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Versatile singer and actress McNair dies

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Barbara McNair, the pioneering black singer-actress who hosted her own TV variety show and starred with Sidney Poitier in the early 1970s, has died. She was 72. McNair died on Sunday in Los Angeles after a battle with throat cancer, her sister, Jacqueline Gaither, said. “She was very family oriented,” Gaither said. “She was more than just a star or a famous personality. She was a person of her own.” Gaining fame in the 1960s as a nightclub singer, McNair graduated to film and television as opportunities were opening up for black women late in the decade. She made her Hollywood acting debut in 1968 in the film, If He Hollers, Let Him Go. She later starred with Elvis Presley in his 1969 film Change of Habit and as Poitier’s wife in the 1970 film They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! She found movie acting “a more rewarding kind of work than singing,” she told the Washington Post in 1969. “When I’m working in a club, I must go from one song to another rapidly and I don’t have much time to express my