Later Career and Legacy

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK The ultimate cookout starts with the ultimate ingredients. At Whole Foods market, no antibiotics ever burgers and kebabs are prepped and ready to throw on the grill. Fire up a juicy ribbeye. Grab creamy potato salad and savory flatbreads from the prepared foods department, and round it all out with three hundred sixty five brand condiments, chips and dips at everyday low prices Whole Foods Market, Make your summer sizzle. The dry eyes still feel gritty, rough, or tired? With my bow, eyes can feel My bow Myibo, for Fluurohexalactane Ophthalmic solution, is the only prescription dry eye drop that directly targets the number one cause of dry eye. Too much tear evaporation Myibbo mimics the way the protective outer layer of a healthy tear film fights evaporation, allowing you to keep more of your own tears. It can help the surface of the eye heal when used consistently as directed So eyes can find relief that's. Don't use if allergic to Myibo. Remove contacts before using and wait at least thirty minutes before putting them back in. Eye redness and blurred vision may occur. For more info, talk to your eye doctor, call one eight fourty four Myibo Y, or visit myibo dot com to find an eye doctor near you. What does treating dry eye differently feel like Hello and welcome to Your Dead to Me, the Radio four comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian author and broadcaster, and today we are donning our glad rags and finding our spotlight as we learn all about the legendary singer and Hollywood actress, Lena Horne And to help us, we have two very special fellow performers in History Corner. They're associate professor in popular music and director of Black Studies at the University of Nottingham. They're an expert on musical theatre and especially race and gender identity in popular culture. You'll remember them from our episode on the History of Broadway, it's doctor Hannah Torrysium Robbins. Welcome back Hannah. Thanks having me back. Delighted to have you back and in Comedy Corner. An introduction feels completely reundant for such Stalwart of you're dead to me. She's a comedian, actor and writer. You've seen her all over the TV on Taskmaster, Frankie Boyill's New Wld Order, QI, too hot to handle Maybe you've seen her incredible new standup show, The Golden Roth And you'll know her from so many episodes of this very podcast, including recent highlights, S Journah Truth and the history of Broadway, not one episode. What an episode that would be. Yes, we're getting the band back together. It's Di Birch. Welcome back Desa. Thanks so much for having me back, Rreg. It's so nice to be back and find out what the heck happened before. That's the alternative name of the show Desay, we have covered several performers before. We have D and Josephine Baker together, Paul Robeson, Pety Barnhum to an extent. Yeah, true. Yes. He performed being a human just about. Just about So if I come to you and I say the name Lena Horn What comes to mind So what comes to mind is Glinda the Goodwitch from the Whiz because I grew up. that was the Black Wizard of usz that we grew up on in the eighties. And so that's sort of, I think was my introduction to her and also seeing her perform on the Cosby Sh RIP maybe I' just saying, but those were my interactions with her and she kind of I think in my head occupies a similar sort of like Harry Belafone status of being a performer and an activist as well. Yeah. This is good knowledge. Okay. Yeah yeah, no that's from spot on, I think. Yeah, it's quite the life. I mean, I didn't know half of this stuff and I'm really excited, so we'd better crack on. So, what do you know This is the so what do you know? This is where I have to go. I guessing what you, our lovely listener might know about today's subjects. and I'm guessing there's a lot of people who've heard the name Lena Horne, but maybe don't quite know who she is. Maybe it's the deseseri thing of the whiz. If you're a fan of classic Hollywood movies, maybe you've seen her in Cabin in the skky or stormy weather, or you watched her star turn as deser did as Glinda in the Wizard of Oz adaptation, The wiz Music lovers might recognise the song Stormy Weather, which is how I know about Lena Horne, or know her incredible voice from her dozens of albums. And of course, if you were a kid or a grown up, you maybe grew up watching Sesame Street and the Muppets andw Lena Horne there. But what about Lena Horne's life story? How did she become the star of stage and screen? and what colour exactly? is light Egyptian Yeah Let's find out. Right Professor Hannah starting at the beginning When was Lan Horn And what was her family background? Are we We're in twentieth century, right? Yeah, absolutely. So she was born on june thirtieth, nineteen seventeen to what was a middle class black family. Her father, Edwin was kind of a renaaissance man. He spoke six languages. He owned a restaurant and a hotel, but eventually he got caught up in gambling. Her mother, Edna, was an actress, however, her parents separated when she was three and she went to live with her paternal grandparents Lena's gramother, Kora was an amazing character. She was an early feminist, she was a community activist and she took Lena to organizing events and meetings alongside her schooling. She was very restrictive about Lena's original education. and Lena remembered that as the period of sort of stability and comfort during her childhood living with her grandparents So Desarite,'s quite a nice start to life. judging by the