Actress Tracy Reed

 Tracy Reed is a familiar face to anyone who remembers the seventies.

A one-time model, she made it as an actress in appearing in episodes of the anthology sitcom "Love, American Style" and got her movie break in Train Ride to Hollywood, a 1975 pop musical starring the Kansas City R&B/rock band Bloodstone.  The movie was meant to be the seventies-soul equivalent of the Beatles' movie A Hard Day's Night. 

Train Ride to Hollywood was a love letter to Old Hollywood and movies of the 1930s and 1940s, in which one of the members of Bloodstone dreamed of being on an LA-bound train with movie stars and characters of the early days of Hollywood, along with a sheik and seven wives.  As you can gather, given the dearth of black women in leading roles of the movies that came out when Franklin Roosevelt was President, Ms. Reed did not play a Hollywood star but one of the wives of the sheik . . . with the other six played by extras.

In fact, Ms. Reed was one of only three women with major supporting roles in Bloodstone's movie, the other two being Roberta Collins (as Jean Harlow) and Ms. Reed's fellow "Love, American Style" alumna Phyllis Davis (who played Scarlett O'Hara as played by Vivien Leigh).  Of three, Ms. Reed, who turns 75 this October, is the only survivor.

From there, Ms. Reed's career took off, as she played Mona in the 1976 comedy Car Wash and also had a role in the third of three comedies starring Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier, 1978's A Piece of the Action.  She also had a small role in the Billy Crystal/Gregory Hines buddy comedy Running Scared, from 1986.

She also played numerous television roles, especially Charlotte Anderson in the 1990-91 season of "Knots Landing."