The name Grace Jones fits the body like a tailor-made suit. Grace Jones stalks her way through show business with the grace of a black panther, sharing the stage with lions and leopards, making dance floors vibrate and men swoon. James Bond, among others.
Grace Jones – the actress
“What do you do to take a man?” Princess Jehna wants to know from Zula the Amazon. “I grab him,” she hisses. “And take him!” Even more than in “Conan The Destroyer” In 1984, Grace Jones shows off her bite at most two years later – as a stripteasing vampire woman in “Vamp”a body painting by visual art superstar Keith Haring on the dark skin. In the late seventies, Andy Warhol was already enjoying the body that seems to have been created for drooling. He takes hundreds of photos of Grace Jones and celebrates legendary party nights with her and his entourage in New York’s Studio 54. Jones’ stylist and future ex-husband Jean-Paul Gaude tailors her the androgynous shoulder-pad flat-top look that makes her an icon. And her smash hit “Slave To The Rhythm” crowns the former high-class groupie the Queen Of Gay Disco.
The singer Grace Jones
The rhythm has been running through her veins since she first saw the light of day in Jamaica, clouded by the cannabis haze. Wow, that was 74 years ago! More than a singer, Grace Jones sees herself as a total work of art, as a performer in a way that Lady Gaga does today. With “One Man Show”, Grace Jones performs an intoxicating new wave variety show in the eighties, complete with big cats and freaky costumes. It is more a logical consequence than a surprise that the long dream legs are venturing into Hollywood. “This woman is just too tough”, complains the barbaric Arnold Schwarzenegger of all people after Jones’ blockbuster premiere. This lady just needs a real guy. She found this in 1985 in the cast of the 007 agent film “A View To Kill”. Not in Roger Moore, whom she knocks out with kisses and kung-fu kicks as the killer May Day. But in the Swedish iceberg Dolph Lundgren, steely martial artist, a decade younger, lover and bodyguard in one. After the break-up at the end of the eighties, Grace Jones suddenly disappeared, two albums remained under the record company’s lock and key, and only a few supporting roles were added to her modeling jobs. It wasn’t until 2008 that the comeback album “Hurricane” and subsequent monster tour swept the critics off their feet again. And the black Amazon is still craving fresh meat a quarter of a century after “Conan”. In the song “Corporate Cannibal” she growls: “I can’t get enough prey / pray for me / I’m a man eating machine”.
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