Body and Soul may refer to:
Isaac Lee Hayes Jr. was an American singer, songwriter, composer, and actor. He was one of the creative forces behind the Southern soul music label Stax Records, serving as both an in-house songwriter and as a session musician and record producer, teaming with his partner David Porter during the mid-1960s. Hayes and Porter were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005 in recognition of writing scores of songs for themselves, the duo Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, and others. In 2002, Hayes was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Frederick Robert Williamson, nicknamed "the Hammer", is an American actor, filmmaker, and former professional football defensive back who played mainly in the American Football League (AFL) during the 1960's. He was a top sports star during the decade, and become a leading man in blaxploitation and action films beginning in the 1970's.
Pamela Suzette Grier is an American actress and singer. Described by Quentin Tarantino as cinema's first female action star, she achieved fame for her starring roles in a string of 1970s action, blaxploitation and women in prison films for American International Pictures and New World Pictures. Her accolades include nominations for an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Satellite Award and a Saturn Award.
Ada Wong is a fictional character in Resident Evil, a survival horror video game series created by the Japanese company Capcom. Ada was first mentioned in the original Resident Evil (1996), before being introduced as a supporting character and antiheroine in Resident Evil 2 (1998). The character was initially conceived as a researcher named Linda for the prototype of the second game, but her name was changed to Ada and she was rewritten as a spy and mercenary for the final build to connect its story to that of the original. Over the course of the series, Ada is often hired to steal biological weapons for various organizations, although she betrays her employers on numerous occasions to save protagonist Leon S. Kennedy from dire situations.
Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. (JPC) was an American publishing company founded in November 1942 by African-American businessman John H. Johnson. It was headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. JPC was privately held and run by Johnson until his death in 2005. His publications "forever changed the popular representation of African Americans." The writing portrayed African Americans as they saw themselves and its photojournalism made history. Led by its flagship publication, Ebony, Johnson Publishing was at one time the largest African-American-owned publishing firm in the United States. JPC also published Jet, a weekly news magazine, from November 1951 until June 2014, when it became digital only. In the 1980s, the company branched into film and television.
Jayne Kennedy Overton is an American television personality, actress, model, corporate spokeswoman, producer, writer, public speaker, philanthropist, and sports broadcaster.
Kathleen Bradley is an American former model, former singer, actress and host. She is primarily known as a "Barker's Beauty" on the CBS daytime game show The Price Is Right from 1990 until 2000. She is noted as the first permanent African American model on the show.
D'Urville Martin was an American actor in both film and television. He appeared in numerous 1970s movies in the blaxploitation genre. He also appeared in two unaired pilots of what would become All in the Family as Lionel Jefferson. Born in New York City, Martin began his career in the mid-1960s and soon appeared in prominent films such as Black Like Me, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and Rosemary's Baby. Martin also directed films in his career, including Dolemite, starring Rudy Ray Moore.
Beverly Ann Johnson is an American model, actress, singer, and businesswoman. Johnson rose to fame when she became the first Black model to appear on the cover of American Vogue in August 1974, after Donyale Luna was the first Black model to appear on the cover of British Vogue in 1966. In 2012, Johnson was the star of the reality series Beverly's Full House that aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). In 2008, The New York Times named Johnson one of the 20th century's most influential people in fashion.
Eddie Mustafa Muhammad is an American former professional boxer who held the WBA (WBA) light heavyweight title. He has since worked as a boxing trainer, and as an occasional actor.
Berlinda Tolbert is an American film and television actress. Tolbert is best known for her role as Jenny Willis Jefferson, the daughter of Tom and Helen Willis on the CBS sitcom The Jeffersons, which originally aired from 1975 until 1985.
Blaxploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s, when the combined momentum of the civil rights movement, the black power movement, and the Black Panthers spurred African-American artists to reclaim the power of depiction of their ethnicity, and institutions like UCLA to provide financial assistance for African-American students to study filmmaking. This combined with Hollywood adopting a less restrictive rating system in 1968. The term, a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation", was coined in August 1972 by Junius Griffin, the president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood NAACP branch. He claimed the genre was "proliferating offenses" to the black community in its perpetuation of stereotypes often involved in crime. After the race films of the 1940s and 1960s, the genre emerged as one of the first in which black characters and communities were protagonists, rather than sidekicks, supportive characters, or victims of brutality. The genre's inception coincides with the rethinking of race relations in the 1970s.
Body and Soul is a 1981 American sports drama film written by and starring Leon Isaac Kennedy and co-starring Jayne Kennedy. Directed by George Bowers, it is a remake of the 1947 film of the same name.
Penitentiary is a 1979 American blaxploitation drama film written, produced and directed by Jamaa Fanaka, and starring Leon Isaac Kennedy as Martel "Too Sweet" Gordone, a man who deals with his wrongful imprisonment as a black youth. The film was released on November 21, 1979.
Penitentiary II is a 1982 American blaxploitation drama film directed by Jamaa Fanaka. Released on April 2, 1982, the film is the sequel to 1979's Penitentiary. It was followed by another sequel, Penitentiary III, which was released in August 1987.
Machete Maidens Unleashed! is a 2010 Australian documentary film directed by Mark Hartley.
Rosalind Miles was an American film and television actress and fashion model. Miles was most known for her roles in film during the early to late 1970s. Miles appeared in mostly American blaxploitation films such as; Shaft's Big Score!, The Black Six and Friday Foster.
Death Force is a 1978 martial arts exploitation film directed by Cirio H. Santiago and written by Howard R. Cohen. The film is an international co-production of the Philippines and the United States, and stars blaxploitation actor James Iglehart alongside Carmen Argenziano, Leon Isaac Kennedy, and Jayne Kennedy. Iglehart plays Doug Russell, a veteran of the Vietnam War turned gold smuggler who is left for dead by his partners and, after being trained to wield a samurai sword by a Japanese soldier, seeks revenge on those who betrayed him. Iglehart's real son, James Monroe Iglehart appears briefly as Jimmy Russell, Doug's infant son.
