For his fourth and final feature, Parks Jr. took on a more intimate and personal story. Aaron Loves Angela (1975) is a tough and tender coming of age drama set in Harlem. Kevin Hooks plays Aaron, a high school basketball star from a predominantly black neighborhood, and Irene Cara is Angela, a Puerto Rican girl from Spanish Harlem. They come from rival high schools - the opening scene finds them locking eyes during a basketball game, he from the court and she lined up with the spectators - and have to sneak around to see each other. Their story soon gets tangled in a plot right out of a Blaxploitation crime thriller: a local drug dealer (played by Robert Hooks, real-life father of young actor Kevin Hooks) has a big deal brewing to sell drugs to the Italian mob during a dry spell in the drug trade.
There's a Romeo and Juliet quality to their romance but it has less to do with rival families or gangs than the culture of life in the urban slums. Aaron and Angela couldn't be more different - she's lived all over the country and has been nurtured with a love of art and culture, he's pinned all his hopes on basketball, pushed by a father still nursing the disappointment of his own pro football career cut short by injury - but they are both raised by single parents and pressured to remain within their own communities. Angela's mother remains unseen while Obie-winning actor Moses Gunn plays Aaron's father as both a man with a tendency to slip into the bottle and wallow in his regret and as a supportive and moral father doing his best to look out for his son.
Kevin Hooks, who made his screen debut in the acclaimed Sounder (1972), transitioned from acting to forge a very successful career as a TV director and producer, directing episodes of St. Elsewhere, NYPD Blue, 24, Prison Break (which he also produced), and Castle among other shows. His career is still going strong after 30 years. Actress and singer Irene Cara jumped from the small screen, where she was a regular on the PBS educational series The Electric Company, to make her big screen debut as Angela. She went on to star in the films Sparkle (1976) and Fame (1980) and to write and record a string of hit songs, winning an Oscar and a Grammy for the top ten hit "Flashdance... What a Feeling." She has no opportunities to sing in Aaron Loves Angela, however. The upbeat soundtrack of original songs is written and performed by Jose Feliciano, who makes a cameo appearance performing in a club. The Latin rhythms and mix of English and Spanish lyrics gives the film a distinctive musical atmosphere.
Gordon Parks, Jr. never made another film. His life was cut short when his private plane crashed while scouting locations in Kenya for his next film, Revenge, in 1979. He was 44 years old.
By Sean Axmaker Sources:
"Gordon Parks Jr., Film Maker, Dead," C. Gerard Fraser. The New York Times, April 4, 1979.
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