BALTIMORE – Tamara Dobson, the model-turned-actress best known for her leading role in two films as kung fu-fighting government super-agent Cleopatra Jones, died in Baltimore on Monday from complications of pneumonia and multiple sclerosis. She was 59.
Dobson caught the eye of a Baltimore department store executive who encouraged her to pursue a modeling career, used her in several local shows and introduced her to New York designer Bill Blass, according to a 1969 article in the old Sun Magazine.
The article, headlined “Tomboy to $60 an Hour Model,” told how she was able to spend part of the school year in New York through the Maryland Institute College of Art’s work-study program, with a job as an illustrator for a men’s store there and modeling on the side. The piece also noted that she had enrolled in acting classes on the advice of a friend, actor Sidney Poitier.
She appeared in magazines including Vogue, Essence and Mademoiselle, was on the cover of Redbook and posed for a fashion spread in Ebony magazine with her hair in her signature Afro style. She was seen in television commercials and served as the face of Faberge’s “Tigress” for several years. She also appeared in ads for Chanel and Revlon.
Her film career began in 1972 with a small role in “Fuzz” as the girlfriend of the “deaf man” villain played by Yul Brynner.
Her big break came the next year when she was cast in the title role of “Cleopatra Jones,” the first black super-heroine in the “blaxploitation” genre – a striking, fierce and fashion-conscious spy.
She reprised the role in 1975, in “Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold.”
At 6 feet, 2 inches tall, Dobson was at one time recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the tallest leading lady in film, according to publicist Shawn Taylor with the Chicago-based Beaman Inc., which announced her death Wednesday on behalf of the Dobson family.
“She was not afraid to start a trend. She designed a lot of the clothing that so many women emulated. With the knowledge from her degree and her natural creativity, she helped develop elegant fashions, especially for tall women,” her brother, Peter Dobson of Houston, said in the announcement.
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