The Last Bohemians returns with a brand new series set in Tinseltown, supported by Audio-Technica. From forgotten feminist artists to Sunset Strip sexpots and from punk performers to subversive style disruptors (and one Californian arts dynasty!): these are some of the most maverick women in LA, whose stories each say something different about the city.
Episode two is with 1970s Bond Girl, Gloria Hendry. She made film history when she snogged 007 in Live and Let Die, becoming Bond's first Black love interest. She took on edgy roles in what were known as blaxploitation films, like Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem. And before that, she became a Playboy Bunny in 1960s New York at the same time as training as a legal secretary, right when the Civil Rights Movement was bubbling up around her.
She's a total trailblazer, whose life story takes us from a broken home in New Jersey to the glitzy casinos of New York, via a film audition with Roger Moore in New Orleans. She remembers filming Bond, her raunchy scenes from what she calls the “Black renaissance” in cinema, how her life unravelled and how California helped get her back on her feet, what the Playboy Club taught her about life, why she stays in shape and how she paved the way for Black women in film.
If you want more, do check out her recent memoir, GLORIA, which is filled with incredible Playboy photographs of her from the 1970s and some abs to die for.
Trigger warning: this episode contains themes of abuse and suicide towards the beginning.
CREDITS
Presenter/exec producer: Kate Hutchinson
Editor: Georgie Rogers
Recording and additional production: Holly Fisher
Photography: Lisa Jelliffe
With thanks to Anders Frejdh, Dan Moss @ Colour It In, Mr & Mrs Smith.
MUSIC
Theme music: Pete Cunningham, Ned Pegler and Caradog Jones
Lobo Loco - Little Caesar of the Boulevard
Juanitos - Do The Kangaroo
Dee-Yan Kee? - Sunday Morning
HoliznaCCO - Laundry On The Wire
Nuisance - Qanisqineq (Instrumental)
U.S Army Blues - Oginiland
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