Battle Of The Beauties
The Women of Blaxploitation
The Black Movie Boom of the 1970’s created jobs for young Black actresses and introduced new talents such as Pam Grier, Vonetta McGee, Gloria Henry, Tamara Dobson, Judy Pace, Esther Anderson, Paula Kelly, Carol Speed, Lisa Moore, Rosalind Cash, Jaki Demar, Rosalind Miles, Kathy Imrie, Shelia Frazier and Brenda Skyes.
Rosalind Cash
Rosalind Cash was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on December 31, 1938. As a young woman, she took off with only $20 in her pocket to seek her fame and fortune in New York City. At first things were difficult: “I had a cold-water one-room apartment in Harlem sharing a kitchen I didn’t dare use because of the rats,” she told The Guardian. But Cash attended the City College of New York, and managed to ferret out the first stirrings of independent black theater in the city. She made her stage debut in 1958 in a production at the Harlem YMCA, performing in a play by Langston Hughes called Soul Gone Home.
