African American Actresses: The Struggle for Visibility, 1900--1960

6 Lena Horne: Actress and Activist

174 When at a gathering of blacks and whites in 1944 Hattie McDaniel used the “N-word” to refer to Lena Horne as “a representative of the new type of[AfricanAmerican]womanhood”inHollywood,sheshockedtheaudience , but she made a valid point.1 This new representative type of black actress was “new” primarily in the sense that she (a certain physiological type,amulatto)wasbeingprivilegedoverthephysiologicaltypetowhich McDanielbelonged.AswhiteHollywoodtransformedanendlessvariety of representations that often reflected America’s social and political ideals , it also reconstructed its racial Other, and Lena Horne was indeed a representative of this reconstructed Other. JacquesLacanarguesthatone’ssenseofselfisoftenmediatedthrough the construction of its Other.2 African American screen actresses could not escape the inscriptions that emanated from a sociopolitical context thatmarginalized,devalued,sexualized,andoftenerasedthem.Inthisregard , this new type was not so new, either in form or in function. Indeed, representatives of this “new type” had preceded Horne—Sul-Te-Wan, Nina Mae McKinney, and Fredi Washington among them. Many were aware of being exploited, and Lena Horne was among those who contested and challenged the inscriptions. Rather than internalizing these representations, at one point in her career she responded to her marginalization by publicly denouncing the sociopolitical discourse that sought to contain its racial Other. This chapter discusses the way Horne launched a campaign to defy Hollywood, viewing it as enslaving and marginalizing, a denial of voice, six Lena Horne Actr ess and Activist lena hor ne · 175 and a disenfranchisement. Horne found herself preoccupied and even obsessed with aggressively challenging the hegemony in both the reel and the real. When Horne was recruited by the cinema industry, she, like Hazel Scott, was already an established entertainer. Unlike most white actresses , most African American women did not have the luxury of pursuing a career in acting unless they could sing or dance or both; many were established nightclub entertainers before being recruited, and the pre-existing myth was that African Americans were automatically quintessential entertainers. According to Peter Stanfield, since “the connotations of racial and gender transgression must be carried by sound,”3 then the black jazz artist occupies a unique position or assumes a significant space. Thus many well-known black women entertainers were attractive to the cinema industry, which hired them with blatant disregard for their dramatic talent (or lack thereof). In this respect, Horne also was representative of this “new” type. Lena Calhoun Horne was born June 30, 1917, in Brooklyn, New York, to Edwin F. Horne and Edna Scottron Horne, who divorced three years later. Prior to her parents’ divorce, Lena resided with her parents and her paternal grandparents, one of whom was Cora Calhoun Horne—an avowed suffragist and defender of black rights who was affiliated with the Urban League, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and the Ethical Culture Society. At the age of seven, Lena joined her mother, who traveled constantly as a struggling actress. Being reunited with her mother forced Lena to live a transient life, yet she eventually spent several years in Brooklyn, where she attended public school and a girl’s high school. When she was fourteen, her mother married Miguel Rodriguez, whom she had met on a tour in Cuba, and the family relocated from Brooklyn to the Bronx.4 Two years later, when her mother became ill, Lena was forced to quit school and landed a job at the Cotton Club, thanks to the assistance of ElidaWebb,theclub’schoreographer.Duringthisperiod,Horneenrolled inmusicclassestoperfecthersingingtalentwhileperformingasachorus line dancer at the club for prominent entertainers such as Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, and Ethel Waters. In 1934, Horne appeared on Broadway in Dance with Your Gods, and the following year she abandoned the Cotton Club and appeared on stagewith Noble Sissle’s Society 176 · a fr ica n a mer ica n actr esses Orchestra in Philadelphia. While performing in Pittsburgh, Horne met Louis J. Jones, a printer, and in 1937 the two married. Horne bore two children—a daughter, Gail, who was born in December 1938, and a son, Edwin (Teddy), who was born in February 1940. In 1938, Horneappeared inherfirstfilm,TheDukeIsTops.Thefollowingyear,sheleftNobleSissle’s Orchestra and landed a prominent role in Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds, but the stage production was short-lived and Horne was forced to return to domestic life. In 1940, Horne returned to the stage as a singer with Charlie Barnet’s band and supplemented her stage career by working in radio and recording music. When...