Foxy

by Pam Grier

  When I got back to Los Angeles, a few friends and I put our money together and rented a house. I was tired of living in a pool house and wanted a regular, four-walled apartment like any other human being. But I also needed a job. New World Pictures was talking about putting me in some more films, but so far, it was just that—talk. I was adamant about not dipping into my savings for my survival, so I went back to doing some odd jobs. Since my receptionist position at APA was taken, I didn’t speak to Roger or Hal about it. I just went out and found some alternative ways to make money.

  After about two weeks of working in a pharmacy as a temporary accounting clerk, a call came in for me. I’d never gotten a call at the pharmacy, so I was surprised to find that Hal Gefsky had tracked me down. “What the hell are you doing working at a drugstore, Pam?” he asked.

  “They pay me a weekly salary here,” I said.

  “But you’re an actress now,” he insisted.

  “An out-of-work actress,” I reminded him.

  “We have some roles for you coming up really soon,” he assured me. “Your popularity is really rising around here.”

  “My popularity?” I echoed, feeling surprised. I had no idea. “Well, when I get hired, I’ll quit the drugstore. Until then, you know where to find me.”

  Working several jobs like before, I contacted Cora, Kareem’s mother, and we talked. Kareem was her only child, and she really wanted me to marry him. At the same time, she was a devout Catholic and she understood how I felt about converting to Islam.

  I continued to communicate with Kareem after my trip to Milwaukee. For me, a great deal had changed. For him, though, it was business as usual as he asked over and over if I “had been thinking.” I’d tell him I had, but I didn’t have any answers yet. I was still wounded from the awful night in Milwaukee when I had felt abandoned in the rain.

  On my birthday, several months after that fated trip, it all came to a head. I was sitting on the sofa in my house with my roommates, who were having a celebratory birthday drink with me, when the phone rang. It was Kareem. He had kept his place in Milwaukee and had also bought a huge Tudor-style mansion in Washington, DC, which he donated to his Muslim sect. I’d expected him to wish me a happy birthday, so I wasn’t surprised to hear from him. But I was not at all ready for what he had to say.

  “Happy birthday, Pam,” he began. “Are you having a nice day?”

  “I am,” I said, glad to hear his voice. Our house cat had just had kittens, and they were climbing all over me, licking my fingers with their tiny pink tongues, making me laugh.

  “You sound happy,” he said. “I’m sorry to have to do this on your birthday, but I need to know if you’re planning to convert so we can get married.”

  “You need to know right now?” I asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  He paused a moment and said, “ Well… if you don’t commit to me today, I’m getting married at 2:00 this afternoon. She’s a converted Muslim, and she’s been prepared for me.”

  Prepared for him? Was he talking about a wife? Was I on acid? “Do you know her?” I asked.

  “Yes, I know her.”

  “Have you been dating? I thought we were only seeing each other.”

  “No, no. It isn’t like that. We’re just friends. She converted, her Islam name is Fatima, and she’s prepared to be my Muslim wife.”

  It felt as if my heart stopped beating. “How long have you been planning this?” I asked.

  “When you left Milwaukee,” he told me, “I realized you might not convert. I’m just giving you an opportunity to commit because I want a life with you. If you do, too, I’ll cancel the wedding this afternoon. When I get the rest of my name, we’ll get your name, too. Then we can get married. That’s what I really want.”

  “And you can marry any other Muslim woman you want as well as me?” I asked.

  “Don’t think about that. I told you it’ll all be up to you, and you don’t know how you’ll feel a year from now. Once you become a Muslim, you might appreciate another wife. Whatever happens, you’ll always be my first wife.”

  Was that supposed to be alluring to me? Was he suggesting that being the first wife was a huge gift, no matter how many more there were? I gasped for air while my head reeled. I must have dropped to the floor, because suddenly I was on the carpet and my knees were scraped and burning.

