Vonetta McGee

Vonetta Lawrence McGee (January 14, 1945 – July 9, 2010) was an American actress. She debuted in the Spaghetti Western The Great Silence and went on to appear in blaxploitation films such as Hammer, Melinda, Blacula, Shaft in Africa, Detroit 9000, and 1974's Thomasine & Bushrod alongside her then-boyfriend Max Julien. In 1975, she was Clint Eastwood's co-star in The Eiger Sanction. She was a regular on the 1987 Universal Television situation comedy Bustin' Loose, starring as Mimi Shaw for its only season (1987–88). Early life Born Vonetta Lawrence McGee in San Francisco, California, to Lawrence McGee and Alma McGee (née Scott). McGee graduated from San Francisco Polytechnic High School in 1962. She was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma at the age of 17. Her family encouraged her to be a lawyer. She enrolled at San Francisco State University to study pre-law and acted with the racially conscious Black theater group Aldridge Players West. She eventually dropped out of college and went abroad to seek active work. Career McGee landed her first role in 1968, when she performed alongside Jean-Louis Trintignant and Klaus Kinski in Sergio Corbucci's Spaghetti Western The Great Silence, and made her first released film appearance earlier that year as the eponymous character in the Italian comedy Faustina. She later became well known for her parts in the 1972 Blaxploitation films Melinda and Hammer. In the action thriller Shaft in Africa (1973), McGee took the role of Aleme, the daughter of an emir, who teaches John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) Ethiopian geography. Earlier that year she had appeared in a supporting role as an occult priestess in The Norliss Tapes. In 1974, McGee appeared as Thomasine, alongside Max Julien as Bushrod, in the western action film Thomasine & Bushrod, which was intended as a counterpart to the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. The next year, she starred alongside Clint Eastwood in the action thriller The Eiger Sanction (1975).