Career
Smith, the avant-garde filmmaker of Flaming Creatures and Normal Love, in which Grant appeared, called her "the queen of the underground--both undergrounds."
A native of Detroit, Grant appeared in Jack Smith"s controversial film Flaming Creatures (1963) and his second, unfinished feature film, Normal Love, which began shooting in 1963 as controversy over Flaming Creatures was beginning to erupt. Andy Warhol also appeared as one of the film"s "Bathing Beauties," who cavorted on a giant prop wedding cake constructed by Claus Oldenburg. In Normal Love, Grant played the role of the Cobra Woman in an erotic coupling with the Mummy, played by Tony Conrad.
After the shoot, the two began an actual romantic engagement off the set, causing a falling-out with Smith, who saw it as a normative, heterosexual coupling out of sync with the ideal of a transgressive, heterotropic eroticism portrayed in his films.
Among the Warhol films in which Grant appeared (with Smith) were his first full-length film, the unfinished Batman/Dracula, and three Screen Tests, one of which was widely shown as part of Warhol"s compilation of screen tests with female subjects that was known as The 13 Most Beautiful Women. In one of the most frequently shown of the Screen Tests, Grant impersonated an anguished silent movie diva, pulling her long, black hair., Grant also appeared in Stephen Dwoskin"s Naissant (1964), Ron Rice"s Chumlum (1964), Gregory Markopoulos" The Iliac Passion (1967), Ira Cohen"s Invasion of the Thunderbolt Pagoda (1968).
Grant, who studied under Stella Adler, also had a prolific although short career on the off-off-Broadway stage, with roles in LeRoi Jones"s The Toilet (1964), Ronald Tavel"s Shower (1965), directed by John Vaccaro, in whose Theater of the Ridiculous production of Conquest of the Universe, Grant also appeared in 1967. Together, Grant and Conrad produced the feature-length film Coming Attractions (1970) with Warhol superstar Frances Francine, the purely abstract film Straight and Narrow (1970), and Four Square.
Like Conrad"s experimental film The Flicker (1965), Coming Attractions (1970) utilized a flicker-like strobe effect within the narrative.
In 1972, Conrad and Grant toured Europe, meeting many underground filmmakers. Grant left New York in 1973 to move with Conrad to Yellow Springs, Ohio, where Conrad taught at Antioch College. During this time, she earned a master"s degree from Wright State University, and performed in local theater.
In her later years, Grant worked as a drugand alcohol-abuse counselor in London, Ohio, where she died of cancer at the age of 54 on July 4, 1990.