know nineteen seventeen, could have been a lot worse. Could have been extraordinarily a lot worse. Yeah, absolutely. Her father, Edwin, was out of the picture. Edwin didn't really like working And he discovered gambling I to sa. You start getting into gambling. you start getting really out of working really quickly because why work if you can just win money? Yeah. So this is it. Sometimes he was extremely successful and sometimes he was extremely not successful. and he was not closely connected with her grandparents. So when her grandmother died, she was forced to go back to living with her mother and her new stepfather, Mike And she said that she couldn't really relate to this white man that her mother had married. and they fell on fairly hard times. Obviously this was the deepression, as you mentioned, and that led to them relocating from a fairly nice house, initially to the Bronx, and then to Harlem and trying to figure out how to make ends meet with both Edna and Mike losing their jobs R Let's meet teenage Lena. Tina the Lina. Lina, the Lina? I don't know. I haven't worked out what I'm doing with that yet, but let's meet her. What does she do to revive the family finances, Desae? I am guessing that she has figured out some kind of song and dance situation to kind of help out like she's performing or doing something in the family business. No you're spot on, I think we start our story with not singing yet, dancing? Yeah, absolutely. So she's sixteen years old Neither her mother or her stepfather have a job. so she secures an audition at Harlem's Legendary Cotton Club.. And it's worth saying that the Cotton Club, although kind of legendary to us now, was a really complicated space. It didn't allow black patrons in, the black musicians and chorus people were not allowed to use the bathrooms. They could only rehearse the final rehearsals in the building. It was quite a tense set up But at the same time, a number of major artists like Cab Callaway, Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, Adelaide Hall were all working there. Duke Ellington was crucial make a welcoming space for black people, you don't call it the cotton. Well, there is that I'm guessing it's not a vibe.' like, hey, come on down the cotton club Yeah. And was she working solely as a dancer? or was she singing at this point and dancing as well? She's been there for a while. So she began as a dancer, but she was singing as well. the chorus was multifaceted. and she certainly started to get spots during this time she stars in her first Broadway musical called Dance withith Your Gods. and she would go do that and then come back and perform at the Cotton Club. So in nineteen thirty five aged eighteen or so, she does leave the Cotton Cub and she's off on tour. decides the only way to break her contract at the Cotton Club given the environment is to run away. So she flees and she runs off to I think Philadelphia and not that far. I mean, was times, I mean, that was more than just an Amtrak. yeool. And she secures an audition with Noble Ciscil, who some listeners may remember from his involvement in Shuffle along and various other modn Renaissance activities. He is now running a major orchestra called the Society Orchestra And he signs her, but she was under considerable pressure because her stepfather, Mike and her mother traveled with the band. And she was constantly on edge expecting that Mike was going to lose his call and cause a problem. And actually he does yell at Noble Sisle for letting the musicians use the kitchen exit in a segregated hotel and not respecting his players. And eventually Mike is kicked off the tour She manages to escape her parents, does what is the classic escape her parents move at nineteen? She picks up a lim bike and just flos it. She's This is the only way they'll ever keep up. Mike's in the back like in my to cruise and she's like, You'll never catch me. She She doesn't eat teethhing cycles away from the garden ust a scooter turn the heels in a big dress like I'm gonna get outt of here. Do doesn't pick up a bike. Okay fine Picks up a feather ' she Oh okay. It's my original bike.es Hannah, Wh who is her beloved hubby? Yeah, in nineteen thirty seven, she runs away to Pittsburgh this time and she marries this guy, Louis Jordan Jones, or Louis Jordan Jones, I think it is actually. And he is from a similar middle class black background. He's the son of a minister, he's a college graduate, he's an aspiring politician. But their marriage is made challenging by the fact that Lana Horne continues to work And he was looking for a different kind of wife who was going to support his political aspirations rather than make her own money. She moves to New York and that does go well, or at least that's the plan She doesn't get work immediately, but once she does it starts to gain momentum. and she secures an audition via the record producer, John Hammond, who's aware of her from Deckca to audition at Cafe Society downtown. So there were two cafe Societies, one upown and one downtown as a solo artist And it is the up and coming cabaret venue in New York and it boasts artists like Billy Holiday. Paul Robesen is a regular performer and that' how they become friends. And it is really the beginning of Lena Horne becoming Lena Horne. This is a very beautiful, glamorous young woman in her mid twenties or so deseser obvious question, is Shobiz all about image first technique later? Yes Okay I mean there's an incredible amount of talent, I think, probably in Shobiz at that time. She's meeting them all over the place. But clearly she was already