Culture Zohn Off the C(h)uff: James Gavin and the Stormy Weather of Lena Horne

For decades, Lena Horne has been an emblem of the complicated equation of race and talent. Today, we need look no further than Barack Obama for guidance about how to rise above the question of color and capability.

Lena Horne in Hollywood - 1942

But Horne began her career in a time when she really had to worry about whether she could eat in the restaurant du jour or whether when she went to Miami on tour she could stay in a chic hotel. (The answers were no and no). She ended up returning to her home, New York, where she still lives, the city which both launched her and cushioned the blows of rejection over the years.

She was always a lot more hotheaded and spoke more candidly about her trials than BHO. She felt herself more of a victim, and she probably was... affirmative action for beautiful and sexy performers was not on the charts when she began her career in the early days of the Cotton Club and Café Society. She often had to take on challenges that had nothing to do with her talent and everything to do with the "honey-colored" skin everybody was so wild about.

Horne used -- and was used for -- her beauty with a series of famous men with whom she had relationships -- and mostly the feeling I get from the capacious new biography from James Gavin, Stormy Weather, is that she loved them too; it's easy to be confused when someone wants to look out for you about what their underlying motivations might or might not be. Consistently overlooked in Hollywood as an actress with chops, Horne alternately made her peace with being able to be one of the best at putting over a nightclub song and railed against the limitations that very special talent imposed.

Lena-Ziegfeld Follies. MGM. 1946

This new biography picks up where a series of memoirs, interviews and an American Masters biography left off: Horne has not been shy or reluctant about speaking her mind over the years. Gavin first interviewed her for the New York Times in 1994.

What's strong in this biography is the sweep of history -- we really sense what was going on in our country not only about race but about movies, politics and culture. And Gavin brings in a diverse cast to make his case that Horne was only one of many, if one of the most famous, who confronted issues that now seem impossible when Oprah Winfrey is among the most celebrated, and the wealthiest women, black or no, in the land.

Gavin took some time to go Off the C(H)uff with me this week:

Culture Zohn: Why is revisiting the career and life of Lena Horne important just now? Is she a symbol for a bygone time, or is there a contemporary take on what made her so important?

James Gavin: Obama's victory, and the changes in attitude that made it possible, could never have happened without the victories of generations of fighters like Lena Horne. Lena, as she knew too well, got "in the door" of the white majority because of the degree to which she looked like them, sounded like them, didn't threaten them. Sixty years later, how much have things changed? Successful black film actresses, what few there are, tend to fit the old Horne mold. And Hollywood doesn't give them much to do.

CZ:Horne seems to have changed her version of events from time to time. How did you determine what memories were fable and what were fact?

JG: I spent untold hours at the library; I interviewed every eyewitness available and exhausted them with my probing. The bigger question to me was, why did Lena fabricate so much? I think it's because both she and the civil-rights leaders of the day felt she had to maintain an impeccable image. Icons are not allowed to make human mistakes. They're supposed to have flawless judgment and to please everyone, especially when they represent a minority.

CZ: Horne's relationships with men, especially white men, are a main element of the biography. Artie Shaw, Orson Welles, Lennie Hayton could help with her career. You allude to the fact that even then, some thought she was sleeping her way to the top. What's your perspective?

JG: Lena was very ambitious. No black man could have lifted her to the heights she craved. Her first husband was a failed black politician who'd been beaten down by society, and whose ego couldn't handle her success. Black men had a particularly brutal time of it then, and often vented their anger on women. Lena was drawn to men who offered safety and status. At the time, most of them were white.

CZ: Horne clearly was always disaffected with Hollywood and felt more at home in NY. She wanted to be an actress and not just a singer cast in musicals and she felt she was not taken seriously. Yet you say that most people agreed that she was a much better singer than actress. Why did she struggle against this?