  “Sorry to hit you with this on your birthday,” he repeated. Was he also sorry he had to get married to someone else on my birthday? What about the other 364 days in the year? “My mom wants to talk with you,” he said, and he handed the phone to Cora.

  She sounded devastated when she said, “Oh, Pam, I really want Lew to marry you. I want you two to be together.”

  “I want that, too, Cora. I love him. But I have to give up too much of myself,” I said through my tears and rage. “I’ll end up pretty far down in the hierarchy. I just can’t do it.”

  “I know you can’t, Pam,” said Cora. “I understand. I love you, and I wish you well.” She handed the phone back to her son.

  “Hope it all works out for you,” I told him.

  “Can you send me back the book I lent you? The one on being a Muslim woman?”

  What was he afraid of ? That I would do something disrespectful to it? I hung up the phone without answering. I spent the rest of my birthday in bed, crying and wishing I were back home with my mother.

  CHAPTER 17

  Scheherazade

  The next day, Cora called to tell me that Kareem had done it. A man of his word, he got married that same afternoon to his “prepared” wife while his own mother was not allowed in the mosque to witness the wedding. After all, she was a Catholic woman. They had tried to keep Kareem’s father out because he was Catholic and only Muslims could enter a mosque, but he forced his way in so they let him stay. In the meantime, Cora had been made to wait in the car while her only son got married to someone she barely knew in a religious ceremony that didn’t want her there.

  “He did it while I sat in the car, Pam. It was a terrible day,” she told me. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” I said. “I really hope you learn to love your new daughter-in-law.”

  “I’ll try,” she said.

  I was shattered by the breakup, although I must have known it was inevitable. I stopped reading Ebony and Jet magazines because Kareem had become a superstar and every month his photo was plastered all over those publications. As usual, I turned to work to keep me busy, always entertaining the idea of college as my ultimate goal.

  One of my roommates back then, Tamara Dobson of future Cleopatra Jones fame, became my best friend. David Baumgarten introduced us because he thought we had a lot to share with each other, and he was right. I still remember the day she arrived from New York, a six-foot-two, stunningly beautiful dark-skinned supermodel with six pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage. She breezed in wearing a long fur coat—she was ultra-sophisticated, and she really knew who she was.

  My apprenticeship began immediately as she unpacked a ton of makeup and several pairs of stiletto heels that made me want to hide my Timberland hiking boots. In a few minutes, Tamara and I were laughing as I tried on her elegant clothing and high heels. Destined to become my big sister and teach me the tricks of the modeling and beauty trades, she was excited to hear about my experiences with farming, horses, skiing, and ice-skating in the ’hood back in Denver. We were as different as two women could be and just as interested in each other’s life and adventures.

  Although I kept working my various jobs, it turned out that my days away from the big screen were numbered. My popularity as a Roger Corman film star was rising, and I made several trips to Aspen, which was becoming a smaller version of Hollywood. Stars gathered there, and I had dinner and skied with the likes of Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and Ivana Trump, before she married the Donald. Because I had always been athletic, I did a decent job of schussing down the slopes.

  Before too long,
I returned to the Philippines to do two more Corman movies, The Big Bird Cage and Twilight People. In The Big Bird Cage, another “women in prison” movie, I played the role of Blossom, the machine-gun-toting girlfriend of revolutionary leader Django, played by Sid Haig, as we tried to liberate a women’s prison camp. In Twilight People, I got a chance to play a strange creature that was part human and part animal, and I found the work exciting and challenging. This was my time, when my popularity and the success of the films were going through the roof. Thousands of people would show up when I was scheduled to appear at theaters, public fund-raisers, and promotions at TV stations. They were hungry for a female action hero, and at this particular moment I fit the bill, but my popularity never ceased to amaze me.

  Now that I was tired of group living and could finally afford something on my own, I got myself an apartment in West Hollywood. The best part was that I got an apartment for Tamara in the same building and we remained close friends, living down the hall from each other. She was fascinated by my childhood in the military and that I was a world traveler, while I was drawn to her sophistication. She was hardly the giggly collegiate girlfriend. She wore furs in the middle of the summer, and her makeup was impeccable. One of the first black models ever to appear on the cover of Vogue magazine, she received tons of free samples and shared them with me.