making quite a bit of money on the image So I imagine that that and just sort of a general being comfortable around artists in that world got her a lot further than actually needing to employ talent We're now into the nineteen forties. She's a singer, she's a performer. But in nineteen forty two, she did what every performer with her song in their heart and a dream in their soul does. She headed to Tinseltown. Yeah, it's really interesting. She always said she never wanted to be a film star. She was never interested in Hollywood. She didn't like California Her agent wanted to run away from her parents, ye. And that's as far as you can get there. It's you can see. I would say that her transition into Hollywood is a reluctant one. And in the end it's MGM, the producer Roger Edens who sees Horn and takes her seriously and decides to take her to meet Arthur Fried. Arthur Freed is the head of the division producing screen musicals and they decide together, along with Vincent Manneelli, who they bump into, who she already knows, that she should go and audition for LB Mayer, the second M in MGM himself and she decides to take her father, Edwin, who she's reconnected with at this point. It was a very surprising audition. Elbie Meer is immediately taken with her. He can see the appeal. He immediately understands what Roger Edens, who is an associate producer has recognized They are not prepared for her and Edwin to come in and negotiate what she is and isn't going to do.. So with his help, she says that They're not going to accept any old part. and he says that he could just hire Lena Horn a maid with his own money. so she's not going to be playing servants on screen. They also negotiate that she won't play any illiterate or uneducated parts and she won't play any jungle or Tarzan stereotypes. God. She gets an extraordinary contract For her first time debutants Seven year gig. W. So she'd done a couple of independent black films at the end of the thirties, but you're basically those had not been widely distributed. they were not prominent movies. She had the appeal. I think that's the thing we can say. She had the appeal, but also they saw an opportunity to represent a different kind of music within some of these film musicals that are made. She gets in the end a seven year ilm contract, and she was the first bllack actor of any gender to get such a major deal. This was that one year they were really doing DEI at MGM and they just really knocked it out of the park and nobody else ever got that deal ever. nineteen forty two to nineteen forty three..' The golden year. Ohness. So Lena Han's debut MGM debut is a film called Panama Hatt and she's playing H so Pann Mahatie is an adapt of a stage musical by Cole Porter. And I think it's a really interesting insight into what MGM attempted to do with her. They deliberately immediately start to lean on the idea of her being slightly ethnically ambiguous. But I think it's also really important to say that this is also a time where black actors were sometimes listed as props and not as caste people in the paperwork at the studios. so the complexity of the ways in which they are conceptualizing race cannot be overstated. Can you give me an example of how they were listed as props? I would produce these documents outlining the contents of the films. This would include the list of scenes, the number of songs, who the cast were and then they would have us list where they would have table Kettle, six chairs and in one And Louis Armstrong. Yeah. Oh my go. Oh. It was it's a bleak fact, but it is it's a really important nuance to understanding what it might have been like to be making a film for her at that time. I mean Her films that sort of have stood the test of time, I suppose would be stormy weather and cabin in the sky, thoseose are the kind of classic early movies that you know you can still watch now, I guess Those are all black casts or predominantly black casts. These are films with great stars in all the main roles, so she's part of a black ensemble Yeah, and if you look at her filmography, really, those two films Cabin in the Sky, which is an adaptation of a hit stage show and Stormy Weather, which was an original film made by Fox are really the highlights of her film career in the forties. And yeah, as you say, they are all blackcast, so it's important to say that everybody behind the camera was white. And what happened there was they got the great and good of black performance into these films and created these amazing celebrations in those films They are the only examples where Lena Horn has dialogue, where she gets to interact with other people, and she actually has character arcs. After that, she basically loses the opportunity to have a meaningful interaction with the plot of any musical film And you said when we did our preparatory Zoom call, you said something quite shocking, she would sometimes not be allowed to stand too close to fellow actors so they could physically cut her out of movies That's an amazing your eyes went very wide there. Yeah. Yeah, this is like before CGI. they were just literally like, we will just splice the film just in case. They literally just had a sort of frame around her. The other thing I suppose we have to talk about in terms of racism or at least know prejudice on set would be her hair and makeup there aid. you know I'm like, I know her hair and makeup was bad because it's not good now. So I mean We mentioned it very early on. may have you may recall light Egyptian Oh my good. You know what that might refer to? I mean, a light Egyptian. I imagine that