Prior to the movie’s events, Pop Byrd had borrowed money from a local drug dealer, Pinky, in order to open his school. Pinky had been stealing money from the mafia and was forced to pay them $250,000 or get Pop’s building for them. Pinky inflated the debt with a ridiculous amount of interest, with the intent of offering Pop the deal of trading his building in exchange for the debt being cleared. However, things do not go as planned, as Pop is accidentally killed by Pinky’s men during an intimidation attempt. Before he dies, he states that he couldn’t give them the building to settle his debt, because it did not belong to him, but to someone named Sydney.

Pinky then decides to send his men to the karate school, to inform them of Pop’s debt (inflated yet again) and attempt the same scheme. However, the thugs are beaten up by Black Belt Jones and the students. Meanwhile, a woman arrives to attend Pop’s funeral, who is none other than Sydney, the daughter of the late Pop Byrd. After demanding to know what happened to her father, she is informed of the mafia’s activities as well as her father’s debt, but says she won’t sell the building. Angered, she is determined to punish the people who caused her father’s death. (It must be mentioned that she hadn’t seen her father since she was 5 years old, which makes her anger seem very exaggerated.) Because both Sydney and Black Belt Jones are martial arts experts, they join forces to “clobber the mob”.

Answer:  That is a good question.  The indirect answer is yes!  Bill Cosby was credited with funding the movie Sweet Sweetback’s Baasasssss song, which is often times credited as being the first blaxploitation movie.  That movie spawned movies like Dolemite and Blacula.  Without those movies, there would be no Afro-Squad.  So yes, indirectly, Bill Cosby helped launch the Afro-Squad!

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song

The musical score of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song was performed by Earth, Wind & Fire. Van Peebles did not have any money for traditional advertising methods, so he released the soundtrack album prior to the film’s release in order to generate publicity. Initially, the film was screened only in two theaters in the United States. It went on to gross $4.1 million at the box office. Huey P. Newton celebrated and welcomed the film’s revolutionary implications, and Sweetback became required viewing for members of the Black Panther Party. The movie is an important work in the history of American cinema because it created a market for independent black films. According to Variety, it demonstrated to Hollywood that films which portrayed “militant” blacks could be highly profitable, leading to the creation of the blaxploitation genre, although some do not consider this example of Van Peebles’ work to be an exploitation film.

Pamela Suzette “Pam” Grier

Early life

Grier was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 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. She has one sister and one brother.^[2] 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 in Denver, Colorado she appeared in a number of stage productions, and participated in beauty contests to raise money for college tuition toward Metropolitan State College. Contrary to previous reports she states that she is not the cousin of National Football League great Roosevelt Grier or to National Hockey League player Mike Grier.

[edit] Career

Grier moved to Los Angeles, California in 1967, where she was initially hired as a receptionist at the American International Pictures (AIP) company. She was discovered by director Jack Hill, who cast her in his women in prison films The Big Doll House (1971), and The Big Bird Cage (1972). While under contract at AIP, she became a staple of early 1970s blaxploitation movies, playing big, bold, assertive women, beginning with Jack Hill’s Coffy (1973), 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 an action film, as protagonists of previous blaxploitation films were males. 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.^[3] Grier subsequently played similar characters in the AIP films Foxy Brown (1974), Friday Foster, and Sheba, Baby (both 1975).

With the demise of blaxploitation, Grier appeared in smaller roles 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, Martin, 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. She also appeared on Sinbad, Preston Chronicles, The Cosby Show, The Wayans Brother Show, and Mad TV. In 1994, Grier appeared in Snoop Doggy Dogg’s video for Doggy Dogg World.

According to The Lives of John Lennon by Albert Goldman, she was at the famed Troubadour night club in Hollywood the night Lennon was ejected for drunkenly heckling the Smothers Brothers.

In the late 1990s Grier was a cast member of the Showtime series Linc’s. She again appeared in 1997 with the title role in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, a film that partly paid homage to her ’70s blaxploitation movies. As of 2004^[update], she appears in the cable television series The L Word as Kit Porter and occasionally guest-stars in such television series as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (where she is a recurring character).

In 2010, Grier began appearing in a recurring role on the hit sci-fi series Smallville as the villain Amanda Waller, also known as White Queen, head agent of Checkmate, a covert operations agency.

Born in New Rochelle, New York, Richard Roundtree graduated from New Rochelle High School in 1961 and starred on New Rochelle High’s undefeated and nationally ranked football team in 1960. He attended Southern Illinois University.^[1] Roundtree was diagnosed with the rare form of male breast cancer in 1993 and underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy.^[2]

Career

Roundtree was a leading man in early 1970s blaxploitation films. He also played a role in the 1977 television series Roots, in the role of the slave Sam Bennett. He portrayed Dr. Daniel Reubens on Generations from 1989-1991. Prior to becoming an actor, he was a football player and a model. Although Roundtree worked through the 1990s, many of his more recent films were not well-received, but he was able to find success in stage plays.

Since 1990, however, he reemerged as a cult icon. Roundtree appeared in David Fincher’s critically acclaimed 1995 movie Seven, the 2000 remake of Shaft as John Shaft’s uncle, and guest-starred in several episodes of the first season of Desperate Housewives as an amoral private detective. He also appeared in 1997’s George of the Jungle, as well as playing a high school vice-principal in the 2005 movie Brick. His voice was also utilized as the title character in the hit Play Station game Akuji the Heartless, where Akuji must battle his way out of the depths of hell at the bidding of the Baron.

In 1997, Roundtree had a leading role in the short-lived FOX ensemble drama 413 Hope St. He portrayed Booker T. Washington in the 1999 television movie Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years.

