Ronee Blakley
Encyclopedia
Ronee Blakley is an American entertainer. Though an accomplished singer, songwriter, composer, producer and director, she is perhaps best known as an actress. Her most famous role was as the fictional country superstar Barbara Jean in Robert Altman
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...

's 1975 film Nashville, for which she won a National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for an Academy Award. She also had a notable role in A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 American slasher film directed and written by Wes Craven, and the first film of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The film features Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, Jsu Garcia, Robert Englund, and Johnny Depp in his feature film...

 (1984).

Life and career

Blakley was born in Nampa, Idaho
Nampa, Idaho
Nampa is the largest and the fastest growing city in Canyon County, Idaho, USA. The population of Nampa was 81,557 at the 2010 census. Nampa is located about west of Boise along Interstate 84, and six miles west of Meridian. Nampa is part of the Boise metropolitan area...

, daughter of civil engineer Ronald Blakley and his wife Carol. Blakley’s early years were spent in the Pacific Northwest where she was selected as Idaho's representative to Girl's Nation while in high school. She studied at Mills College
Mills College
Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...

, Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

, and went to New York to attend Juilliard for post-graduate work.

Blakley began in New York improvising vocally with Moog synthesizer
Moog synthesizer
Moog synthesizer may refer to any number of analog synthesizers designed by Dr. Robert Moog or manufactured by Moog Music, and is commonly used as a generic term for older-generation analog music synthesizers. The Moog company pioneered the commercial manufacture of modular voltage-controlled...

s in Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

 to music by Gershon Kingsley
Gershon Kingsley
Gershon Kingsley a contemporary German American composer, is well known as a pioneer of electronic music and the Moog synthesizer and founder of the First Moog Quartet, as a partner in the famous electronic music duo Perrey and Kingsley, and for his rock-inspired compositions for Jewish religious...

. Her first soundtrack was composed for the 20th Century Fox film Welcome Home Soldier Boys and earned her a spot in Who's Who in America.

1970s

In 1972, the folk-rock album Ronee Blakley debuted on Elektra Records
Elektra Records
Elektra Records is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group. In 2004, it was consolidated into WMG's Atlantic Records Group. After five years of dormancy, the label was revived by Atlantic in 2009....

 and featured Blakley’s original songs, accompanied by herself on her piano. Blakley also made the musical arrangements. The song “Bluebird” featured a duet with Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt is an American popular music recording artist. She has earned eleven Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, an ALMA Award, numerous United States and internationally certified gold, platinum and multiplatinum albums, in addition to Tony Award and Golden...

. Blakley's songs were published by her own company, Sawtooth Music.

Her second album, Welcome was released on Warner Bros. in 1975, produced by Jerry Wexler
Jerry Wexler
Gerald "Jerry" Wexler was a music journalist turned music producer, and was regarded as one of the major record industry players behind music from the 1950s through the 1980s...

 and recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio
Muscle Shoals Sound Studio
The Muscle Shoals Sound Studio was formed in Muscle Shoals, Alabama,in 1969 when musicians Barry Beckett , Roger Hawkins , Jimmy Johnson and David Hood left FAME Studios to create their own studio...

 in Alabama. The Los Angeles Herald Examiner wrote it was a "near perfect album."

That same year, Blakley appeared in what may be her most widely known performance in Nashville. Her character Barbara Jean was purported to be modeled after country star Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn is an American country music singer-songwriter, author and philanthropist. Born in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky to a coal miner father, Lynn married at 13 years old, was a mother soon after, and moved to Washington with her husband, Oliver Lynn. Their marriage was sometimes tumultuous; he...

. In Nashville Blakley performs her own songs in character, including "Tapedeck In His Tractor," "Dues" and "My Idaho Home." In her review for The New Yorker, film critic Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....

 wrote:


“This is Ronee Blakley’s first movie, and she puts most movie hysteria to shame. She achieves her gifts so simply, I wasn’t surprised when somebody sitting beside me started to cry. Perhaps, for the first time on the screen, one gets the sense of an artist being destroyed by her gifts.”


Blakley was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

 along with Lily Tomlin
Lily Tomlin
Mary Jean "Lily" Tomlin is an American actress, comedienne, writer, and producer. Tomlin has been a major force in American comedy since the late 1960's when she began a career as a stand up comedian and became a featured performer on television's Laugh-in...

 (who was also nominated in the same category). Blakley was also nominated for a Grammy, a Golden Globe and a British Academy award, and won the National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actress. She was featured on the covers of Newsweek, American Cinematographer and Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

's Interview Magazine.