that was the makeup color, skin tone that they were going for and not like the name of the perm they were using on the hair either way. What is light Egyptian? and how was Her hair and makeup, in some ways othering of her, in other ways sort of glamorizing. In the forties, the white press couldn't decide what her skin tone was, but one of the ways in which she was racialized is that they always refer to her skin color. But in headlines, she was referred to as sepia, as copper, as chocolate. like these are not the same shades of foundation to put it a horrible way think there's a really important point about how she was lit and how she was represented. So yeah, you're right. The Max factor, Max Space factactor was working for MGM and was used to making bespoke foundoundation shades. So he made one called Platinum for Jean Harlow.ight And he makes light Egyptian for Lena Horn. we The reality that the hairdressers' union ban their members from touching her head. Not only is she subject to this appalling condition, but she can't have her hair and makeup done in the same room as the white actors who are being treated by union members. So some of the stories about her being isolated, about her being cold and aloof from other performers and particularly from other black performers Specifically to do with the way in which the hairdresser union treated. I may need to repeat half of that because I went for a tailspin the second you said that the hairdresser was not allowed to touch her head. Is this like a Jim Crow thing? L no water fountains, no you can't touch your head because it'll bite your fingers off. Hannah, when we talk about the Jim Crow laws, these are segregation laws keeping white and black people apart in public spaces The Jim Crow laws were about protecting quote unquote white interests. They were about restricting interracial marriage, they were about restricting employment rights post the abolition of slavery and they existed well into the twentieth century The ultimate cookout starts with the ultimate ingredients. At Whole Foods Market, no antibiotics ever burgers and kebabs are prepped and ready to throw on the grill. Fire up a juicy ribeye, grab creamy potato salad and savory flatbreads from the prepared foods department, and round it all out with three hundred and sixty five brand condiments, chips and dips at everyday low prices. Whole Foods Market, Make your summer sizzle. Pl is home of all your favorites With all new episodes of all the Queen's men. You stand up when you talk to the quQueen. Plus a whole new world of movies like Gladiator two. I must have power. Original series like The Shy. Life comes at you fast, whether you' ready for it or not In live sports like UFC Welcome to Paradise. Same family. That's all that mattericed to me. Your BET favorites are now on Paramount Plus. suubscribe now Organic Valley P protein plus ultra filtered milk is past raised from cows that might take more steps than most people That's a plus. And it has fifty percent more protein and fifty percent less sugar than regular milk That's a big plus. And the fact that I didn't make a pun about moving Also a plus Organic Valley Potein plus ultra filter milk Protein plus pasture raised Learn more at organicvalley. com Unlucky in love Miss Horne does get married again So've got I've got good news there. And hubby number two, is this someone Lena can lean on? Is he going to be a kind of loyal loving hubby who lets her be the star Certainly at the beginning, yes. Okay she is. Lena Horne marries the MGM arranger and conductor Lenny Hayton. Initially, they didn't get on. She didn't trust white men in her words, and he didn't trust singers. But eventually they get That's the best way that sentence could have ended. Yeah's because I was worried. Yeah. Yeah, I could have framed that better. Never mind They build this relationship together and eventually in nineteen forty seven, they get married in Paris. But their partnership is extremely controversial in public and private because interracial marriage is still illegal California. So they're married in Paris simply because it's illegal in the they live and work. So they interracial marriage is made legal in California the a year later in nineteen forty eight This It comes at a time where Lena's film career is starting to stall. She's refusing to play these anti bllack stereotypes and they're trying to push her to do it. And that leads her to be suspended from MGM's payroll for a period in nineteen forty five because she won't take the part she's being given. She's also got these associations with her radical Black group. She's pouring her income into union organizing, and she's known to be a friend of Paul Robeson So they have a context in which the studio is starting to see her as a problem and then she goes and marries Lenny. I mean, if she's hanging out with Paul Rilson and doing all the organizing, is she about to get a big sea stamped all over her? this is that time, right? Absolutely right. I mean, I suppose that Senator Joe McCAarth. Not cancer kids. No,. I mean, we're talking here about the commommunist witch in Hollywood. Okay That is what brings down Paul Robesen. To a certain extent she dodges it by going abroad, right? that is that fair? or is she forced abroad? I mean her and Lenny, I'm going to call them Leni, that's their couple name. L Lena and Leny, Leny. They're overseas, right from fifty to fifty two. Yeah. so Lena Horne is named in Red Channels as a communist basically the end of her time at MGM for a number of years. She goes to Europe, as you say, ultimately, I think