“I told the boys, don’t just count on what the eyeballs see—she runs deep inside, that woman. And she speaks out.”—Redd Foxx on Lena Horne, quoted in James Gavin, Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne (2009)
In one of the most memorable episodes of Foxx’s 1970s sitcom, Sanford and Son, “A Visit From Lena Horne,” junkman Fred Sanford tricked the singer—on whom he had a major crush—to come to his home to visit his son Lamont, on the pretext of visiting his “little lame” boy who, of course, didn’t exist. (See this YouTube clip from the show.)
You can see some of the radiance that captivated Sanford—and thousands of other men worldwide—in the image accompanying this post. But it was what “runs deep inside” that made Lena Horne—the singer, activist, dazzler, and legend who died at age 92 on Sunday night—one of the most compelling entertainment stories of the 20th century.
Racism branded Horne indelibly. I found the deeply expressive singing of the latter part of her career more moving than the silky tones of her youth. Much of this derived from the lessons learned of a hard-bitten survivor, someone never doomed to fold up and die like Billie Holliday. That same fierce pride, however, gave rise offstage to a diva who could be tough and prickly.
Well, no wonder. Early in her career, Horne was forced to endure the following indignities:
* hiding her marriage to her second husband, the white pianist-arranger-conductor Lennie Hayton, for three years;
In one of the most memorable episodes of Foxx’s 1970s sitcom, Sanford and Son, “A Visit From Lena Horne,” junkman Fred Sanford tricked the singer—on whom he had a major crush—to come to his home to visit his son Lamont, on the pretext of visiting his “little lame” boy who, of course, didn’t exist. (See this YouTube clip from the show.)
You can see some of the radiance that captivated Sanford—and thousands of other men worldwide—in the image accompanying this post. But it was what “runs deep inside” that made Lena Horne—the singer, activist, dazzler, and legend who died at age 92 on Sunday night—one of the most compelling entertainment stories of the 20th century.
Racism branded Horne indelibly. I found the deeply expressive singing of the latter part of her career more moving than the silky tones of her youth. Much of this derived from the lessons learned of a hard-bitten survivor, someone never doomed to fold up and die like Billie Holliday. That same fierce pride, however, gave rise offstage to a diva who could be tough and prickly.
Well, no wonder. Early in her career, Horne was forced to endure the following indignities:
* hiding her marriage to her second husband, the white pianist-arranger-conductor Lennie Hayton, for three years;
* being dropped from USO tours during World War II when she objected that because of segregation, white Nazi prisoners were seated at her shows in front of African-American U.S. servicemen;
* filming stand-alone musical sequences in MGM movies that could be—and were—deleted in the Jim Crow-ridden South;
* being refused service by a waiter—who nonetheless asked for her autograph; and
* losing the plum role of the mulatto Julie to Ava Gardner in the 1951 film version of the Kern-Hammerstein musical Show Boat, despite the fact that Gardner a) did not fit the physical requirements of the role as well as the light-skinned Horne; b) probably could not act better; and c) certainly could not sing as well (Gardner’s voice had to be dubbed).
Reading about Horne’s scalding anger (depending on which story you read, she threw either a table lamp or an ashtray at a bigoted heckler), one is reminded of the retreat into sullenness of another proud trailblazer: the Atlanta Braves’ Henry Aaron. Howard Bryant’s biography of the slugger who beat Babe Ruth’s record for career homers, The Last Hero, depicts a son appalled at the shameful treatment accorded his strong, powerful father by white society, as well as the record-setting hitter whose life was threatened for his assault on the Babe’s record.
I hope that Horne--like Aaron, receiving newborn appreciation for his accomplishments in the post-steroid era--found a measure of satisfaction in her later years. In the last decade of her life, for all her bitterness, her identity was secure. She told an interviewer, upon reaching 80:
“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.”
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