- Tamara Dobson, Cleopatra Jones, 1972. Hot off being the pimp Goldie in The Mack earlier that year, Max Julien created a kind of Black female James Bond in the titular – and very tall – Federal agent. She was like a sister or cousin to Pamela Grier’s Coffy – also by dreamt up Julien. He wrote Cleo for his then lover, Vonetta McGee (Blacula, Hammer). She still had to audition among ten other wannabe Blaxploiteers chosen from 2,500 contenders: Anazette Chase (The Mack), model and singer Grace Jones (she joined the real Bond in A View to a Kill), Kitty Jones (Shaft’s Big Score), Vikki Mclaughlin (Super Fly). Plus five unknowns: Michele Pettis, Judy Ross, Naomi Simms, Duchelle Smit and Julie Woodson, a future Playboy Playmate although she had fled Super Fly over nudity. Various producers said Tamara ruined her career by refusing nude scenes in her two Cleo thrillers while Coffy’s Grier often stripped… politically. “We were told our brown nipples weren’t attractive. I was trying to break that line of what was acceptable in society.”
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 1