  I was very impressed with Tamara’s ability to mix and match makeup colors for the African American woman, complete with her own personal blending. She was a pioneer in a variety of ways, and when she applied makeup to my face and told me her fantastic international modeling stories, she seemed like Scheherazade herself. I remember her introducing me to the famous weeklong “green beans” diet, to lose weight before a photo shoot. Not that I needed to lose weight back then. I was very thin and twice as active. But everything about Tamara was a source of learning and fascination for me.

  It was obvious that David Baumgarten’s instinct about Tamara and me helping each other out made a great deal of sense. I needed to understand glamour and how to fix myself up. At the same time, Tamara needed to be more adventurous and take some risks. So while she polished up my rough edges by teaching me to apply makeup, make my hair more sophisticated, and walk like a model, I taught her how to ride a motorcycle for her upcoming film shoot. I also taught her to shoot a gun, which she had never done before. When I told her I could teach her to shoot, she looked at me like I was crazy. “Are you telling me you own a rifle?” she said one evening, when she was showing me how to do a thorough cleansing ritual for the delicate skin under my eyes.

  “I got one for hunting when I was young,” I said in a matter-of-fact way.

  “Did you ever kill anything?” she asked.

  “A tree or two,” I said. We tried to keep from laughing so we wouldn’t crack the green clay facial masks drying on our faces.

  Unbeknownst to both of us, we were an integral part of the burgeoning black film movement that became known as “blaxploitation.” It’s difficult to define something when you’re in the center of it, so I really didn’t see what was happening while I was living it. But there were a lot of opinions about this genre, as it was being defined by the mainstream, the black leftists, the religious right conservatives, and the lesbian community.

  To me, what really stood out in the genre was women of color acting like heroes rather than depicting nannies or maids. We were redefining heroes as schoolteachers, nurses, mothers, and street-smart women who were proud of who they were. They were far more aggressive and progressive than the Hollywood stereotypes. Despite the fact that many men and some women were not supportive of female equality like they are today, the roles all made sense to me. After all, these were the women with whom I grew up. I guess I was ahead of my time, because today, contemporary women are scantily dressed but are still dignified and very intelligent.

  At the time, in the early seventies, I was pulled in many directions, and my life was changing drastically as this explosive film genre emerged, targeting the urban black audience with black actors and funk and soul music appropriate to the time. Blaxploitation films generally took place in the ’hood in an atmosphere of crime as they dealt with hit men, drug dealers, and pimps. Black against white, rich against poor were common themes, featuring negative white characters such as corrupt cops, as well as black women of ill repute, easily fooled organized crime members, and corrupt politicians of any and every race.

  In the background of each story were hunky pimps and pushers, knockout whores, and crooked police snorting, shooting, and screwing everything in sight. The black characters wore wildly colorful ’hood garb, and the plots nearly always resembled old Warner Bros. melodramas, with dashes of MGM fashion glamour—via the street—thrown in. It was common for the persecuted female character, angry and less conflicted than her male counterpart, to destroy a white-based power structure that had caused pain and harm to herself and her family.

  I was emerging as one of the leading women in this genre, as was Tamara. The press continually tried to create competition between the two of us, since she was the sophisticated one and I was more “grassroots.” But she and I both hated the controversy the press cooked up. We were so disturbed about them trying to come between our friendship, Tamara wrote the following letter to Ebony magazine on November 8, 1973:

  Dear Ms. Horton,

  I’m writing in reference to an article which appeared in Ebony magazine, Nov. 1973 issue, titled “The Battle Among the Beauties.” I would like to point out that there were several erroneous statements in the article, namely that I have refused to appear in the same celebrity events, let alone the same page, with my good friend, Pam Grier.

