Max Julien: Last News

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In “Is That Black Enough for You?!?,” Elvis Mitchell’s highly pleasurable and eye-opening movie-love documentary about the American Black cinema revolution of the late ’60s and ’70s, Billy Dee Williams, now 85 but still spry, tells a funny story about what it was like to play Louis McKay, the dapper love object and would-be savior of Billie Holiday in “Lady Sings the Blues.” The year was 1972, and African-American audiences had rarely (if ever) been given the chance to gawk at a movie star of color who was not just this sexy but this showcased for his sexiness. Louis was like Clark Gable with a dash of Marvin Gaye; when he was on that promenade stairway, Williams says that he just about fell in love with himself. That’s how unprecedented the whole thing was. The actor recalls how the lighting was fussed over (we see a shot in which Louis appears bathed in an old-movie glow), and how unreal that was to him on the set. At the time, Black actors didn’t get lighting like that. But Black audiences drank it in with a better-late-than-never swoon, even as they knew that this was a representation they’d been denied for more than half a century.

Carol Speed, who lit up the screen in the cult blaxploitation film The Mack died on Jan. 14 in Muskogee, Okla. She was 76 her family announced her death in a statement published online, but did not specify the cause.

Carol Speed was an actress known for roles in films of the blaxploitation era, including “Abby” and “The Mack.”Speed had early TV success with guest roles on “Julia” and “Sanford and Son,” as well as a recurring role on “Days of Our Lives,” before making her way into movies. She had small roles in “The New Centurions” and “The Big Bird Cage,” then landed a prominent part in 1973’s “The Mack,” starring opposite Max Julien (1933–2022). The following year, Speed starred in “Abby,” playing a woman possessed by a demon.

Max Julien, best known for his starring role in the 1973 blaxploitation film The Mack, died Saturday on his birthday at his home in Los Angeles, according to his friends. He was 88 and no cause of death has been revealed.