Brenda Sykes (born June 25, 1949) is an American actress who made a number of films and appeared in television series in the 1970s. She was discovered on ''

The Dating Game ''The Dating Game'' is an American television game show that first aired on December 20, 1965, and was the first of many shows created and packaged by Chuck Barris from the 1960s through the 1980s. ABC dropped the show on July 6, 1973, but it c ...

''.

Life and career

Sykes was born in

Shreveport Shreveport ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the third most populous city in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Baton Rouge, respectively. The Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area, with a population o ...

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

, the daughter of a postal worker. She graduated from

Susan Miller Dorsey High School Susan Miller Dorsey High School is a high school located in the Crenshaw, Los Angeles, Crenshaw District of Los Angeles, California. It is a part of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The school serves Baldwin Hills, Los Angeles, California, ...

in Los Angeles in 1967. Sykes played

Jim Brown James Nathaniel Brown (born February 17, 1936) is a former American football player, sports analyst and actor. He played as a fullback for the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL) from 1957 through 1965. Considered to be one ...

's love interest in ''

Black Gunn ''Black Gunn'' is a 1972 American neo-noir crime thriller film, directed by Robert Hartford-Davis and starring Jim Brown, Martin Landau, Brenda Sykes, Herbert Jefferson Jr. and Luciana Paluzzi. Baseball pitcher Vida Blue appears in a supporting ...

''. According to Brown, he was responsible for her being cast in the role, an effort he made because he was attracted to her in real life. From 1973 to 1974, she co-starred on ''

Ozzie's Girls ''Ozzie's Girls'' is an American sitcom starring Ozzie and Harriet Nelson that was broadcast in first-run syndication from September 1973 to September 1974. It served as a continuation and revival of '' The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet'', wh ...

'' as a college student boarding with Ozzie and

Harriet Nelson Harriet Nelson (formerly Hilliard; born Peggy Lou Snyder; July 18, 1909 – October 2, 1994) was an American actress and singer. Nelson is best known for her role on the Situation comedy, sitcom ''The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet''. Early ...

. She played the character Mandy, one of

Jimmie Walker James Carter Walker Jr. (born June 25, 1947) is an American actor and comedian. Walker portrayed James Evans Jr. ("J.J."), the older son of Florida and James Evans Sr., on the CBS television series '' Good Times'', which ran from 1974 to 1979 ...

's girlfriends on the 1970s

sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ne ...

Good Times ''Good Times'' is an American television sitcom that aired for six seasons on CBS, from February 8, 1974, to August 1, 1979. Created by Eric Monte and Mike Evans and developed by executive producer Norman Lear, it was television's first African ...

'', made a starring role appearance on the first season of ''

The Streets of San Francisco ''The Streets of San Francisco'' is a television crime drama filmed on location in San Francisco and produced by Quinn Martin, Quinn Martin Productions, with the first season produced in association with Warner Bros. Television (QM produced the ...

'', and as Summer Johnson on the

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

series ''

Executive Suite An executive suite in its most general definition is a collection of offices or rooms—or suite—used by top managers of a business—or executives. Over the years, this general term has taken on a variety of specific meanings. Corporate offi ...

''. Sykes was married to musician

Gil Scott-Heron Gilbert Scott-Heron (April 1, 1949 – May 27, 2011) was an American Jazz poetry, jazz poet, singer, musician, and author, known primarily for his work as a spoken-word performer in the 1970s and 1980s. His collaborative efforts with musician ...

from 1978 to 1987 and is the mother of poet

Gia Scott-Heron ''Gia'' is a 1998 American biographical drama television film about the life and times of one of the first supermodels, Gia Carangi. The film stars Angelina Jolie as Gia and Faye Dunaway as Wilhelmina Cooper, with Mercedes Ruehl and Elizabeth ...

. "She was exquisitely beautiful, soft and refined. He was so full of fire, and she was the opposite. She was the water in his life," said the filmmaker Esther Anderson. Sykes has been married to Paul C. Hudson since May 19, 1995.

Filmography

Television

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sykes, Brenda 20th-century African-American people 20th-century African-American women 21st-century African-American people 21st-century African-American women 1949 births Actors from Shreveport, Louisiana Actresses from Louisiana African-American actresses American film actresses American television actresses Living people