This essay is about Pam "Rosie" Grier, who is best known for her work in The Thing With Two Heads. She never got to meet Ray Milland, though, due to bluescreen.
Pam was born in 1949 in Salem, North Carolina. She went to beauty contests to pay her way into college. Unfortunately for her, this all ended tragically when she moved to California and got a job at AIP.
Naturally she started appearing in horribly cheap movies. Her first film was Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which Roger Ebert only wrote so he could criticize the writing in movies. Things got even worst as Roger Corman started giving her roles. She appeared in Women In Prison films. She was the one who held Barbie and moved her around in "The Big Doll House", a rare family WIP film. These tend not to work out so well, and "The Big Bird Cage" also flopped.
Her career reversed course and started digging upward as she appeared in Coffy. This film was a comedy about guys sitting around talking about what they like their women to be like. She next appeared in "Foxy Brown", an unusual film about a person not yet born who adopted a musical style not yet created. Despite that, she became popular enough to start appearing in a hot new genre that experts thought would last forever. "Friday Foster" and "Sheba, Baby" were both Blaxploitation films about a woman who would blow away pimps but only after she found someone to take care of her children.
Unfortunately for Pam word got out that she knew Roger Corman, and her career went into decline at the end of the seventies. For the rest of the eighties she was stuck doing appearances on sitcoms like Night Court. While this was humiliating it did help her eventually get a role in "The Original Gangstas." She appeared in other blockbuster comedies like Mars Attack!, a film made when one producer bet another one that he could make a movie that wasted as much talent as possible.
She became popular enough that a red hot Quentin Taratino decided to put her in one of his films. This movie was Pluto Nash, but the end result was so bad that it was shelved for 5 years and Quentin made a quickie apology movie for Pam called "Jackie Brown."
Nowadays you can find Pam on The L Word, one of the 26 spinoffs of Sesame Street. Her character is popular but she is unconfortable from time to time in a role where she can't blow away the druggie muppets.
Clearly Ms. Grier makes a case that you can have a long, successful career as long as you stay away from Corman and Tarantino.
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