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Legendary singer and actress Lena Horne died late Sunday night, Mother's Day 2010, at age 92 in New York. The New York Times says her son-in-law Kevin Buckley, the husband of her daughter, Gail, announced her passing, and then the piece continues with a recounting of her life as the first African-American to land a long-term contract with a big Hollywood studio, MGM.
A running theme in that obituary and other overviews is that Ms. Horne, despite her beauty and singing talent, despite her fair skin that could have allowed her to pass for white or Latina had she chosen to do so, faced a segregated world that stifled her, hindering what could have been an even more brilliant career.
Ms. Horne was stuffed into one "all-star" musical after another -- "Thousands Cheer" (1943), "Broadway Rhythm" (1944), "Two Girls and a Sailor" (1944), "Ziegfeld Follies" (1946), "Words and Music" (1948) -- to sing a song or two that could easily be snipped from the movie when it played in the South, where the idea of an African-American performer in anything but a subservient role in a movie with an otherwise all-white cast was unthinkable.
"The only time I ever said a word to another actor who was white was Kathryn Grayson in a little segment of 'Show Boat' included in 'Till the Clouds Roll By'" (1946), a movie about the life of Jerome Kern, Ms. Horne said in an interview in 1990. In that sequence she played Julie, a mulatto forced to flee the showboat because she has married a white man.
But when MGM made "Show Boat" into a movie for the second time, in 1951, the role of Julie was given to a white actress, Ava Gardner, who did not do her own singing. (NYT)
The article makes clear that by that time, Ms. Horne was no longer under contract.
At my personal blog, where I share briefly my memories of the legend, I excerpt from her AP obituary the Max Factor story I'd heard before.
Her success led some blacks to accuse Horne of trying to "pass" in a white world with her light complexion. Max Factor even developed an "Egyptian" makeup shade especially for the budding actress while she was at MGM.
But in his book "Gotta Sing Gotta Dance: A Pictorial History of Film Musicals," Kobal wrote that she refused to go along with the studio's efforts to portray her as an exotic Latin American.
"I don't have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I'd become," Horne once said. "I'm me, and I'm like nobody else." (AP)
Ms. Horne was born June 30, 1917, and I watched two of her movies that featured an all-black cast on television growing up, the musicals Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky. To this day, for sentimental reasons, I still prefer her rendition of the song "Stormy Weather."
BlogHer Contributing Editor Professor Kim Pearson shared on Twitter that the introduction Ms. Horne gives on the performance in the video below captures for her the woman and her attitude. "This here .. is what Miss Lena means to me. Thank you, Miss Horne," she twittered.
I concede that may be one of the best Lena Horne videos I've seen today among people recognizing her passing.
Apparently younger than Prof. Kim and I, Melissa at Shakesville recalls the first time she saw Ms. Horne:
I know the exact moment I saw Lena Horne for the first time. I was 11, and she made a guest appearance on "The Cosby Show," as herself, in an episode where Claire (Phylicia Rashad) took Cliff (Bill Cosby) to see her perform for his birthday. I remember thinking how beautiful and glamorous she was, and falling utterly in love with her voice, which has remained to this day one of my absolute favorites—totally recognizable, totally unmistakable, totally butter. (Shakesville)
You can view that Cosby appearance at YouTube. Melissa ends her post saying she knows nothing negative about the star. I didn't either until I wrote about two books on her life. One is positive, The Hornes: An American Family, and that is to be expected since it was written by her daughter Gail Lumet Buckley. The other, however, is a less flattering portrait, Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne by James Gavin. This
