Lena Horne 1917-2010; RIP

May 10, 2010 at 9:17 am (Anti-Racism, Civil liberties, good people, jazz, Jim D, music)

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCG3kJtQBKo&a=CfVxg-oWYZA&playnext_from=ML]

As well as being a great singer and actress, Lena was a courageous civil rights activist, willing to put her career on the line for her principles. She should have been a bigger star in the movies, but as the New York Times obituary puts it, “she was born fifty years too early”: Hollywood wasn’t ready for a female Afro-American star in the forties and fifties – even one as sultry and glamourous as Lena. The role of Julia in Showboat, which Lena had played on the stage, was given to Ava Gardner (who couldn’t sing) when MGM came to make the film in 1951. Lena wasn’t even considered for the role.

Lena’s outspoken opposition to racism, and her association with leftists like Paul Robeson, got her known (as she herself put it) as “a bad little Red girl.”

She also had an unusual love life:  though married (reasonably happily it would seem) to the white MD Lennie Hayton, she admitted that the consuming love of her life was Duke Ellington’s musical collaborator, Billy Strayhorn. Only one problem there: Strayhorn was gay.

Farewell to a wonderful, courageous talent. We’ll not see her like again.