JG: I think MGM was nothing if not progressive in signing Lena, and that they utilized her strengths in the best possible way. But the fact that she was mainly isolated in solo numbers was agonizing for a woman who felt chronically alone. Whether completely true or not, she blamed institutional racism for holding her back. But the hell she raised over her "cameo" stature did, I believe, have an impact upon the desegregating of Hollywood.

CZ: Horne seems to have taken her early role with the NAACP very much to heart and embarked on a lifelong quest to find a way to combat racism. She was able to make her own personal experiences resonate even though they were in a rarefied world. How so?

JG: Even though she seemed to exist in a "black ivory tower," as she put it, of beauty and privilege, the hell she'd gone through to get there eventually became known. She kept fighting, fueled by personal anger over feeling rejected, victimized, and given the sense that she was less-than. There's a lot there for most of us to relate to.

CZ: Have you seen her recently? Is she still able to be politically or socially engaged?

JG: In 2000, Lena withdrew into her East Side apartment and hasn't been heard from since. We've never gotten to learn her views on Obama, unfortunately. She's very fragile, but I'm told that in recent years she sometimes threw things at the TV when Bush appeared. How can you not love a woman like that?

Gavin gave me a list of later generations of talented women who saw her as a beacon:

Janet Jackson (wanted desperately to play Lena, and was cast, in that aborted ABC-TV biopic)
Halle Berry (thanked Lena, among others of Lena's generation, in her Oscar acceptance speech)
Alicia Keys (chosen by Oprah in 2007 to play Lena in an Oprah-produced biopic that, to my knowledge, has not been mentioned since)
Whitney Houston (reportedly offered to play Lena in the ABC biopic)
Angela Bassett (co-hosted a recent benefit performance in Pasadena of a stage musical based on Lena and starring Leslie Uggams)
Mya: platinum-selling R&B singer, age 29, sang "Stormy Weather" in tribute to Lena

With all of Horne's success, she apparently remained embittered about her trajectory. That seems a shame. She has had a fascinating, if bumpy, ride.

In between appearances for his new book, Gavin is working on a documentary of his first book, Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret with filmmaker Raymond De Felitta.

Comments

[Ohioan730]

I was born when Lena Horne was long past ingenue age and she was no less gorgeous to me than when she was in those old pictures. Maybe even prettier. Anybody Fred G. Sanford loved, had to be something. He had very good taste as we all know. She was the only woman who had a remote chance of taking the place of his beloved Elizabeth. lol

That "Little Lame LaMont" episode of Sanford and Son is probably the one I remember best. Lena Horne stole the show wherever she went. Heathcliff Huxtable was also rather enamored with Lena Horne and she did a cameo on The Cosby Show once or twice. 'Cliff was totally ga-ga and couldn't speak.

Even fictional men from sit-coms love that lady. What a class act she is.

[NoPCZone]

What about her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement? Ms Horne and the late Billy Strayhorn went right into the belly of the beast- something that has been related in Lush Life ( a book and movie about Strayhorn).

Ms Horne is a much more complicated figure than this essay would leave you to believe. I certainly hope the book is better- she deserves it. There will never be another like her.

[MarlaBC]

I certainly hope Gavin has dealt honestly with Horne's bisexuality in this book. While Billy Strayhorn did accompany her to civil rights events, the fact of the matter is, it was her girlfriend, Dr. Jeanne Noble who was the driving force behind Lena's involvement in the 1960s movement. David Hadju's Lush Life bio conveniently omits this information.

[chitown]

"She kept fighting, fueled by personal anger over feeling rejected, victimized, and given the sense that she was less-than. There's a lot there for most of us to relate to."

Really? Imagine being the headliner in a show at the Cotton Club, but not being able to pee there because there are no restroom facilities for black women - in Harlem. Try relating to being the star of a show in a big Vegas hotel, but having to stay at some fleabag motel on the highway because you aren't allowed to stay in a room in that hotel. When will whites, who seem clueless about the true nature of racism, stop trying to equate the black experience of decades-long, state-sanctioned repression to something akin to adolescent angst?