She toured as backup singer to Bob Dylan in the Rolling Thunder Revue
Rolling Thunder Revue
The Rolling Thunder Revue was a famed U.S. concert tour consisting of a traveling caravan of musicians, headed by Bob Dylan, that took place in late 1975 and early 1976; the prevailing theory was that the tour was named after the Native American shaman Rolling Thunder. Others maintained that tour...

, the caravan of a band Dylan put together to tour after his album "Desire". The band also featured Joan Baez
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....

, Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...

 and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. She appears on the live albums from that tour "Hard Rain" and "The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue
The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue
The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue is a live album by Bob Dylan released by Columbia Records in 2002. It documents the Rolling Thunder Revue, led by Bob Dylan prior to the release of the album Desire...

". She also recorded with Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...

 and Hoyt Axton
Hoyt Axton
Hoyt Wayne Axton was an American country music singer-songwriter, and a film and television actor. He became prominent in the early 1960s, establishing himself on the West Coast as a folk singer with an earthy style and powerful voice. As he matured, some of his songwriting efforts became well...

.

In 1977, Blakley starred in the film She Came to the Valley with Dean Stockwell
Dean Stockwell
Dean Stockwell is an American actor of film and television, with a career spanning over 65 years. As a child actor under contract to MGM he first came to the public's attention in films such as Anchors Aweigh and The Green Years; as a young adult he played a lead role in the 1957 Broadway and...

, Scott Glenn
Scott Glenn
Theodore Scott Glenn is an American actor. His roles have included Wes Hightower in Urban Cowboy , astronaut Alan Shepard in The Right Stuff ,Emmett in Silverado , Commander Bart Mancuso in The Hunt for Red October , Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs and The Wise Man in Sucker Punch -Early...

, and Freddy Fender
Freddy Fender
Freddy Fender , born Baldemar Garza Huerta in San Benito, Texas, United States, was a Mexican-American Tejano, country and rock and roll musician, known for his work as a solo artist and in the groups Los Super Seven and the Texas Tornados...

. She also appeared in several TV movies including Desperate Women, Ladies in Waiting, Oklahoma City Dolls and the Ford 75th Anniversary Special introduced by Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...

 and co-starring John Ritter
John Ritter
Jonathan Southworth "John" Ritter was an American actor, voice over artist and comedian perhaps best known for having played Jack Tripper and Paul Hennessy in the ABC sitcoms Three's Company and 8 Simple Rules, respectively...

 in The Glass Menagerie. Her guest starring roles in television series include Vegas, The Love Boat, Highway to Heaven, Trapper John, Hotel, The Runaways, Beyond Westworld and Tales from the Darkside
Tales from the Darkside
Tales from the Darkside is an anthology horror TV series produced by George A. Romero; it originally aired from 1983 to 1988. Similar to Amazing Stories, The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, The Outer Limits, and Tales From The Crypt, each episode was an individual short story that ended with a plot...

.

1980s

In 1980, Blakley starred in The Baltimore Bullet
The Baltimore Bullet
The Baltimore Bullet is a 1980 film based on the adventures of two pool hustlers in the United States.It was directed by Robert Ellis Miller and starred James Coburn, Bruce Boxleitner and Omar Sharif. The Baltimore Bullet screenplay was written by legendary film and stage dancer John Brascia, from...

 with James Coburn
James Coburn
James Harrison Coburn III was an American film and television actor. Coburn appeared in nearly 70 films and made over 100 television appearances during his 45-year career, and played a wide range of roles and won an Academy Award for his supporting role as Glen Whitehouse in Affliction.A capable,...

, Omar Sharif
Omar Sharif
Omar Sharif is an Egyptian actor who has starred in Hollywood films including Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Funny Girl. He has been nominated for an Academy Award and has won two Golden Globe Awards.-Early life:...

 and Bruce Boxleitner
Bruce Boxleitner
Bruce William Boxleitner is an American actor, and science fiction and suspense writer. He is known for his leading roles in the television series How the West Was Won, Bring 'Em Back Alive, Scarecrow and Mrs. King , and Babylon 5...

