This week’s open thread will highlight some well-known blaxploitation actors and actresses.
Vonetta Lawrence McGee (January 14, 1945 – July 9, 2010) was an American actress. She is best known for her roles during the 1970s, which included blaxploitation films such as Hammer, Melinda, Blacula, Shaft in Africa and 1974’s Thomasine & Bushrodalongside her then-boyfriend Max Julien. She was a regular on the 1987 Universal Television situation comedy Bustin’ Loose, starring as Mimi Shaw for its first and only season (1987-1988).
Born in San Francisco, California to Lawrence McGee and Alma McGee (née Scott), McGee graduated from San Francisco Polytechnic High School in 1962. She enrolled at San Francisco State University and became involved in acting groups on campus.
McGee made her debut in 1968 as the eponymous character in the Italian comedy Faustina. In the same year she performed alongside Jean-Louis Trintignant and Klaus Kinski in the Western The Great Silence, but became well known for her parts in the 1972Blaxploitation films Melinda and Hammer. In the action thriller Shaft in Africa (1973), McGee took the role of Aleme, the daughter of anemir, who teaches John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) Ethiopian geography. In 1974, McGee appeared as Thomasine, alongside Max Julien as Bushrod, in the western action film Thomasine & Bushrod, which was intended as a counterpart to the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. The next year, she starred alongside Clint Eastwood in the action thriller The Eiger Sanction (1975). She appeared in an episode of the TV series Starsky & Hutch named “Black and Blue” in 1979.
McGee was in a live-in relationship with Max Julien during the early-to-mid 1970s. In 1987, McGee married actor Carl Lumbly. They had one child, Brandon, born in 1988. McGee died of cardiac arrest on July 9, 2010, at the age of 65.