On screen, Tamara Dobson stood 6-foot-2 and sported an afro that seemed almost as tall--she was impossible to miss. Off screen, she was virtually impossible to find.
Dobson, the actress who cut an imposing figure as high-fashion super-agent Cleopatra Jones, only to later become the most elusive star of the blaxploitation era, died Monday at a Baltimore care facility of complications from pneumonia and multiple sclerosis, her family said. She was 59.
A former model, Dobson's Hollywood career was brief, but iconic.
Blaxploitation film expert David Walker remembered Dobson Thursday as being, with Pam Grier, one of the most influential black actresses of the 1970s, and beyond.
"These two women alone were more responsible for changing how black women were portrayed on the screen than any other two women," Walker said.
Grier kicked butt and other body parts in the revenge flicks Foxy Brown, Coffy and others. Dobson took a cooler, but no less lethal approach to injustice in 1973's Cleopatra Jones and its 1975 sequel, Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold.
"The difference between Tamara Dobson and Pam Grier," Walker said, "is that everybody knows Pam Grier, and everybody knows Cleopatra Jones."
But nobody, at least not the public, knew Tamara Dobson.
True, the usual biographical data is present and accounted for: Born in Baltimore on May 14, 1947; modeled in Vogue, Mademoiselle and other fashion magazines; scored her first notable movie role as Yul Brynner's girlfriend in 1972's Fuzz; made her final appearance in the 1984 TV movie Amazons; once recognized, the legend goes, as film's tallest leading lady.
And, true, Dobson wasn't the only blaxploitation star to step back from the spotlight after the groundbreaking, but controversial film cycle abruptly ended in the late 1970s. But she was about the only one who never came back. Pam Grier had her Jackie Brown; Tamara Dobson had more than 20 years of private life to herself.
Walker, who made the blaxploitation documentary Macked, Hammered, Slaughtered and Shafted, said he tried to contact Dobson a handful of times for interviews, but had no luck. She was unreachable, unlocatable. And not just to him, but to others, including the fellow stars of her era.
"She really did 100 percent disappear off the face of the earth," Walker said. "I've heard rumors about everybody, but there's no story about her."
Well, maybe there were a few stories, a few theories about her post-Hollywood life. One, according to Walker, had her marrying a diamond broker.
"Maybe she just fell in love with something other than acting," Walker said. "And that's a nice way to remember her--in a fairytale context."
Dobson's family described the former actress as a "devoted aunt" who "lived most of her adult life in New York." She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis six years ago, they said.
"It was a fast degeneration in her case, and it was very disheartening to me," her brother, Peter Dobson, said Thursday. "I could not stay and watch her suffer, especially knowing the type of athletic person she was."
According to Peter Dobson, the mystery of whatever happened to Tamara Dobson wasn't all that mysterious: She had a crushing experience on one of her final films and essentially decided enough was enough.
"She was always headstrong about her decisions," Peter Dobson said.
After Hollywood, Tamara Dobson bought and managed property in New York, her brother said. Ideas for new show-biz ventures--such as a pro-wrestling announcing gig suggested by her brother--were dismissed.
"She got there [to Hollywood]. She was very stubborn to put her feet to the path to get there, and if she said she was done, she was done," Peter Dobson said.
"She's one of the toughest people I know."
When illness struck, Peter Dobson said, his sister became a recluse, intent on fighting her health battle.
Did she know how iconic a film figure she was?
"In a way she did," Peter Dobson said, "in a way, she didn't."