Actress Vonetta McGee has died at the age of 65 after a cardiac arrest. McGee was a heroine of the 1970s blaxploitaton movies. She had also appeared in Italian westerns Sergio Corbucci’s Il Grande Silenzio (The Great Silence). McGee was also able to star opposite some of this generations greatest actors Jean-Louis Trintignant, Klaus Kinski, Clint Eastwood and Sidney Poitier.
She was born in San Francisco and named after her father Lawrence Vonetta McGee. She attended San Fancisco State College where she studied pre-law but caught the acting bug after getting involved with some amateur theatre. She left college without graduating and joined the diaspora of American actors who moved to Rome in the 1960s to find work at the Cinecittà film studios.
In 1969 Sindney Poitier invited her to appear with him in the The Lost Man and the following year she was “the Negress” in John Huston’s The Kremlin Letter. Hereafter she starred in a string of blaxploitation films including: The Big Bust-Out (both 1972) and Shaft in Africa (1973).
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 these and other popular entertainments, whatever the colour of the stars.
She leaves her (husband) Carl Lumbly and (son) Brandon, and by her mother, Alma, three brothers and a sister.
Actress Lawrence Vonetta McGee, born 14 January 1945; died 9 July 2
