Deaths 2022

Deaths 2021

Deaths 2020

Deaths 2019

Deaths 2018

Deaths 2017

Deaths 2016

Deaths 2015

Deaths 2014

Deaths 2013

Deaths 2012

Deaths 2011

Deaths 2010

Deaths 2009


Full list by date of death

Vonetta McGee

Actress

Born - 14 January 1940, San Francisco, California, USA
Died - 9 July 2010

Light-skinned African-American actress prominent in 'blaxploitation' movies of the 1970s. She began her career in Italy with Faustina - she had the title role - and Il Grande Silenzio, both in 1968. She was also in The Lost Man (1969) and The Kremlin Letter (1970), but it was in action films of the early 1970s tailored to black audiences that she became a name moviegoers recognised: Blacula (1972), Melinda (1972, and another title role), Hammer (1972), Shaft in Africa (1973), Thomasine & Bushrod (1974). Because of her late start to a film career, she was 35 by the time she co-starred with Clint Eastwood in The Eiger Sanction (1975) and, after Brothers (1977), most of her subsequent work was for television. Her last film was Johnny B Good in 1998. A longtime sufferer from Hodgkin's lymphoma, she was married for the first time at 46 to actor Carl Lumbly. They were still together at the time of her death from cardiac arrest.