Blair Brown

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Born: Bonnie Blair Brown on April 23, 1946 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001974/



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pic credit: thomasbyers

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a scene from altered states

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credit o.p.

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from a Starlog interview

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The Rockford Files (1974–1980)
s2 e13 - The Girl in the Bay City Boys Club
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0688069/

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Possibly making Rockford rock-hard when she was twenty-nine-years of age.


I was reminded of this appealing actress upon watching The Rockford Files' 1975 episode of "The Girl in the Bay City Boys Club" (which Wendigo has done a wonderful job of capping key frames of, in his Post #9 seen directly above).



What a lovely lady. Although not well remembered these days, Blair Brown was once a movie star, especially in the early 1980s, with the hit movie Altered States (making a star of William Hurt and directed by the talented madman Ken Russell) and the attention-getting (at the time) Continental Divide (with John Belushi).



Lobby cards above feature the two stars (Anna Gaël and Benoit Girard) of L'obsédée sexuelle, A.K.A. La maison des amants
("House of Lovers"), which has been described as "a sexploitation film recounting the descent into hell of a young
nymphomaniac and a decent family man. during an evening of madness and debauchery." The man is seduced by "the beauty
with bare breasts and strange behavior" who has escaped from a mental asylum where she had been placed after killing a
nurse. After he is dragged into "a kind of delirious and uncontrollable sadomasochistic trance," some of the crazy woman's
"friends burst in. An orgy ensues. The spiral of sex and madness that has been set in motion can only find its conclusion in
death." Some reviewers from the time were outraged, with one tsk-tsking, "A real national disgrace for French-speaking cinema."
Blair played a character named "Jo-Jo," implying she was one of the friends who took part in the orgy, meaning there may be
undiscovered Blair nudity should a copy of this film ever surface. (A few more photos from a site describing this as an "adult film.")

Ms. Brown's career trajectory was fairly quick, after beginning in 1971-1972 (the latter year with the obscure Canadian-French co-production, L'obsédée sexuelle (Brutalités amoureuses) (how many films have parentheses in the title? Translation is "The Sexually Obsessed / Brutality in Love"), which promises VEF potential, and after lucking out by getting a supporting role in 1973's The Paper Chase (where she played a law student; this film also made an impact at the time, although as with the two other mentioned U.S. movies, all are kind of forgotten today), she came to be the leading lady in an episode of The Rockford Files, only two years later.




Not to say TV was previously unfamiliar terrain for Blair, but after her big movie roles she made the transition to television in earnest with her own series from 1987–1991, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. (A comedy that was impressively without a laugh track or studio audience.)


These grabs were taken from the show's intro, as may be viewed on YouTube.

There's not one negative comment on the show's IMDb page's user reviews, and I liked one (entitled, "The Blair Brown Show...") that compared Blair's single female character trying to make it in New York City with other famously struggling TV career women, Mary Tyler Moore and the lead actress of Ally McBeal (Calista Flockhart): "Blair Brown, on the one hand... blends unnoticeably into a crowd, but on the other she is a gorgeous, drop-dead classic beauty."


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In the last image, posing with her colleagues Danielle Brooks, Laverne Cox, Uzo Aduba, Taryn Manning, Samira Wiley and
Taylor Schilling, as they attended the "Orange is the New Black FYC Event" in Hollywood on May 5, 2017.

That was an apt description of the lady. Since her TV show (which didn't seem to make much headway; I am reading that after it was cancelled by NBC, one of the big U.S. TV broadcast networks, a cable network picked it up) Blair has been working steadily, although I don't see many titles that have made a jolt. When she was in an interesting film, such as 2003's Dogville (first shot above), she was just one of the actors in the cast; the leading roles appear to have been evasive. Blair did appear (as a character inspired by Martha Stewart) in twenty-four episodes of the acclaimed prison TV series Orange Is the New Black, from 2015-2019 (second photo above, with Samira Wiley, in a 2016 episode entitled "Doctor Psycho"), and when her stint ended at age seventy-three, aside from a podcast series, Ms. Brown has been in nothing since.



The first photo is of Blair Brown as she attended what was aforementioned, Netflix's "Orange Is The New Black For Your Consideration Event" on May 5, 2017 in Hollywood (Photo by Todd Williamson); next, at Broadway Opening Night of 'Saint Joan' at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on April 25, 2018 in New York City. In the most recent photo that is last, the actress was attending a play called "The Minutes" on March 9, 2022 in New York City; she was seventy-six then, a year ago.




There is a restaurant in New York City called Sardi's ("the toast of Broadway for 100 years"), which is famous for caricatures of celebrities that line its walls. Blair got hers on February 28, 2018. She was in a Broadway play called The Parisian Woman and its star, Uma Thurman, got hers as well. So did other cast members Phillipa Soo, Marton Csokas and Josh Lucas (pictured above), begging the question that while genuine stars Blair and Uma were deserving, does Sardi's put up portraits of every up-and-coming actor? (I'm assuming just because I've never heard of the latter three, no one else knows about them either.)



This 1988 Esquire cover reads: "Wow! Blair Brown: The Thinking Man's Bombshell." Ending photo has our lady
paired with lovely Bridget Fonda, playing Blair's promiscuous sister in 1989's Strapless (referred to in a scene
where the sisters and other women try on strapless gowns leading to the observation, "They shouldn't stay
up, but they do"... serving as a kind of metaphor). Lonely Blair meets what seems to be the perfect man, rich,
attentive and continental. She succumbs, only to find he falls short. Film reviewers Frederic and Mary Ann
Brussat felt "Blair Brown gives the best performance of her career." (The film's author was David Hare, whom
Blair was romantically involved with in between his two marriages.)


That's enough background on Ms. Brown. Let's get to the times she has generously allowed for peeks on her hidden territory. I am thinking she made the "nudity concession" for Altered States (1980), as (even though she was in the biz for almost a decade) Blair correctly figured this was going to be one prestigious production that would hand her significant notice. She has never been in a naked state as she was in Altered States.

















Blair Brown was far shyer in One Trick Pony that was released in the same year of 1980, but a few glimpses of the private parts momentarily slipped through. (This was the vehicle that intended to get Paul Simon on the Hollywood track, but ironically made the singer out to be a one trick pony in his own right. On the plus side, he came across as a kind of an attractive fellow, here.)






Continental Divide was a "hate at first sight" romantic-comedy pitting a newspaper reporter (Belushi, in a rare non-cartoony role) against Blair's nature-loving scientist.



He proved lucky enough to bed her, although the light nature of the film evidently precluded showing anything of Blair to speak of.





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When Blair was thirty-eight, the movies offered her another starring role in A Flash of Green (1984); I'm surprised I haven't heard of it, as the film sounds worthwhile. Apparently, a reporter (Ed Harris) is hired to smear conservationists among whom is a woman (Blair) that Harris has fallen for, and what sounds good is that the film evidently explores political sleaze in an intelligent manner. A few IMDb commenters complained the film was never home-distributed beyond poor quality VHS (although that may have changed). There was a bedroom scene where Blair, luckily, did some minimal flashing of her own.
















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