Rosalind Cash

This intense, stage-trained African-American leading lady of the 1970s--and busy supporting player ever since--began her career in NYC, performing as a nightclub singer before moving to stage work on and off-Broadway. In 1968, Cash joined the prestigious Negro Ensemble Company. From the early 1970s on, she worked on stage and TV and intermittently on the big screen in films including "The Omega Man" (1971), "Uptown Saturday Night" (1974), "Cornbread, Earl & Me" (1975) and "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension" (1984). Cash's TV credits tended toward the high-minded and culturally sensitive with projects like the 1974 PBS "Theater in America" presentation of a New York Shakespeare Festival production of "King Lear" (she was Goneril) and the 1984 adaptation of James Baldwin's autobiographical classic "Go Tell It on the Mountain." She also appeared in several high-profile miniseries including "Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones" (CBS, 1980) and the Melvin Van Peebles-scripted drama "The Sophisticated Gents" (NBC, 1981). In 1994, Cash accepted what was to become her TV last role: Mary Mae Ward, a proud matriarch who had triumphed over racism and tragedy on the ABC daytime drama "General Hospital." She made her final film appearance in the horror-comedy "Tales From the Hood" (1995) as the fierce Dr. Cushing, an assignment reminiscent of some of her work in 70s blaxploitation flicks.