He has appeared in the television series The Closer as Colonel D.B. Walter U.S.M.C. (retired) father of sniper and in Heroes as Simone’s terminally ill father, Charles Deveaux. Next, he appeared in an episode of Lincoln Heights. Most recently, Roundtree has a supporting role in the 2008 Speed Racer film as a racer-turned-commentator who is an icon and hero to Speed.

Rudy Ray Moore

Biography

Moore, who was raised in his birthplace of Fort Smith, Arkansas, as well as Cleveland, Ohio, began his entertainment career as an R&B singer and continued singing through his comedy career. He developed an interest in comedy in the Army after expanding on a singing performance for other servicemen. Moore released many comedy records throughout the 1960s and 1970s, developing a rude and explicit style similar to Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor. This kept him off of television and major films, but cultivated an enduring fan base.^[1]

It should be noted that some of Moore’s X-Rated comedy records were recorded at his home with personal friends in attendance as the audience. This is where the term party records comes from, with Rudy Ray Moore creating the format.

He appeared on Big Daddy Kane’s 1990 album Taste of Chocolate and 2 Live Crew’s 1994 album Back at Your Ass for the Nine-4. He also reprised his Dolemite character in an appearance on Snoop Dogg’s 1999 album No Limit Top Dogg.

In 2000, Moore starred in Big Money Hustlas, a movie created by and starring the Insane Clown Posse, in which he played Dolemite for the first time in over 20 years.

In 2008, Moore reprised the character Petey Wheatstraw on the song “I Live For The Funk,” which featured Blowfly and Daniel Jordan. This marked the first time Blowfly and Rudy collaborated on the same record together—and the 30-year anniversary of the movie Petey Wheatstraw and was also the final recording Rudy made before his death.^[2]

On October 19, 2008, Moore died of complications from diabetes.^[3]

Blacula (1972). This cheaply made Blaxploitation riff on Dracula boasts a great leading turn by Shakespearean actor William Marshall, who lends the picture a resonant speaking voice and a commanding presence — even when he’s wearing goofy sideburns that track all the way from his eye sockets to his jaw line. Enjoyable as a kitschy time capsule, or on its own merits as a competently executed tragedy, Blacula delivers everything its title promises. I’m just sorry I can’t say the same for the disappointing 1973 sequel, which boasts an even better title — Scream, Blacula, Scream! — and the presence of Blaxploitation queen Pam Grier.

Vonetta McGee, an actress whose big-screen heyday during the blaxploitation era of the 1970s included leading roles in “Blacula” and “Shaft in Africa,” has died. She was 65.

McGee died Friday at a hospital in Berkeley after experiencing cardiac arrest and being on life support for two days, said family spokeswoman Kelley Nayo. Although McGee had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 17, Nayo said, her death was not related to the disease.

McGee was described as “one of the busiest and most beautiful black actresses” by Times movie reviewer Kevin Thomas in 1972, the year she appeared opposite Fred Williamson in the black action movie “Hammer,” and had starring roles in the crime-drama “Melinda” and the horror film “Blacula.”

She went on to appear with Richard Roundtree in “Shaft in Africa” (1973), and co-starred with Max Julien in “Thomasine & Bushrod” (1974).

McGee also appeared with Clint Eastwood in the 1975 action-thriller “The Eiger Sanction,” prompting The Times’ Thomas to write in his review: “Her parrying with Eastwood, verbally and otherwise, is enough to scorch the screen.”

“I was pleased to see her get a role with Clint Eastwood,” said Williamson, who knew McGee before they made “Hammer.” “Not many black actors had that opportunity to be in a movie where color doesn’t matter.

“Vonetta McGee was like a lot of actors and actresses at that time, like myself, Jim Brown, Richard Roundtree, Billy Dee Williams and Pam Grier, in that we had more talent than we were allowed to show because everything was perceived as a black project. Once they categorize you, your marketability becomes limited.”

McGee was no fan of the “blaxploitation” label that was attached to many of the films featuring black casts in the ’70s.

That label, she told The Times in 1979, was used “like racism, so you don’t have to think of the individual elements, just the whole. If you study propaganda, you understand how this works.”

Although The Times reported that McGee “calls herself one of the lucky graduates of the black-film genre,” she pointed out that there was a difference between someone like Diana Ross and other potentially marketable black actresses.

“She has had the luxury of a studio behind her,” McGee said. “This is where a lot of us fell short. We all needed a certain amount of protection. But we were on our own.”

Among McGee’s other film credits are “The Lost Man,” “Detroit 9000,” “Brothers” (in which she played an activist based on Angela Davis), “Repo Man” and “To Sleep with Anger.”

In the ’80s, her career turned primarily to television.

That included playing Sister Indigo on Robert Blake’s short-lived 1985 dramatic series “Hell Town” and playing a social worker who takes a con man played by Jimmie Walker into her home in the syndicated 1987-88 sitcom “Bustin’ Loose.”

She also played a recurring role on “L.A. Law” and appeared in several episodes of “Cagney & Lacey” as the wife of detective Mark Petrie (played by Carl Lumbly).

McGee and Lumbly were married in 1986 and had a son, Brandon, in 1988.

Born Lawrence Vonetta McGee in San Francisco on Jan. 14, 1945, she was attending what is now San Francisco State when she got involved with a local acting group.

She launched her film career in 1968 in Italy, where she appeared in the spaghetti western “The Great Silence” and played the title role in the comedy “Faustina.”

In addition to her husband and son, she is survived by her mother, Alma McGee; three brothers, Donald, Richard and Ronald McGee; and a sister, Alma McGee.

A memorial service is pending.

dennis.mclellan@latimes.com

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