Born on this day: febrile, quirky American actress Karen Black (née Karen Blanche Ziegler, 1 July 1939 – 8 August 2013. Isn’t it somehow perfect her middle name is “Blanche”?). For me, Black - whose wildly erratic career encompassed everything from some of the key American films of the seventies to mainstream Hollywood schmaltz to obscure straight-to-VHS horror dreck - represents perhaps *the* essential face and presence of seventies “New Hollywood” cinema: totally idiosyncratic, unconventional, and intense. My favourite Black performances would have to include Five Easy Pieces (1970), Cisco Pike (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974), Airport 1975 (1974) – as the stewardess driving the plane!), Trilogy of Terror (1975), The Day of the Locust (1975), Nashville (1975), Burnt Offerings (1976), Killer Fish (1979) and Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982). (Like so many of her peers, some of Black’s definitive performances were in Robert Altman movies: see also Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Sandy Dennis). One fascinating curio to investigate: the made-for-TV psychodrama The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver. (I watched it on YouTube ages ago – might still be there!). A nice way to remember Black: she occasionally dabbled as a singer / songwriter and her strange, enchanting music is compiled on the album Dreaming of You (1971 – 1976), which is streaming on Spotify. My favourite song is called “Headache” (“Went to bed with a headache / I got up and took a pill / I woke up this morning with a headache / And a great big urge to kill”).
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