With Women Of Action,Caroline Siede digs into the history of women-driven action movies to explore what these stories say about gender and how depictions of female action heroes have evolved over time.
There’s a specific tone of action filmmaking that emerged from the recent era of Mission: Impossible fervor, Star Wars sequels, and Marvel Cinematic Universe domination. Audiences fell for movies that were funny without sacrificing their pathos, ensemble-driven without losing focus on their lead, sexy without being sexual, and mildly progressive without letting that overwhelm their love of a kickass action sequence. If 1980s action was souped up, 1990s action was sleek, and 2000s action was hyperstylized, there’s a contemporary trend of action filmmaking that takes itself seriously without ever taking itself too seriously. It’s remarkable to look back and discover that this distinctly modern tone has come back around after arriving fully formed in the 1973 Blaxploitation classic Cleopatra Jones. That’s all in a day’s work for Tamara Dobson’s “6 feet 2 inches of dynamite.”
Though the Warner Bros. heroine hit theaters two months after Pam Grier first shattered the Blaxploitation glass ceiling with Coffy, the two characters are more counterpoints than copycats. In both Coffy and its pseudo-sequel Foxy Brown, Grier’s characters are scrappy, traumatized vigilantes looking for bloody revenge outside of the system—something they ultimately earn only after they’ve suffered a high level of abuse and sexualization along the way. Dobson’s Cleopatra Jones, meanwhile, is a fashionable special agent working for the United States government who jets around on global missions, drives a Corvette Stingray with a personalized license plate, lives in a chic Los Angeles mansion, and takes out bad guys with her sick karate moves. Where Grier’s R-rated films were at least partially aimed at titillating 19-year-old boys, Cleopatra Jones is a PG project with no sex or nudity; a rarity for the Blaxploitation genre.
As with Batman and Superman or James Bond and Jason Bourne, it’s to everyone’s cultural benefit that both archetypes exist. In fact, it’s kind of remarkable to think that 1973 audiences could do a double feature with two such wildly different Black female action heroines—something that would still feel noteworthy if it happened in Hollywood today. Where Coffy‘s filmmakers leaned intense and sleazy, Cleopatra Jones was sleeker and higher-budget with a lighter comedic touch thanks to director Jack Starrett (a.k.a. the “frontier gibberish” speechmaker in Blazing Saddles) and co-writer Sheldon Keller, who came up through sketch comedy before writing for The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Cleopatra Jones doesn’t go so far as to become a full-on spoof, but it deploys a winking self-awareness similar to some of the sillier 007 entries, which almost certainly inspired the initial story pitch from screenwriter/Blaxploitation star Max Julien. (The trailer even sells its leading lady as “the soul sister’s answer to James Bond.”) Cleo enters the film stepping off a helicopter in a chic fur-lined cape on her way to blow up an opium field in Turkey. To foil some goons who are waiting to take her out at the airport, she rides in on the baggage carousel and high-kicks them in the face. Later, she opens a Batmobile-esque compartment in her car door to reveal a collection of weapons hidden inside. At one point, she hops onto a dirt bike just to prove she can do that too. As one white male cop muses to another, “Kert, you ever have feelings of inadequacy?”
Dobson came from a modeling background and brings a real sense of poise to Cleo, which is an effective contrast to how cartoony the film can be at times. (At one point she takes down two henchmen who have literally disguised themselves as gray-haired old folks in order to sneak-attack her.) Italian designer Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo crafted Dobson’s stylish wardrobe, which includes everything from a silver jacket straight out of Star Trek to an incredible collection of hats, bell bottoms, and fur coats. The film’s action high point is a riveting five-minute car chase through the L.A. River, which is elevated by both some great stunt driving and the fact that Cleo rocks a periwinkle shirtdress with matching turban and earrings throughout.
In other words, Cleopatra Jones is fun in a way too few female-led action movies are allowed to be. You could probably draw a straight line between this movie and the Charlie’s Angels TV show that debuted three years later. While there can be something powerful about using the action genre to unpack the trauma and abuse that real-life women face, sometimes you just want to watch kickass ladies enjoy themselves like male action heroes so often get to do. If the thrill of Coffy is that it feels like its heroine could genuinely die at any moment, the thrill of Cleopatra Jones is that you know Cleo will always end up on top. As she puts it, “My jurisdiction extends from Ankara, Turkey to Watts Tower, baby.”