  I would like to point out that Miss Grier and myself have been very close friends since 1969. In fact, we are neighbors. I never authorized any persons who represent me in the field of management or agency work to make the aforementioned statements.

  I have always had a great respect for Ebony magazine and the other Johnson publications, however, I feel that under the circumstances, my growing lack of enchantment with the magazine based on this article is understandable.

  I would like to respectfully request that the facts be set straight.

  Sincerely, Tamara Dobson

  The press was determined to divide and conquer, but Tamara and I would have none of it. I started to create a movie for us, similar to the popular male buddy comedy I Spy, starring Bill Cosby and Robert Culp. It would be the first time that two black actresses would star in a buddy picture, but the producers weren’t ready to risk the money on women being funny. Maybe they were still attached to story lines where black women were victims who transformed themselves into heroes. They were not interested in what we thought was the logical next step in our careers, even though we felt we were on the right track. After all, comedies were “king”—they were more mainstream and more lucrative at the box office right then. That was where we wanted to go.

  Although we could not make that happen, Tamara and I enjoyed our friendship, no matter what the press or the producers said or thought about us. We were thrilled to join the ranks of black women making a splash, including Diahann Carroll, Lena Horne, and Eartha Kitt. Even though I was a private person at heart, I was excited to promote my films in big cities, where they treated me like royalty. And now that I knew Tamara, I was embracing the glamour of Hollywood, and I finally felt pretty and self-confident. That was a big step for me during this historical time of political ascension for African American women.

  Society was in a dilemma about what was considered “pretty” among women of color. If we straightened our hair, we were labeled “pretty.” If we let it grow out into a natural afro, we were called “ethnic.” So far, there were few people in the mainstream who were ready to accept our natural looks as part of our beauty, and that really pissed off both Tamara and me. They convinced us to straighten our hair or to wear a wig for TV and movies. But along with Cicely Tyson, my friend Tamara was one of the first black models to
wear an afro. She was demonstrating her sense of self and her nationalism, determined to express her natural beauty and have it be accepted by her audience.

  It was different for an actress. The craft itself demands a person to change who she is and how she looks for the duration of a role. But there were issues to consider. How much skin were we willing to show and where? Nude scenes were considered racy in the United States, while they were considered art in Europe. We had to make decisions for ourselves that would affect our careers in the future, but in what way, we couldn’t be sure.

  While Tamara shot her most famous film, Cleopatra Jones, I was hired for a role where I finally made some real money. It was the part of a woman named Coffy in a movie of the same name, which had been originally written for a white woman. She had turned it down, however, because she was not willing to do her own stunts, since stunt work can be so dangerous.

  Very few actresses were willing or capable of performing stunts. I didn’t blame them, but this was where I got singled out. Unafraid, I was a natural adventurer and stuntperson as I rode horses and motorcycles, and jumped off of buildings into nets. If you needed a woman of color to handle a gun, do a wheelie on a chopper, or fall off a cliff into a rice paddy, I was the one to call. Push me out of a plane, throw me into a fire, I was ready. It all excited me, and I loved the challenge.

  When it came time for me to show up in a bra and panties for my role in Coffy, I was willing to do that, too. My stay in Europe had opened me up, but there was a debate about what to do when I had a Janet Jackson–style wardrobe malfunction. A strap on my black and white polka-dot dress broke, and I was so into the scene that I was unaware that I had bared my nipple. Since it had occurred on its own, not planned, I was all for leaving it in. Why would people be afraid of a nipple?

  The truth was that it was still considered uncouth for a woman to breastfeed in public. But nudity was becoming more prevalent, and men and women alike were taking off their clothes, soaking in coed hot tubs naked, and skinny-dipping in swimming pools. It was post-Woodstock, and we were being told to love our bodies. These days, no one thinks much of nudity. Even Halle Berry allowed her nipples to show in Monster’s Ball. Back then, people were accustomed to seeing black women mainly play hookers and drug addicts where they wore skimpy clothes and allowed themselves to be exploited.