Ronee Blakley | |
---|---|
Born | Ronee Sue Blakley August 24, 1945 Nampa, Idaho, U.S. |
Alma mater | Stanford University (1967) California State University (2002) |
Occupation | Actress, singer |
Spouse(s) | |
Children | Sarah Blakley-Cartwright |
Website | roneeblakley |
Ronee Sue Blakley (born August 24, 1945) is an American actress, singer-songwriter, composer, producer and director.
She is perhaps best known for her role as the fictional country superstar Barbara Jean in Robert Altman's 1975 film Nashville , for which she won a National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for an Academy Award. She also performed roles in Walter Hill's The Driver (1978) and Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).
Blakley was born in Nampa, Idaho, one of four children born to Ronald Blakley, a civil engineer, and his wife Carol (née Brown), who became a gay rights activist in support of Blakley's brother, Stephen. [1] [2] In addition to Stephen, Blakley had a brother John and a sister Marthetta. [3]
Blakley's early years were spent in the Pacific Northwest where she was selected as Idaho's representative to Girls Nation while in high school. She studied at Mills College, Stanford University, and went to New York to attend Juilliard for post-graduate work.[ citation needed ]
Blakley began her music career in New York, improvising vocally with Moog synthesizers in Carnegie Hall to music by Gershon Kingsley. Her first soundtrack was composed for the 20th Century Fox film Welcome Home, Soldier Boys and earned her a spot in Who's Who in America.[ citation needed ]
Blakley released her self-titled debut album on Elektra Records in 1972. The album featured Blakley's original songs, self-accompanied on piano. Blakley also made the musical arrangements. The song "Bluebird" featured a duet with Linda Ronstadt. Blakley's songs were published by her own company, Sawtooth Music.
Her second album, Welcome—produced by Jerry Wexler and recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama—was released on Warner Bros. in 1975.
That same year, Blakley appeared in what may be her most widely known performance in Nashville . Her character, Barbara Jean, looked similar to country star Loretta Lynn, though Blakley stated that the character was based on Lynn Anderson. [4] Blakley performed her own songs in character, including "Tapedeck In His Tractor," "Dues" and "My Idaho Home." In her review for The New Yorker, film critic Pauline Kael wrote:
This is Ronee Blakley's first movie, and she puts most movie hysteria to shame. She achieves her gifts so simply, I wasn't surprised when somebody sitting beside me started to cry. Perhaps, for the first time on the screen, one gets the sense of an artist being destroyed by her gifts.
Blakley's performance in Nashville was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture and for Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture (Female), BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and the Grammy Award for Album of Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Special, and won the National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actress. She was featured on the covers of Newsweek , American Cinematographer and Interview magazines.
She toured in Bob Dylan's traveling Rolling Thunder Revue , singing a set of solo original songs accompanying herself on piano. She also sang with Dylan and other headlining musicians on the tour, released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue . She recorded backup vocals on "Hurricane" for Dylan's album Desire . Blakley has also recorded with Leonard Cohen and Hoyt Axton.
Blakley starred in the 1977 film She Came to the Valley . She also appeared in several TV movies including Desperate Women, Ladies in Waiting, Oklahoma City Dolls and the Ford 75th Anniversary Special presentation of The Glass Menagerie. Her guest starring roles in television series include Vega$, The Love Boat, Highway to Heaven, Trapper John, Hotel, The Runaways, Beyond Westworld and Tales from the Darkside .
Blakley starred in The Baltimore Bullet in 1980. She appeared on Broadway in 1982's Pump Boys and Dinettes and starred in Rain for the Indiana Repertory Theatre. Blakley played the role of Marge Thompson in the 1984 horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street .
She wrote, produced, directed and starred in her own feature music docudrama, I Played It for You, in 1985. The movie debuted at the Venice Film Festival and was screened at several other film festivals around the world. Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times called it "passionate and brave, an absorbing work." FX Feeney of LA Weekly called it "a valuable document." The film was released on DVD in 2008, bundled with the soundtrack on CD and a new spoken word poetry album titled Freespeak.
Throughout her career, Blakley has performed on behalf of several political and social causes, with an emphasis on civil rights and equal rights for women. During the 1976 presidential campaign, she toured performing before the speeches of Jerry Brown and later performed at the final Los Angeles rally of Walter Mondale with Kris Kristofferson.
Blakley was married to German filmmaker Wim Wenders from 1979 to 1981. Having previously graduated from Stanford University in 1967, she completed a master's degree at California State University in 2002. She has one child, author Sarah Blakley-Cartwright. She graduated from Barnard College in 2010 and is known for penning the novel adapted into the 2011 movie Red Riding Hood. [5] Her career was put on hold while she raised her daughter and also recovered from a back injury. Her most recent album of original songs, River Nile, was released in 2009, inspired by a trip she made to Egypt. In October 2010, she appeared on stage at New York's Bitter End for the first time in 20 years. [6]
She wrote, produced and directed the 2012 film Of One Blood, her first foray into films in over 20 years. Her daughter appeared with her in the film.
Nashville is a 1975 American satirical musical ensemble comedy-drama film directed by Robert Altman. The film follows various people involved in the country and gospel music businesses in Nashville, Tennessee, over a five-day period, leading up to a gala concert for a populist outsider running for President on the Replacement Party ticket.
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Desire is the seventeenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on January 5, 1976, through Columbia Records. It is one of Dylan's most collaborative efforts, featuring the same caravan of musicians as the acclaimed Rolling Thunder Revue tours the previous year. Many of the songs also featured backing vocals by Emmylou Harris and Ronee Blakley. Most of the album was co-written by Jacques Levy, and is composed of lengthy story-songs, two of which quickly generated controversy: the 11-minute-long "Joey", which is seen as glorifying the violent gangster "Crazy Joey" Gallo, and "Hurricane", the opening track that tells a passionate account of the murder case against boxer Rubin Carter, whom the song asserts was framed. Carter was released in 1985, after a judge overturned his conviction on appeal.
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The Rolling Thunder Revue was a 1975–1976 concert tour by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan with numerous musicians and collaborators. The purpose of the tour was to allow Dylan, who had now become a major recording artist and concert performer, to play in smaller auditoriums in less populated cities where he could be more intimate with his audiences.
The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue is a live album by Bob Dylan released by Columbia Records in 2002. The third installment in the ongoing Bob Dylan Bootleg Series on Legacy Records, it documents the Rolling Thunder Revue led by Dylan prior to the release of the album Desire. Until the release of this album, the only official live documentation of the Rolling Thunder Revue was Hard Rain, recorded during the second leg of the tour.
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