Actress-Singer Barbara McNair Dies

 

Actress-Singer Barbara McNair Dies

Donald Uhrbrock//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

McNair hosted television's 'The Barbara McNair Show,' a musical and comedy program in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

By JACOB ADELMAN, AP

LOS ANGELES (Feb. 5) - Singer Barbara McNair, who became a film and television star in an era when such opportunities were opening up for black women, has died, her sister said. She was 72.

McNair died Sunday after a battle with throat cancer, Jacqueline Gaither said.

"She was very family oriented," Gaither said. "She was more than just a star or a famous personality. She was a person of her own."

McNair fame in the 1960s as a singer and made her Hollywood acting debut in 1968 in the film, "If He Hollers, Let Him Go."

She later starred opposite Sydney Poitier in "They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!" and with Elvis Presley in "Change of Habit."

She hosted television's "The Barbara McNair Show," a musical and comedy program in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

As a singer, one of her biggest hits was "You Could Never Love Him."

McNair started as a night club singer in New York. An engagement in 1957 at the Village Vanguard earned her the attention that would lead to her first Broadway performance in the play "The Body Beautiful" a year later.

She went on to star on Broadway in the musical "No Strings" in 1963.

McNair sang professionally as long as she could, Gaither said, but the cancer that started in her throat and then spread eventually hurt her ability to perform.

She sang until the middle of last year, Gaither said.