TAMARA DOBSON

Standing at a statuesque 6'2, Tamara Dobson was, and remains, one of the tallest leading ladies to ever feature in film. Starring in just a handful of motion pictures, Dobson immortalized herself in pop-culture consciousness as the unforgettable Cleopatra Jones in 1972's Cleopatra Jones. A fierce action heroine and fashion icon, Jones is dedicated to bringing down the predatory drug-dowager Mommy (Shelley Winters), protecting her community and delivering some sweet '70s justice. In contrast to many other films of the day, Dobson's Cleopatra was not handing down justice as a rogue vigilante, but as a US Special Agent in the CIA.

Dobson’s characterization as a highly-competent agent working within the system of established authority is still a revolutionary one. Both ancient history and modern-lore are filled with charismatic rebel women, rising up and reigning down vengeance on those that have wronged them or their people. From the Trung Sisters, to Boadicea, to Phoolan Devi, to Coffy, when just retribution is delivered from a lady's hands, Lady Vengeance is overwhelmingly represented. A Black woman amongst the ranks of organized authority is a radical representation, suggesting that those most oppressed by the system can come to matter within it and wield its powers to protect and serve others who have been similarly marginalized and oppressed.

The visual iconography of Dobson's Cleopatra in both Cleopatra Jones and its sequel Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (1975) juxtaposes sleek and chic Giorgio St. Angelo pantsuits with flamboyant wide-brimmed hats and big fur-trimmed coats, constructing a heroine who is rugged yet feminine, and stylish and desirable without being overtly sexualized. Dobson, who did her own make up and provided considerable input on the aesthetic creation of her character, refused to do nude scenes. Refusing to appear nude has helped distinguish her image from that of some of her contemporaries, and further established her reputation as a star in a genre where fame often came and disappeared quickly. That audiences never see Cleopatra Jones in the buff further cements her character as occupying a position of power, authority, and agency; Jones is never nude and nigh invulnerable.




Though Cleopatra Jones is oft considered to be the defining role of Dobson's career, her first credited role was in Fuzz (1972), an action crime comedy picture that starred Raquel Welch and Burt Reynolds. Like many other foxy ladies she worked in modeling before she worked in acting, gracing the pages of Vogue, the covers of LIFE and Redbook as well as television commercials for Chanel, Revlon and Farbrege. Before her modeling career, Dobson earned a degree in fashion illustration from the Maryland Institute College of Art. After Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold Dobson starred in Norman...Is That You? (1976) and Chained Heat (1983). She also worked in television, playing a series regular on Jason of Star Command (1979-1981), and making guest appearances on series such as Sanford and Son (1977) and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century(1980). Her final role was starring in 1984's Amazons, a made-for-TV movie about... Amazons.

In 1976, JET magazine reported that Dobson was writing some screen plays as well working on a record for MCA. Unfortunately, none of these projects came to be and Dobson continued working as a model, becoming the face of Farbrege's Tigress fragrance at the end of the 1970s. Some time in the mid-1980s, Tamara seemed to disappear from the radar screen as well as the cinema and television screens. Little is published on her life and career post-1985 outside of the fact that she spent most of her life in New York City. Shortly after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she returned to her hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. A few years later in 2006, Dobson passed away from complications of pneumonia and multiple sclerosis; she was 59.

Though her acting career was relatively brief, Dobson established herself as a star and a cultural touchstone of the '70s. Forty years after Cleopatra Jones, she remains a fashion icon and inspiration to many, having introduced some of the most elegant fashions of the decade. Her star-image and the characters she played have caught the interest of many film and cultural studies academics writing on representations of race, gender, and sexuality; her career is celebrated by a variety of movie geeks and cinephiles. A woman of multiple accomplishments, Tamara Dobson's memory lives on in film, fashion and fierceness.

Recommended Reading:

Brody, Jennifer Devere. "The Returns of 'Cleopatra Jones'", Signs 25:1 (1999): 91-121.
Dunn, Stephanie. Baad Bitches and Sassy Supermamas: Black power action films. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
Sims, Yvonne Women of Blaxploitation: How the Black Action Film Heroine Changed American Popular Culture. Jefferson: McFarland and Company, Inc., 2006.

