The unparalleled success enjoyed by United Artists with Ossie Davis' Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) and by MGM with Gordon Parks' Shaft (1971) led to a flood of films that made household names out of former character actors (Yaphet Kotto, William Marshall), stage players (Thalmus Rasulala, Paula Kelly), professional athletes (Jim Brown, Fred Williamson), fashion models (Richard Roundtree, Tamara Dobson), standup comedians (Richard Pryor, Rudy Rae Moore), and even the occasional receptionist (Pam Grier, Gloria Hendry). Nearly forty years after the advent of Blaxploitation, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish the parodies ( Cleopatra Schwartz, Black Dynamite) that followed from the genuine articles ( Cleopatra Jones, Black Shampoo) that broke out of the Hollywood studio system in the 1970s to appeal an African-American movie-going demographic accustomed to searching high and wide for racial representation on the big screen.
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