- starred in two films in the Philippines, TNT Jackson (1974) and The Muthers (1976), directed by Cirio H. Santiago
Marc: How did you come to the attention of Roger Corman, and how long after that did you get the starring role in TNT Jackson?
Jean: After coming back from Mexico starring in my movie. Just a normal casting call; my agent sent me on this interview, I met Roger Corman. In two months, I got TNT Jackson.
What, if anything, did you do to prepare for being the lead in this action-heavy project?
Stan Shaw gave the green light for me to be cast. Margaret Avery was originally cast before they saw me. She dropped out because she was expecting a child. They saw me and I was the best out there. I beat out Nichelle Nichols from “Star Trek,” it was between the two of us and they picked me. I was happy to travel again, to the Philippines and China. I started training, working out, jogging, lifting weights, to get in top shape for this movie.
What was your impression of Cirio Santiago as a director?
Cirio Santiago was a very professional man, and lotta personality, patient, and a family man. I would sit next to him by the camera, and he would explain to me how this scene is going to work, this amazing creative person, I learned so much from him. I thought someday that I want be a director, he made it look so easy. RIP my friend.
Corman has often told the story of how his publicity man Jon Davision came up with presenting you with the “Ebony Fist Award” to get publicity for the film. Did you get to keep the actual award, and if so, do you still have it?
I never heard about this award. After filming this movie, I started dating Richard Burton, moved to Switzerland, and lived with him a while, so I didn’t really hear about all these awards.\
You returned to the Philippines with Cirio Santiago to make The Muthers as part of an all-star cast of contemporaries: Roseanne Katon, Trina Parks, and Jayne Kennedy. What was that like?
Making The Muthers movie, I had so much fun working with great actresses.
Quentin Tarantino wrote this about The Muthers: “It’s the playful execution of a preposterous story that’s key to the film’s charm. A friend once made the observation that if you were to watch three children play act a scene from ‘Starsky & Hutch’ that they’d seen on TV the night before, say Starsky and Hutch interrogating a prisoner, the children’s level of intensity and commitment to what they were doing would be both more charming and sincere then the same scene played by Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul. Well both Bell’s and Katon’s performance achieve this kids-at-play quality. They could very well be two little girls playing pirate in their backyard. Add that to the Modesty Blaise meets Pippi Longstocking conception of their characters, and the genuine camaraderie the two women share, maybe only The Little Rascals could’ve packed more charm into its 88 minutes. Considering how many movies Santiago made, it’s a damn shame he didn’t make one more Bell & Katon pirate adventure.” Were any of those concepts what you had in mind when you were making the film?
It would’ve been nice if [Cirio] did make a movie with Bell & Katon as pirates, that would’ve been fun.
Did you maintain any further contact with anyone you worked with from your acting days?
Yes!…Trina Parks, Jayne Kennedy, Rosanne Katon, Joyce Williams from Playboy days, and Stan Shaw. I’m so proud of Stan Shaw, my co-star in TNT Jackson, who’s gone on to make incredible historic accomplishments in our industry. He’s starred in the first film about Vietnam, The Boys in Company C, Alex Haley’s grandfather Will Palmer in “Roots: The Next Generations,” won the Emmy for Kurt Vonnegut’s Pulitzer Prize-winning short story Displaced Person, Harlem Nights, as well as a great number of films. He’s currently the newest star added to the cast on BET+’s “The Family Business!”
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