AP-129 · FILM AND TELEVISION

Carol Speed

Lulu in The Mack, the title role in Abby, and the author of a 1980 Holloway House novel about the making of The Mack.

Title card: American Pimp archive.

Carol Speed was born Carolyn Ann Stewart in Bakersfield, California, on March 14, 1945. She was on stage at twelve, in a San Jose Light Opera production of The King and I, and later sang backup for Bobbie Gentry at Harrah's in Reno. The Hollywood Reporter notes she was the first Black homecoming queen in Santa Clara County and studied at San Jose State and the American Conservatory Theater. Her television debut was a small part on NBC's Julia in 1970.

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In The Mack (1973) she played Lulu, the girlfriend of Max Julien's pimp, Goldie, and one of the women who work for him. Her other films of the period were The Big Bird Cage and The New Centurions (both 1972), Black Samson (1974) and Abby (1974), in which she had the title role as a minister's wife possessed by a spirit. Warner Bros. sued, arguing Abby copied The Exorcist, and the film was pulled from theaters. She was also in Rudy Ray Moore's Disco Godfather (1979).

In 1980 Holloway House, the Los Angeles house that published Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines, published her book Inside Black Hollywood, a novel about the making of a film very like The Mack, told through an actress based on herself. She later wrote The Georgette Harvey Story (2002) and contributed to Gods in Polyester (2004). Her last film was Village Vengeance (2006). She lived in Atlanta in her later years and died in Muskogee, Oklahoma, on January 14, 2022, at 76; her family confirmed the death.

For this archive she is the rare woman from the pimp films of the 1970s who wrote her own account of that world, even if she wrote it as fiction.

ALSO KNOWN AS
Born Carolyn Ann Stewart

BORN
Bakersfield, California, 14 March 1945

STATUS
Died 14 January 2022, Muskogee, Oklahoma, aged 76

ERA
1945–2022

ASSOCIATED WITH
The Mack (1973); Abby (1974); Max Julien; Holloway House

STANDING
Documented

DOCUMENTED RECORD

Born Carolyn Ann Stewart, March 14, 1945, Bakersfield (Wikipedia; The Hollywood Reporter).
Played Lulu in The Mack (1973) (Wikipedia; The Hollywood Reporter).
Title role in Abby (1974), which Warner Bros. sued to have pulled from theaters (The Hollywood Reporter).
Inside Black Hollywood, Holloway House, 1980, 256 pages (Amazon; Wikipedia).
Died January 14, 2022, Muskogee, Oklahoma, aged 76 (Wikipedia; The Hollywood Reporter).

NOT ESTABLISHED