Black History Month: Lena Horne

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via Getty
This week's post focuses on someone whose influence wasn't just in the theatre world, but has inspired those working in film and pop/jazz music as well.

Lena Horne was an activist and an artist with a 70+ years long career. She was in movies. She was an activist. She was one of the first black performers in The Empire Room in the Waldorf-Astoria.
She retired in 1980 and then went on to be in her own one-woman Broadway show that won her a Tony award - Live On Broadway Lena Horne: The Lady And Her Music.

After reading story upon story of this fierce, 5'5" lady, it seems to me that she was unstoppable, but she had to be because of the world around her. She had to fight harder than those half as talented just to be seen and cast.

Lena's career started in the chorus at The Cotton Club - a Harlem nightclub popular with celebrities during prohibition. After she had gained notoriety in the chorus, she participated in shows at Cafe Society in New York and Cafe Trocadero in Los Angeles. From there, it was straight to Hollywood in films like The Duke is Tops, Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather, but because Lena was black, she was given bit parts that could be edited out if these films were being shown in the South. Lena didn't want the bit parts - she wanted the dramatic leads. She begged the heads of MGM to play Julie in their movie adaptation of Show Boat but was overlooked by studio heads who cast Ava Gardner - a white actress.

Most of the stories about Lena's life that I read this week say that it's because of the constant snubs based on her race and not her talent that led Lena to leave Hollywood and focus on her career as a singer. She returned to the clubs she had started in, but this time as the star. She did TV performances with the top entertainers of the time - Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Ed Sullivan, Dean Martin and on and on. And in 1958, Lena became the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Tony Award for "Best Actress in a Musical" for her part in Jamaica.

She is lauded by many contemporary artists as being inspirational to them and I now understand why - she was always someone who knew her worth and refused to settle for anything less.  Here's a quote that I loved from her obituary:
"My identity is very clear to me now. I am a black woman. I'm free. I no longer have to be a 'credit.' I don't have to be a symbol to anybody; I don't have to be a first to anybody. I don't have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I'd become. I'm me, and I'm like nobody else."



Sources:

  • https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2009/07/lena-horne-excerpt200907
  • https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/08/the-red-baiting-of-lena-horne/398291/
  • https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/national/unpublished-black-history/lena-horne-harry-belafonte-1964-racism-manhattan
  • https://www.npr.org/sections/ablogsupreme/2010/05/10/126675135/lena-horne
  • http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-lena-horne6-2009jul06-story.html

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