JOANNA LUMLEY

The absolutely foxy Joanna Lumley had her first forays in front of the camera as a swinging sixties model, but it wasn't too long before she moved from the still image to the motion picture in 1969. She's played roles ranging from Bond Girl, to action icon, to a Van Helsing, to science fiction elemental being, to the infamous Eurydice Colette Clytemnestra Dido Bathsheba Rabelais Patricia Cocteau Stone, and her career shows little sign of slowing down anytime soon.

Before becoming a television star in the late 1970s, Joanna Lumley appeared in several fantasy, science fiction and horror films. After playing The English Girl in On Her Majesy's Secret Service (1969), Lumley appeared in a fantasy-horror feature based on the Scottish folk tale of Tam Lin. Released originally as The Ballad of Tam Lin (1970), this film is also known as The Devil's Widow, The Devil's Woman and Games and Toys. Starring Ava Gardner, Tam Lin retells the famous legend with a group of young and beautiful jet-setters under the power of Gardner's Black Magic Woman. Lumley only puts in so much screen time as one of the PYTs frolicking on the huge country estate but she is just as immediately striking and instantly recognizable as she is in any of her starring roles. A couple of years later, Lumley appeared as Jessica Van Helsing in what would be the eighth Dracula feature for Hammer studios, and the final starring Christopher Lee as Count Dracula, a film called The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973). While this film is largely considered to be the worst of the Hammer Dracula series, her turn as a scream-queen was well received. Interestingly enough, in this film Lumley was replacing Stephanie Beacham, co-star of the aforementioned Tam Lin, who had played Jessica Van Helsing in Hammer's previous Dracula picture Dracula AD 1972 (1972), this film is largely considered to be the second worst Dracula film in the Hammer catalog.

Though the comely Miss Lumley may now be best known for her comedic talents as Patsy Stone in Absolutely Fabulous, she was an action heroine first. Just like fellow foxy ladies Diana Rigg and Honor Blackman, Joanna Lumley has been both a Bond Girl and an Avenger. From 1976 - 1977 she thrilled ITV audiences as the sharp-shooting secret agent Purdy. Credited with helping to name the character, Lumley high-kicked her way to becoming a television icon that combined a cool charm with an athletic sex appeal. Later that decade she starred in the cult science fiction series, Sapphire and Steel. Though made on a tight budget, the series made good use of staging and special effects. With its tense, sometimes slow pacing and eerie atmosphere, Sapphire and Steel often combined science fiction with the supernatural, adding an extra element of mystery to this striking and strange series. Curiously enough, despite the immense popularity of other similar science-fiction fantasies such as Dr Who, Sapphire and Steel has never been re-broadcast on terrestrial television.

Even after solidfying her image as a comedy star in the mid-nineties with Ab Fab, Joanna Lumley never abandoned the Horror and Fantasy genres. In 1997 she appeared as Morgan Le Fay in Prince Valiant, an incarnation of the Arthurian legend that starred Stephen Moyer. That same year she co-starred alongside Ben Kingsley as Mrs. Lovett in a television movie version of Sweeney Todd. Lumley has also done quite a bit of voice work, lending that gorgeous cut-glass voice to Tim Burton's 2005 animated feature The Corpse Bride, recording audio books including several of the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, and to informing users of AOL's UK service that they've got mail.

These days Lumley is likely just as well known for her activism and charity work as her acting roles. In 2008, she became the public face for the Gurkha Justice Campaign, advocating for the right of all Gurkha soldiers who had served in the British Army to be granted the same right of abode as their commonwealth counterparts. Impressed with her passionate campaigning, some called for her to run Parliament, but she dismissed the suggestion stating that she had no desire to run for election.