. Two years later, in 1982 she appeared on Broadway in Pump Boys and Dinettes
Pump Boys and Dinettes
Pump Boys and Dinettes is a musical written by a performance group of the same name. The performance group, "Pump Boys and Dinettes" consists of John Foley, Mark Hardwick, Debra Monk, Cass Morgan, John Schimmel and Jim Wann...

 with Loudon Wainwright III
Loudon Wainwright III
Loudon Snowden Wainwright III is a Grammy Award-winning American songwriter, folk singer, humorist, and actor. He is the father of musicians Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche, brother of Sloan Wainwright, and the former husband of the late folk singer Kate McGarrigle.To...

 and starred Off Broadway with Tammy Grimes
Tammy Grimes
-Early life:Grimes was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, the daughter of Eola Willard , a naturalist and spiritualist, and Nicholas Luther Grimes, an innkeeper, country-club manager, and farmer. She attended high school at the then-all girls school, Beaver Country Day School, in Chestnut Hill,...

 in 1983. She starred in Somerset Maugham's Rain
Rain
Rain is liquid precipitation, as opposed to non-liquid kinds of precipitation such as snow, hail and sleet. Rain requires the presence of a thick layer of the atmosphere to have temperatures above the melting point of water near and above the Earth's surface...

' for the Indiana Repertory Theatre
Indiana Repertory Theatre
-History:Indiana Repertory Theatre, frequently abbreviated IRT, is a theatre in Indianapolis, Indiana that began as a genuine repertory theatre with its casts performing in multiple shows at once. It has subsequently become a regional theatre and a member of the League of Resident Theatres...

.
For Wes Craven's 1984 horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 American slasher film directed and written by Wes Craven, and the first film of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The film features Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, Jsu Garcia, Robert Englund, and Johnny Depp in his feature film...

 she played the role of the mother.

In 1985, she produced, wrote, starred in, and directed her own feature music docudrama titled I Played It for You which debuted at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...

 and which has subsequently appeared at several other film festivals around the world, including a recent screening at the Silver Lake Film Festival
Silver Lake Film Festival
Silver Lake Film Festival ran from 2000 to 2007. It was a 501 nonprofit organization established to provide a showcase for cutting-edge independent film, music, digital, and other arts in Los Angeles, California. The Festival was held annually at various venues throughout Los Angeles’ Eastside,...

. Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times called “I Played It For You” "passionate and brave, an absorbing work." FX Feeney of the LA Weekly called it "a valuable document." the film was released on DVD in 2008, bundled with the soundtrack on CD and a new spoken word poetry album titled Freespeak.

Personal life and recent activity

Throughout her career, Blakley has performed on behalf of several political and social causes with an emphasis on civil rights and equal rights for women. During the 1976 presidential campaign, she toured performing before the speeches of Jerry Brown and later performed at the final Los Angeles rally of Walter Mondale
Walter Mondale
Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale is an American Democratic Party politician, who served as the 42nd Vice President of the United States , under President Jimmy Carter, and as a United States Senator for Minnesota...

 with Kris Kristofferson
Kris Kristofferson
Kristoffer "Kris" Kristofferson is an American musician, actor, and writer. He is known for hits such as "Me and Bobby McGee", "For the Good Times", "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and "Help Me Make It Through the Night"...

.

Blakley was married to German filmmaker Wim Wenders
Wim Wenders
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.-Early life:Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Düsseldorf...

 from 1979 to 1981. She completed a master's degree at California State University in 2002.

She has one child, a daughter, author Sarah Blakley-Cartwright
Sarah Blakley-Cartwright
Sarah Blakley-Cartwright is an American author. She wrote the novel Red Riding Hood to accompany the Warner Brothers release, which debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List.-Notes:...

, born in 1988. Blakley's career was put on hold while she raised her daughter and also recovered from a back injury.

Her most recent album of original songs, River Nile, was released in 2009, inspired by a trip she made to Egypt. In October 2010, she appeared on stage at New York's Bitter End for the first time in 20 years.

Discography

  • Ronee Blakley (1972) – Elektra (re-released by Collector's Choice 2006)
  • Nashville Soundtrack – MCA
  • Welcome (1975) – Warner Bros. (re-released by Collector's Choice 2006)
  • I Played It for You (2007) – RBPI (CDBaby.com)
  • Freespeak (2008 – RBPI (CDBaby.com)
  • Lightning Over Water Soundtrack (2008) – RBPI (CDBaby.com)
  • Ronee Blakley Live at the Mint (2008) – RBPI
  • River Nile (2009)
  • Grief Holes (2009), spoken word and instrumental

Film

  • Wilbur and the Baby Factory (1970)
  • Nashville (1975)
  • Mannikin (1977)
  • Three Dangerous Ladies (1977) (segment "The Mannikin")
  • The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover
    The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover
    The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover is a 1977 film directed by Larry Cohen. It stars Broderick Crawford and James Wainwright. The all star cast includes Jose Ferrer, Michael Parks, Celeste Holm, Ronee Blakely, Tanya Roberts in a cameo role, and in final screen appearances, Jack Cassidy and Dan...