the civil rightights movement is a turning point in her life and she She meets Martin Luther King earlier in that process, who asks her to sing at a rally and through that she becomes involved in fundraising for him, fundraising for the stududent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She works with Eleanor Roosevelt on anti lynching legislation. She attends the march on Washington with Josephine Baker. There's a beautiful photo of them standing in front of the monument. And this is kind of the beginning of her being very prominently vocal about you know political activism in the nineteen seventies, she speaks out for bllack women radicals like Angela Davis when she's incarcerated But I think it's also worth saying that through the forties she had been supporting radical politicians, helping with union fundraisers and thinking about the ways in which black political organizing could function. and then in civil rights, she came to understand that the way she'd been used as a figurehead or an aspirational symbol of blackness was actually really negatively loaded and started to talk publicly about that and kind of relearn her black radical consciousness I guess The sort of stormy weather that she'd sung about in forty three, unfortunately stormy weather came for her in nineteen seventy seventy one. She had sort of a really tragic eighteen months or so, which she lost a lot of people she loved Yeah, so by this point, she and Lenny have separated because she was just less interested in her music career and more involved in political activism. No idea what Lenny did or what he was like. He was just a white man she didn't trust, but then she did enough to marry him. He gave her a career in Europe and then he dipped. He was just like, Well, Yeah, nice that it goes that way. than. Lenny McGuffin, here just And Lenny passed away. So they separate and then her father and her son both pass away within six months of each other Tell us about her music career in the eighties. The er appearance on the Whiz is really symbolic because she has transitioned into being essentially an industry veteran and she gets to basically sing a song that Diana Ross has just performed and we have a kind of classic version. and then we have this blues gospel re working of it, specifically for her and that throws out what she sounded like at MGM and completely re her sound As a result, she starts working live again and she has a one woman show called The Lady in Her Music, which opens in nineteen eighty one and runs on Broadway for a year. She has some time in Las Vegas as well. and from that she wins a special Tony awward. That is a speech worth watching if anyone has five minutes and she wins two Grammys and In this moment, she really moves from interpreting music by other people, kind of being told where to stand and what to sing to becoming Lena Horne, truly herself on stage, I think. Amazing. I'm getting a sense here that she's reached icon status. like ye important to the community, but important to culture institutions. They're all going, This person deserves awards. When you see her in the wiz, there is no question that she has gotten icon status She justa appears like ethereially and is like believe in yourself Yeah. Mikedroff She lived until ninety two. so she wass born in nineteen seventeen. She lived to presumably to vote for Barack Obama, right? because I'm like I rememember her dying like Yeah in a whole different millennia. Yeah. ye. So she lived to see a black president and still be an icon and receive all of her flowers and get all her awards. Yeah It's the real end of the story we wanted, right? So she died in twenty ten, aed ninety two genuinely extraordinary life Lena Horne. And it's not a story I knew at all other than the song stormy weather. That's all I knew as a reference point. And you had your own reference point. So ye from encountering that. And also like when you talked about her at the beginning, like obviously I live long enough to see her in her later years and her passway, so I knew that things were relatively happy. But when you talked about her beginning being sort of like, oh, things were actually pretty well set up in black middle class That usually goes one of two ways. L usually it's sort of like stable, or it's like a Miles Davis version where it's like everything just sort of carees into insanity.. I was waiting to see if there was ever any of that element, but it seemed like she was just trying to be resilient against like being buffeted by society and all of these various odds, like being expelled from Hollywood as a communist and going to Europe Coming back from that and having a whole renewed phase of your career where everyone's like, oh, actually here's all of your flowers and a Broadway show and you know all of this work is really incredible and rarely happens. Absolutely. The Nuce window it's time now for the nuance window. This is where Deserite and I stand quietly in the chorus line for two minutes, doing some jazz hands, but you know, no singing. while Professor Hannah takes centre stage to tell us something we need to know about Lena Horn. So my stop watchatch is ready. it away Pfessor Han So Lena Horne relentlessly talked about the loneliness and isolation that she felt at MGM and that it made her seem like she didn't want to be in community with other black performers She came to believe that she was chosen by movie executives so that they could capitalise on her perceived racial ambiguity. and that made her work and the profile of her success understandably contentious for a really long time.