I haven't read Gavin's book, so I don't want to pre-judge it, but from the article, it seems that the author has a "drive-by" understanding of American racism. Lena Horne has an up close and personal knowledge of how law and custom curtailed opportunities for black people, no matter how "golden-skinned".

You're damn right that Lena Horne is angry. In the immortal words of James Baldwin "show me a black man (or woman) in America who isn't angry, and I'll show you a n****r in need of a psychiatrist".

[Ecoutez]

When my daughter was 10, I took her to see Lena Horne when she performed in San Francisco on her last major tour. Still in her stride, her performance was superlative. My daughter experienced the same pride and identity I felt when at age 8 my uncle took me to see Josephine Baker at the Strand Theatre in New York City. I immediately became completely transformed when she sang, "j'ai deux amours, mon pays et Paree." From then on, I became a francophile and dreamed that one day I would make it to Paris. These two Black Americans were icons in their day and it's hard to replicate them. It's very interesting to study Hollywood and its casting based on color. When we look at white actresses, the blondes were most always cast as the innocent, fragile and most desired beauties, while the dark-haired ones projected a toughness a la Joan Crawford or Bette Davis. This didn't happen all the time because there was Hedy Lamar, Ava Gardner, and of course, Elizabeth Taylor. In this same vein, I remember the Archie comic strip with Betty, the blonde, the pure girl-next-door and Veronica, the mean dark-haired , conniving one.whose hair was so black it looked purple. If white women were going through these stereotypes of blue eyes versus brown-eyes casting hurdles, you can only imagine what Black women were going through. Lena Horne knows.

[IQ]

"......WHETHER COMPLETELY TRUE OR NOT(??), she blamed institutional racism for holding her back. But the hell she raised over her "cameo" stature did, I believe, have an impact upon the desegregating of Hollywood......"

True or Not???? The fact that you felt it necessary to pose this is astonishing!!!
OK lets try this. Imagine if every person that controlled your career, your earning potential also dismissed you when you made statements detailing the racism you felt!
Now imagine if that person is now your lover..or both?!

"Horne's relationships with men, especially white men, ARE A MAIN ELEMENT OF THIS BIOGRAPHY" Were her relationship with Black Men,which there were many more, are not of importance? These relationships with Black Men don't illuminate anything that may fill in the blanks in Ms Horne's experience?

I certainly hope this blog is not AN indication of the lack of insight that Mr Gavin has. I hope Ms Horne is not portrayed as some embittered also-ran with a star complex who embellishes on her history for effect, I fear the book itself may at times insult Ms. Horne's proud accomplishment and survival. But what gives me great pause is the feeling that Mr Gavin will mislead those many readers who have no perspective or have a distorted knowledge of the day to day struggle that Jim Crow and state-sanctioned disparities had on an entire group of people.

[MDTERP]

"Black men has a particularly brutal time of it then, and often vented it on women"... what the hell is that? An excuse? An explanation? Glad to know what the civil rights movement was all about, equal rights for black men. Maybe then black women would have less of a chance of being punching bags?

[Grange Lady Haig Rutan Author]

James Gavin's long awaited "Stormy Weather," about the legendary-­most-exqui­site-livin­g elegant beauty: Lena Horne, is gorgeous gold and blows my mind and I am haunted by what was required of this beautiful, intelligent woman, still remembering in 1965 as I watched an at least seven foot tall Las Vegas deputy sheriff in true wild west garb, clad in beige, from the top of his huge hat to his shiny brown boots, escort the trembling stone-faced beauty of Lena across the open floor of Jake Gottlieb's Dunes Hotel, where she was appearing but could not throw those "bones" and wish a "new pair of shoes for baby."

Once upon a time, my first husband, a white man Al Haig, the chosen pianist of the innovators and titans of bebop:Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, played the piano in a movie, entitled: Stormy Weather with Lena Horne. He opened and he closed; Al was present at the heart of the rhythm, then suddenly he was gone, so is The Dunes Hotel, BUT LENA HORNE IS STILL STANDING. YES!

