Ronee Blakley
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Ronee Blakley (b. August 24, 1945 in Caldwell, Idaho, USA) is an American actress, singer and composer.
Blakley's big break came playing country superstar Barbara Jean in Robert Altman's 1975 film Nashville. She was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Supporting Actress and, along with Lily Tomlin (who was also nominated in the same category), is often regarded as offering one of the most revealing performances in the film. Barbara Jean, who in some respects appears to have been modelled after Loretta Lynn, is an emotionally unstable and accident-prone character whose success has come at the cost of exhaustion, loneliness, injury, bitter rivalries, exploitation, fickle audiences, obsessed fans, and an overbearing husband-manager who at one point tells her "Don't tell me how to run your life!" Blakley performs several of her own songs in this character, including "Dues" and "My Idaho Home." The first is a frank admission of a failed and emotionally taxing relationship: one that is made tolerable only by her ability to write the song, and momentarily at that. The latter is a nostalgic depiction of a happy childhood in rural America, which uses many of the elements of agrarian nostalgia common to country songs, and then tweaks them: this happy childhood was far, far away from Nashville. In a pivotal scene, Barbara Jean triumphantly performs these songs and then loses her focus, babbling on stage while the audience turns against her.
During the 1970s Ronee performed with artists such as Bob Dylan and Hoyt Axton. She appears as "Mrs. Bob Dylan" in Dylan's 1977 film Renaldo and Clara, which is set during the Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975. She is also one of the vocalists on the early electronica Gershon Kingley, First Moog Quartet.
She was married to film director Wim Wenders between 1979 and 1981. Her 1985 documentary film I Played It For You, in which Wenders appears, won a prize at the Venice Film Festival. The film contained 14 songs, including Over and Over, Crazy and Rodeo Wind. The film has not been seen by a wide audience and these recordings have not been officially released.
Ronee also appeared in A Nightmare on Elm Street and a number of other films during the 1970s and 1980s.
On March 11th, 1988, Ronee Blakley gave birth to Sarah Blakley-Cartwright, her only child. Sarah plans on attending Barnard University in the fall of 2006.
Her two albums were released on CD in 2006.
In a telephone interview with Richie Unterberger early 2006, Blakley announced her intentions to record a new album. Transcripts of these interviews are in the linear notes of her CD albums.
Discography
- Welcome (1975)
- Ronee Blakley (1972)
Filmography
- A Return to Salem's Lot (1987)
- A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
- Lightning Over Water (1980) as herself
- Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff (1979)
- She Came to the Valley (1979)
- The Driver (1978)
- Renaldo and Clara (1978)
- The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977)
- Nashville (1975)
External links
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