Even one foot high she cuts an impressive figure. Here’s a little something different—you're looking at a foot-high statuette of Pam Grier as Foxy Brown. It comes from Mark Alfrey Studios and goes for $70, or thereabouts. He also has a version of Grier as the immortal Coffy, seen below. They’re done in stylized proportions, but amusingly, their extreme shapes are not too far off Grier’s actual mid-20s physique—all praises to genetics. By the way, someone asked us recently why Coffy never had a last name. When you consider Grier has played such characters as Sheba Shayne, Friday Foster and Jackie Brown, Coffy no-last-name would seem to be a grave omission, but she actually does have a last name—it’s Coffin (see what we did there with that “grave” omission thing?). Her character is called Coffy as a nickname, (much better than Coffin, considering she’s a nurse), so what she actually lacks is a first name. It never occurs in the film.
Last time we watched Coffy we made a game of coming up with a first name. Her sister is named LuBelle, so that gave us a general sense of which way to go, but we settled on something ridiculous, owing to the brain-muddling influence of demon alcohol. Next time you watch the movie try some names on for size—it’s kind of fun. Anyway, back to the figures, these things are licensed, so Alfrey got some signed by Grier, and those go for a cool $145. But for the blaxploitation fan who has everything price is no object. And for Grier, statuettes are great, but how about a star on the Walk of Fame? She’s had far greater cultural impact than many of the recipients.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison. 1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down
German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is "Kaputt." The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes. 1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity
An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.
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