What makes Cleopatra Jones special, however, is that it’s not just pure escapism. As with a lot of Blaxploitation films of the era, the story centers on the way drug lords are ravaging a Black neighborhood with heroin while racist, corrupt cops abuse an already struggling community. There are genre staples here like the campy lesbian villain “Mommy” (two-time Oscar winner Shelley Winters doing the absolute most) and the one “good cop” (Dan Frazer) for balance. But the elevating touch is how much Cleopatra Jones cares about depicting the sprawling tapestry of Cleo’s L.A. hometown. This is a film in which every single one- and two-scene character pops, which, more than anything, is what makes Cleo’s fight for her community feel like more than just a talking point.
Take the scene where she stops by a diner run by a middle-aged woman named Mrs. Johnson (Esther Rolle). Plotwise, it’s a way to introduce Mrs. Johnson’s two karate-expert sons so they can serve as Cleo’s backup. But Julien and Keller’s script makes time for a wonderfully warm, lived-in moment where Cleo and Mrs. Johnson greet each other like old friends and gossip about her cool boots and joke about how Mrs. Johnson is too old to remember what young studs even want from women. Though the character only appears in that one sequence, the fantastic chemistry between Dobson and Rolle makes Cleo feel like a prodigal daughter returning home, not just a secret agent dropping by to save the day.
The same goes for a scene where Cleo pays some precocious neighborhood kids to watch her car when she parks on a sketchy street. Storywise, the beat doesn’t technically need to be there, but it adds so much texture to the film and to Cleo’s glamorous but caring characterization. She’s both of this world and not. That’s also true of a subplot involving minor drug lord “Doodlebug” Simpkins (Antonio Fargas, pre-Huggy Bear), who becomes a compellingly tragic antihero in his attempt to claim the same kind of power as his white boss. If anything, Cleopatra Jones is almost too full of supporting characters and subplots, which take a little effort to track at times. Yet that also makes it the kind of film that rewards multiple viewings, which certainly isn’t true of all exploitation cinema.
Indeed, the first time I watched Cleopatra Jones, I felt a twinge of uncertainty during the film’s junkyard-set climax, where Cleo is set to die in a car crusher until her do-gooder activist boyfriend (Bernie Casey) swoops in to save her. My gut impulse was that she should be saving herself, not getting rescued. But on second thought, I realized the assist is actually much more in keeping with the film’s community-minded ethos. When Cleo first returns home, a member of her boyfriend’s anti-drug charity accuses her of abandoning her neighborhood while it’s struggling. By the end, however, Cleo’s got an army of local supporters ready to help her take down Mommy. The fact that she’s not a hero who insists on working alone is part of her strength. Dobson herself spoke about how she didn’t see Cleopatra as a “women’s lib” creation because she’s first and foremost in solidarity with the entire Black community.
Again, it’s a pointed juxtaposition to Coffy and Foxy Brown, which are much more about solo vigilantes forced to solve problems no one else will. One can dream of an alternate version of Hollywood history where these kinds of emotionally diverse female action heroines got to keep growing and expanding over the years, just as long-running foils like Captain America and Tony Stark have been allowed to do. Unfortunately, by the time a Cleopatra Jones sequel arrived in 1975, the Blaxploitation trend was already fizzling. (Grier starred in her last action roles that year too.) Where the original Cleopatra Jones was a critical and commercial hit, the Hong Kong-set, Shaw Brothers-produced sequel Cleopatra Jones And The Casino Of Gold struck out at the box office. Like Grier, Dobson continued to work in a handful of supporting roles but struggled to find leads, even though she’d headlined a moneymaking vehicle on the crest of a zeitgeist. Her last credited acting role was a 1984 TV movie, and she later died of complications from multiple sclerosis in 2000 at age 59.
It’s bittersweet to read Dobson’s 1973 profile in The New York Times, where she rejects the Blaxploitation label but defends the genre by noting, “Some black people think the only movies you should be making are Sounders, but who in the world is making 10,000 Sounders? We’re all different. … What’s good about films like this is that black people are experimenting, we’re learning about films and filmmaking. There are now black directors and writers and script girls, and even one black cameraman. These are areas where we haven’t been before. People who put down the black adventure films are mistaken. These films are giving black people experience in making films. It takes time to cultivate certain techniques.”
That progress came slower and much more unevenly than it seemed like it might at the height of the Blaxploitation era. Still, Cleopatra Jones‘ modern-feeling tone and somewhat lighter content make it a great entry point for the genre—particularly for younger viewers weaned on today’s franchise fare. Part of the fun of the film is that it’s so firmly, deliciously of its funky 1970s eras. But that doesn’t stop it from feeling unexpectedly timeless.
Next time: As Baby Yoda kicks off a new phase of big-screen Star Wars, we unpack the legacy of Rey.
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