I picture Lena, dressed in a gorgeous flowing red chiffon caftan, alone in a penthouse with Ava Gardner sipping a toast to James Gavin and reciting:

"Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - "

John G. Magee

[amoment]

"With all of Horne's success, she apparently remained embittered about her trajectory. That seems a shame. She has had a fascinating, if bumpy, ride." It must be really hard for people to understand what it means to be black. I guess, Lena is supposed to say something like, Oh, it was really hard being a black female entertainer trying to make it in those days, but I am so glad that some whites adored me and gave me so many opportunities that other blacks didn't have. Lena knows she could have done so much more if not for racism. Her bitterness is understandable. I guess nobody told Lena she should be grateful.

[db08]

"affirmative action for beautiful and sexy performers was not on the charts when she began her career in the early days of the Cotton Club and Café Society"

While you might mean affirmative action as just consideration, most, unfortunately, view it as given a chance to the less talented people of color. Affirmative action was in effect for many "beautiful and sexy performers" but not for those people of color. Ava Gardner was a beneficiary as were many others who were able to develop their talents and skills. Gardner was a fine actress as Horne would have been if given the same opportunities.

Ms. Horne lived through and survivied the Jim Crow era, one of the most racist periods in our history. She is a heroine for the true cause of freedom.

[Steamboater]

Horne was never a good actress but you're right, if given the opportunity that white actresses had she would have been. White actresses were groomed from day one during the studio system's heyday and taught how to walk, get out of a car without so their legs weren't open to reveal it all, given dance and singing lessons, but mosly and acting lessons almost daily. Horne was a singer and one of the best and showcased as one but never given the same opportiunities as whites. I don't remember but one part she never played was a maid and that's certainly in her favor.

[Steamboater]

Leslie Uggams in a stage show musical bio of Horne? Isn't she a little old to play that? Vocally she could pull it off but that's a role she should have played years ago. I just hope that when a stidio finally makes a film about Horne's life, they use Horne's own recordings. They can certainly be remasterd to for a film. Got to read this book? What is it exaclty that Horne continuously lied aboutand fabricated?

[TJCole]

I'll take Lady Day over her anytime, and the stories I heard from those who played with her, just incredible...

[Steamboater]

The "cameos" blacks were in during Hollywood's musical heyday were cut when shown in the south.

Horne did a lot of nightclub work but there was always a distance about her when she performed live. That stopped when she first did her concert in New York several ago. She finally became one with her audience.

As to white men mentioned, these men had a reputation as outsiders themselves. Shaw was a Jew at a time when anti-semitism was ingrained in America, Welles had his "Citizen Kane" and a reputation for leftwing politics almost to the point of accusations of communism and Hayton a drummer, someone invariably on the road who didn't give a crap what anyone thought., and as a drummer socialized with AA's. For that matter, so did Shaw. Shaw was an maddening though. With the women he was involved with, he was more a teacher than a lover or husband; teaching women. They had to be sophiscated so he told them what books to read, usually the likes of Dostoyefsky, and almost stood over them and made sure they read them too.

It's a pity Horne never got to to do the role of Julie in "Showboat" too because she was light-skinned enough to play the part and she wanted it badly. Ironic that the part of a mixed-race woman who could pass for white in the south went to a white actress but Horne never blamed Ava Gardner; they were good friends.

[MarlaBC]

Excuse me? Welles was a boy genius at the time Horne chose him, thus providing status - which Horne wanted in order to propel her career. Hayton was not a drummer, but a musical arranger and at the top at MGM. Shaw may jave been maddening, but he was highly successful when she went with him. ALL of them fit the description Gavin uses that Horne was ambitious and went with men who could do something for her career.

Horne was never up for the part in Show Boat, that's a myth.

[Ponderus]

Lena Horne was and remains one of the towering artists of the 20th century.

I haven't read Gavin's book, but my guess is as with all seminal figures, one book will not be able to tell her story.

And thank goodness that TV movie fell through. Janet Jackson? Puhleeze. Not even close.