     (1977)
  • Renaldo and Clara
    Renaldo and Clara
    Renaldo and Clara is a surrealist movie, directed by and starring Bob Dylan. Filmed in 1975, during Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour, it was released in 1978...

     (1978)
  • The Driver
    The Driver
    The Driver is a 1978 crime film directed by Walter Hill and starring Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern, and Isabelle Adjani. Based upon similarities in plot elements, it is heavily influenced by Jean-Pierre Melville's film Le Samouraï...

     (1978)
  • She Came to the Valley (1979)
  • Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff
    Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff
    Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff is a 1979 American drama film directed by Marvin J. Chomsky. The screenplay by Polly Platt is based on the 1970 novel of the same title by William Inge....

     (1979)
  • The Baltimore Bullet
    The Baltimore Bullet
    The Baltimore Bullet is a 1980 film based on the adventures of two pool hustlers in the United States.It was directed by Robert Ellis Miller and starred James Coburn, Bruce Boxleitner and Omar Sharif. The Baltimore Bullet screenplay was written by legendary film and stage dancer John Brascia, from...

     (1980)
  • "Lightning Over Water
    Lightning Over Water
    Lightning Over Water is a 1980 documentary film by Wim Wenders and Nicholas Ray about the last days of Ray's own life; the director was most famous for his 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause. It was screened out of competition at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.- Summary :The film is a collaboration...

    " (1980)
  • A Nightmare on Elm Street
    A Nightmare on Elm Street
    A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 American slasher film directed and written by Wes Craven, and the first film of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The film features Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, Jsu Garcia, Robert Englund, and Johnny Depp in his feature film...

     (1984)
  • Cinématon
    Cinématon
    Cinématon is a 162-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released, until 2011. Composed over 33 years from 1978 until 2011, it consists of a series of over 2,432 silent vignettes , each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities,...

     (1985)
  • A Return to Salem's Lot
    A Return to Salem's Lot
    A Return to Salem's Lot is a 1987 horror film written and directed by Larry Cohen.-Plot:Michael Moriarty plays an amoral anthropologist who has been lumbered with his dysfunctional adolescent son and who returns to Salem's Lot, the town of his birth, to find that it has been taken over by the undead...

     (1987)
  • Student Confidential (1987)
  • Someone to Love (1987)
  • Murder by Numbers
    Murder by Numbers
    Murder by Numbers is a 2002 psychological thriller film produced and directed by Barbet Schroeder. It stars Sandra Bullock, Ben Chaplin, Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt. It is loosely based on the Leopold and Loeb case....

     (1990)

Television

  • Desperate Women (1978)
  • Vega$ (1 episode, 1978) : Second Stanza (1978)
  • Ladies in Waiting (1979)
  • The Love Boat (1 episode, 1979) : Doc's Ex' Change/Gift, The/Making the Grade (1979)
  • Beyond Westworld (1 episode, 1980) : Sound of Terror (1980) 0
  • The Oklahoma City Dolls (1981)
  • Highway to Heaven (1 episode, 1984) : Song of the Wild West (1984)
  • Trapper John, M.D. (1 episode, 1985) : So Little, Gone (1985)
  • Tales from the Darkside (1 episode, 1985) : The False Prophet (1985)
  • ABC Afterschool Special
    ABC Afterschool Special
    The ABC Afterschool Special is an American television anthology series that aired on ABC from 1972 to 1996, usually in the late afternoon on week days. Most of the episodes were dramatic presentations of situations, often controversial, of interest to children and teenagers. Several episodes were...

     Sherman (1 episode, 1987) : Divorced Kids' Blues (1987)
  • Hotel (1 episode, 1988) : Double Take (1988) TV episode

Composer

  • Welcome Home, Soldier Boys (1972)
  • Nashville (1975)
  • Lightning Over Water (1980)
  • Docu Drama (1984)

Soundtracks

  • Nashville (1975) (writer: "Bluebird", "Tapedeck in His Tractor", "Dues", "My Idaho Home") (music: "Down to the River") (lyrics: "Down to the River") (performer: "Tapedeck in His Tractor", "Dues", "My Idaho Home", "One, I Love You", "Down to the River")
  • Renaldo and Clara (1978) (writer: "Need a New Sun Rising") (performer: "Need a New Sun Rising")

External links

  • Official Website
  • Ronee Blakley at MySpace
    MySpace
    Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

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