My Roku lied to me about the availability of L.A. Law on streaming, or maybe it just didn’t recognize the name. Still, it remains true that Vonetta McGee’s career could easily escape your notice, if you didn’t have a fondness for certain ’70s films. She herself disliked the term “blaxploitation,” believing it mostly served as a way of dismissing movies without looking at their actual merits, simply because their casts were predominantly black. She’s not entirely wrong, I think, though I also think it’s a useful signifier. Then again, it’s also a term that will make me seek out films, to a certain extent at least, so what do I know?
Still, it appears that quite a lot of McGee’s performances were specifically aimed at an audience I am not part of. There’s Blacula, of course—and my goodness but she gives a good performance in that movie, a movie that is full of solid performances. More so than people give it credit for. I haven’t seen a lot of her movies—for starters, I don’t have as much time as I used to for watching movies I don’t think are age-appropriate for my kids. Still, she’s doing extremely good work in what I’ve seen of hers.
One of the universals of watching performances for research on more obscure figures is an awareness that some of them shouldn’t be as obscure as they are. In some cases, it’s because their entire line of work is trivialized; this is generally the case for behind-the-scenes people. However, when it comes to performers, the names that slip through the cracks tend to be names attached to people who don’t fit a certain mold. I feel as though this is part of what’s going on with Vonetta McGee, who was a better actress than some women who became more famous for worse performances.
I genuinely don’t remember what put McGee on the schedule. It has given me an opportunity to revisit her performances, though, and that’s worthwhile. I’ve encountered her now and again over the years—though I didn’t get to see her bravura performance in L.A. Law before, because I’d never watched it before. I’d just never gotten around to it. I’ve watched it for this column, at least a little bit, and while the show doesn’t appeal to me, she may be the best part of what I’ve watched so far.
Catching up on more of her career is a priority to me once the kids are in school in person and I have a few viewing hours possible every day. In theory, the point of this column is to suggest people that I think you should pay more attention to; every once in a while, what we come across instead is someone I should. There’s nothing wrong with that. I think it’s healthy.
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