgee:(Los Angeles Times) — Best moment the big screen include roles in “Blacula,” “Hammer” and “Shaft in Africa.” He later appeared with Clint Eastwood in ‘The Eiger sanction. In the 80s, there were numerous TV credits

Vonetta McGee, an actress whose big-screen heyday in the era of the 1970s blaxploitation include roles in “Blacula” and “Shaft in Africa”, has died. He was 65.

McGee died Friday at a Berkeley hospital after experiencing a cardiac arrest and be alive for two days, said spokeswoman Kelley Nayo family. Although McGee was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma at age 17, Nayo, said his death was not related to the disease.

McGee was described as “one of Hollywood’s busiest and most beautiful black” by Times film reviewer Kevin Thomas in 1972, when he appeared alongside Fred Williamson in the black action film “Hammer” and had starring roles in the crime -drama “Melinda” and the horror film “Blacula.”

She went on to appear with Richard Roundtree in “Shaft in Africa” (1973) and co-starred with Max Julien in “Thomasine & Bushrod (1974).

McGee also appeared with Clint Eastwood in the 1975 action thriller “The Eiger sanction,” prompting Thomas The Times “to write in his review:” His stopping by Eastwood, verbally or not, is enough to burn the screen. ”

“I am pleased to see that given a role with Clint Eastwood,” said Williamson, who knew McGee before they made “Hammer.” “Not many black players had the opportunity to be in a movie where the color does not matter.

Vonetta McGee was like a lot of actors and actresses at the time, like me, Jim Brown, Richard Roundtree, Billy Dee Williams and Pam Grier, in that we had more talent that allowed us to show for all that was perceived as a black project. Once you categorize, marketing becomes limited. ”

McGee was not a fan of blaxploitation “label” that was attached to many of the films with black mold in the 70s.

That label, told The Times in 1979, was used “as racism, so you do not have to think about individual items, only the set. Propaganda If the study, to understand how this works.”

While The Times reported that McGee “calls herself a graduate fate of black-movie genre,” she pointed out that there was a difference between someone like Diana Ross and other black actresses potentially marketable.

“She has had the luxury of a studio behind it,” said McGee. “This is where many of us came up short. All we had some protection. But we were on our own.”

McGee Among other films include “The Lost Man,” “Detroit 9000”, “Brothers” (where he played an activist based in Angela Davis), “Repo Man” and “to sleep with anger.”

In the ’80s, his career turned around a television.

That included playing at the Indigo sister of Robert Blake’s short-lived 1985 drama series “Hell Town” and play a social worker who is a swindler played by Jimmie Walker at his home in the 1987-88 syndicated sitcom “Bustin Loose ‘.”

She also played a recurring role on “LA Law” and appeared in several episodes of “Cagney & Lacey” as the wife of Detective Mark Petrie (played by Carl Lumbly).

Lumbly and McGee were married in 1986 and had a son, Brandon, in 1988.

Born Lawrence Vonetta McGee in San Francisco on January 14, 1945, she attended what is now San Francisco State when she became involved with a local group to act.

She began her film career in 1968 in Italy, where he performed at the spaghetti western “Into Great Silence” and was the star in the comedy “Faustina.”

In addition to her husband and son, he is survived by his mother, Alma McGee, three brothers, Donald, Richard and Ronald McGee, and a sister, Alma McGee.

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