Archive for the ‘ACTORS (I-P)’ Category
Mae West
April 2nd, 2009 | 
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Mae West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter, and sex symbol. Known for her bawdy double entendres, West made a name for herself in Vaudeville and on the stage in New York before moving to Hollywood to become a comedienne, actress and writer in the motion picture industry. One of the more controversial stars of her day, West encountered many problems including censorship.
When her cinematic career ended, she continued to perform on stage, in Las Vegas, in the United Kingdom, on radio and television, and recorded rock and roll albums. She was born Mary Jane West in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York City. She was the daughter of John Patrick West and Matilda “Tillie” Doelger (also spelled Delker).
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Pam Grier
Pamela Suzette “Pam” Grier (born May 26, 1949) is an American actress. She came to fame in the early 1970s, after starring in a string of moderately successful women in prison films and blaxploitation films, starring in B-movies such as 1974’s Foxy Brown. Her career was revitalized in 1997 after her appearance in Quentin Tarantino’s film Jackie Brown.
Grier was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S., the daughter of Gwendolyn Sylvia (née Samuels), a homemaker and nurse, and Clarence Ransom Grier, who worked as a mechanic and Technical Sergeant in the United States Air Force. Grier is African-American, and also has Native American, European, and Asian ancestry. She has one sister and one brother, and is a cousin of football player Rosey Grier. Because of her father’s military career, her family moved frequently during her childhood, to various places such as England, and eventually settled in Denver, Colorado, where she attended East High School. While there she appeared in a number of stage productions, and participated in beauty contests to raise money for college tuition toward Metropolitan State College.
Grier moved to Los Angeles, California in 1967, where she was initially hired as a receptionist at the American International Pictures company. She was discovered by director Roger Corman, who cast her in his women in prison films The Big Doll House (1971) and The Big Bird Cage (1972). She became a staple of early 1970s blaxploitation movies, playing big, bold, buxom roles, beginning with 1973’s Coffy, in which she plays a nurse who seeks revenge on drug dealers; her character was advertised in the trailer as the “baddest one-chick hit-squad that ever hit town!” The film, which was filled with sexual and violent elements typical of the genre, was a box office hit, and Grier was noted as the first African-American female to headline a film, as protagonists of previous blaxploitation films were all male. In his review of Coffy, film critic Roger Ebert noted that Grier was an actress of “beautiful face and astonishing form” and that she possessed a kind of “physical life” missing from other actresses. Grier subsequently played similar characters in the films Foxy Brown (1974), Friday Foster, and Sheba, Baby (both 1975).
With the demise of blaxploitation, Grier’s career went on hiatus for many years. She acquired progressively larger character roles in the 1980s, including a prostitute in Fort Apache the Bronx (1981), a witch in Something Wicked this Way Comes (1983), and Steven Seagal’s detective partner in Above the Law (1988). She made guest appearances on Miami Vice, Night Court and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and also had a recurring role in the TV series Crime Story between 1986 and 1988. Read more on Wikipedia.
MARLON BRANDO
Brando, was born April 3, 1924, and died July 1 2004. Movies include, “A streetcar named desire”, and “On the water front”. However, I think the world today, best known him, in his outstanding role as Vito Corleone, in the movie “The Godfather (Widescreen Edition)