Despite becoming a household name as a comedy star and a celebrated charity organizer, Joanna Lumley has never tried to distance herself from her genre work. In her interviews and appearances she's just as proud of her roles as a Bond Girl and as the action icon Purdy, as she is of her acclaimed performance in the monolog series Up in Town. With several books, dozens of television and film roles and countless media appearances to her credit, this silver fox is not stopping anytime soon. Having just finished a turn on the stage as the iconic Eleanor of Aquatine in The Lion in Winter at the Theater Royal Haymarket, she's scheduled to reprise her most famous role as Patsy in a special episode of Absolutely Fabulous later this year.

-Trailer for The Satanic Rites of Dracula
-Brief documentary on Sapphire and Steel
-Joanna Lumley and Gareth Hunt promoting the 1994 video release of The New Avengers

Picture this!

Happy birthday to the very talented, very cool, very foxy Debbie Harry! Her career spans from folk musician to actress (her filmography includes films directed by David Cronenburg, John Waters and Amos Poe) to singer and song-writer in one of the most iconic bands to have emerged from the New York punk scene.

Check out this spot from Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes, 47 seconds with two people who managed to become very famous alumni of both Studio 54 and Punk Magazine's Mutant Monster Beach Party.

A Happy Birthday to the very talented and prolific Nina Hartley!

Violence! Nudity! International Spy Syndicates! Mad Scientists! Creatures on a Rampage!

Ted V. Mikel's 1968 film The Astro-Zombies is an entertaining kitchen-sink of exploitation tropes that re-tells the Frankenstein story. Surprisingly, the feature's creatures don't appear to actually be from outer-space, but are constructed with the help of modern science and the body parts of innocent murder victims. After his dismissal from the Space Agency for creating an Astro-Man from the brain of a psychotic criminal, the deranged Dr. DeMarco decides to make another monster to hunt down the first one. In addition to getting some innocent people killed, his activity also attracts the attentions of the CIA and an international spy ring. After being treated to some scenes of lengthy expository dialog, pain-stakingly long experimental procedures (complete with lots of microscope peering, switch throwing and vial filling), this movie starts to get down to business. As the CIA and Commie-spies gun each other down in the race to find the rogue Doctor, DeMarco's former colleagues try to trap the Astro-Man by using Joan Patrick as live bait. Her boyfriend Eric Porter, is played by Tom Pace who also starred in another Mikel's exploitation film The Girl in Gold Boots (1968). They never do capture the creature, but nearly everyone ends up back in DeMarco's lab for the conclusion to this convoluted tale of super-science. In between the spy battle and zombie hunt viewers are treated to an array of horror, sci-fi and exploitation clichés not already covered including: a topless go-go dancer in full body paint, stabbings, a young women writhing away in her underwear while strapped to an operating table and hunch-backed lab assistant.



Unfortunately, all the copies I've seen feature the incredibly bad sound quality not uncommon to the period, and combined with the slow beginnings and convoluted plot viewers may find themselves having a hard time following the story, especially for the film's first third. Still, you don't need to be able to follow the events of The Astro-Zombies too closely to savor the delicious wickedness of Tura Satana's evil secret agent, Satana. It isn't incredibly easy to determine who the star of this picture actually is; Wendell Corey and John Carradine get top billing, Joan Patrick is the love interest that lives, but Tura Satana completely steals the show in every scene she enters. Whether she's throwing drinks in the faces of back-stabbing underlings, stubbing out cigarettes on her victims, or gunning down the cops with glee, Satana's sinister super-spy shines as the most memorable character in this late '60s riff on the archetypal mad science tale. As the fast-thinking and more than capable leader of an international spy ring, Satana barks orders, kicks ass, and kills without mercy, using both ruthlessness and cunning to find and enter DeMarco's lab in order to steal the knowledge of his technology and ship back the secrets to her presumably Soviet home-country. Given the absolute delight it is to watch Tura's villainous vixen tear around The Astro-Zombies, one wonders what havock she could have wrought if cast as the right villain in the right big-budget picture. Still, there's a good chance any big-budget part would have probably paled in comparison to her starring role in Russ Meyer's black and white masterpiece Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.