Racialicious Crush Of The Week: Pam Grier

When the genre’s popularity waned–and the newly cash-flush studios sought out their next big genre–Grier played smaller but quite memorable roles in TV (Miami Vice), theater (Fool For Love and Frankie And Johnny), and, yep, film (Fort Apache, The Bronx, Mars Attacks!, and that Mario Van Peebles homage to Blaxploitation heroes set in the Wild West, Posse). My personal favorite from this time in Grier’s career is The Dust Witch, who is described as “the most beautiful woman in the world,” in Something Wicked This Way Comes. (I may be remembering this fuzzily, but the Ray Bradbury novel, on which the movie is based, doesn’t give the character’s physical description beyond this; so, usually, these roles tend to go to white women. So, dig if you will, this role being given to Grier…back in 1983, during the third year of then-president Ronald Reagan’s term and seven years after he uttered that tarring term “welfare queen,” a codified phrase for Black women.)

Courtesy: iamsupergorge.com

Also around this time–in 1988–doctors diagnosed Grier with Stage IV cervical cancer. At first, the medical professionals said she would be fine after the cancerous cells were removed; then they told her that she had only 18 months to live. On reflection, Grier credits her combining chemotherapy and yoga with tinctures, hot teas, and herbs from a recommended Chinese herbalist for her cancer being in remission. The experience also led to her supporting environmental efforts–like community gardens–because she believes her recovery was so naturally based; to this day she maintains a farm, which is also a rescue shelter for horses, in her home state of Colorado. She also credits her grandfather as the first feminist she knows because ”[h]e taught me to fish and inspired me to get an education.” (She was a pre-med major.)

Then came Jackie Brown, and we’re reminded once again why Grier has such a hold on our pop-culture hearts, including director Quentin Tarantino’s. According to the above-mentioned Guardian interview:

[I]n 1995, Tarantino offered her Jackie Brown, a homage to her earlier 70s action roles. “I had no interest in film until Quentin asked me,” she says. How did it feel to be making a comeback? Grier sounds exasperated: “I never left! I just hadn’t been offered roles of that calibre forever. Spike Lee wasn’t writing roles for me, John Singleton and other black directors weren’t writing roles with me in mind–I was just doing other things until Quentin asked me.” Made on a relatively small budget of $12m, Jackie Brown was a hit, grossing nearly $73m at the box office in 1997, getting Grier back on to the Hollywood radar and earning her a much-deserved Golden Globe nomination. “What I know is that all my work before Jackie Brown prepared me for that part,” she says.

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