Growing up in the late 60's and early 70's, there was a change in the air. Tricky Dick (Richard Nixon) was riding the wave of Watergate, gas prices were rising, the Black Panthers were marching for the "Freedom of the people," freedom marchers were singing "Give peace a chance," even Catwoman, Eartha Kitt joined in the chorus that cause J. Edger to Black Ball her from Hollywood, but still the Hollywood scene was all of unrest, and the change continue, until it settled on tinsel town, and the era of movies with black stars was reborn.
The actor Vonetta McGee, who has died aged 65 after a cardiac arrest, was a heroine of 1970s movies, and in the greatest of all Italian westerns, Sergio Corbucci's Il Grande Silenzio (The Great Silence). The year was 1983, Repo Man. The cast was a large one for a low-budget movie. It included all types: method actors from New York, punks from the LA hardcore scene, disgruntled Hollywood character actors and refugees from the theatre, but only one star. Vonetta McGee.
Not that Vonetta behaved in a "starry" fashion. She was completely approachable and a professional, always one of the team. Nevertheless, of all the actors in the film, Vonetta was the one with the credits. She was the one who had acted opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant, Klaus Kinski, Clint Eastwood and Sidney Poitier.
Lawrence Vonetta McGee – named after her father – was born in San Francisco. Her family planned for her to have a career in law, and she began studying pre-law at San Francisco State College, but she became involved in amateur theatre and was bitten by the acting bug. Vonetta left college without graduating and joined the diaspora of American actors – experienced and aspirant – who moved to Rome in the 1960s with her then screen-writer/ producer boyfriend, Max Jullen who was pinning 'CLEOPATRA JONES' (that was originally created with Vonetta in mind to play the lead role) the soon to become Hollywood's first movie to knock the block buster movie 'LADY SINGS THE BLUES' out the number one spot, Vonetta decided to beat the pavement to find work at the Cinecittà film studios.
Her filmographies list her first feature as Faustina, a comedy directed by Luigi Magni in 1968, but Il Grande Silenzio was made the previous year and opened in Italy at Christmas in 1967. In the film, Vonetta was a pioneer woman whose outlaw husband has been murdered by a bounty hunter, played by Kinski. She hires a mute gunfighter – Silence, wonderfully played by Trintignant – to kill the killer, thus setting in train the grim, tragic and terrible events of Corbucci's film.
Vonetta gave a fine performance as the vengeance-bent widow, Pauline. She was extraordinarily beautiful: tall, dark, with enormous and expressive eyes. 20th Century-Fox bought the rights to Il Grande Silenzio and then suppressed the film, considering it too pessimistic. But it was hugely influential on other filmmakers (Eastwood attempted a remake, Joe Kidd, directed by John Sturges), and for Vonetta, a career in American movies followed inevitably.
Poitier invited her to return to the US to appear with him in The Lost Man (1969). She starred (as "the Negress") in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter the following year. Thereafter came the string of pictures which made her famous: Blacula, The Big Bust-Out (both 1972) and Shaft in Africa (1973). In essence, these were genre pictures that starred black actors instead of white ones. They proved immensely popular with audiences, but tended to be disdained or ignored by mainstream film critics.
Vonetta disliked the "blaxploitation" label: she was proud of the black part, proud of the strong, take-charge characters she had played in the films, but did not consider them exploitative in any way.
She was a smart woman, who saw no difference between the roles she played any different than what her white counterparts of what society considered popular entertainments were portraying.A role in Eastwood's The Eiger Sanction (1975) and an increasing amount of episodic television work followed. Vonetta then suffered health problems and took a break from acting.
Repo Man marked her return to the screen. When making the film, she talked about her work in Grande Silenzio and about working with Corbucci. He was the nicest man, (how appropriate, given the savagery and sadism that characters in his extraordinary films). "And he never tried to put the make on me! His wife, Nori, was usually on set, and they were such a happy couple. They made it a great environment to work in."
Vonetta's two lessons to young, up and coming actors, "Do not try to put the make on your leading lady, and make a nice environment for each actors to be creative in." This was excellent advice. In Repo Man she was both elegant and a perfect action heroine: diving into the fight sequences with gusto, demolishing a pair of blond brutes played by Biff Yeager and Steve Mattson.
In the mid-80s, Vonetta appeared in Cagney & Lacey as the wife of a detective played by Carl Lumbly. She and Carl married in 1986 and had a son, Brandon. In 1990, she appeared, briefly but memorably, opposite Sy Richardson and Danny Glover in Charles Burnett's fine film To Sleep With Anger.
Last year, a major movie studio tracked Vonetta down to hire her again. But the word came back that she had "absolutely" retired, and was living in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.
She is survived by husband, Carl and son, Brandon, and by her mother, Alma, three brothers and a sister.
• Lawrence Vonetta McGee, died 9 July 2010.
You may be gone, but never forgotten.
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