Lena Horne died last week at the age of 92. Horne was one of those unlucky talents championed more for lost potential than actual achievement. This was in no way her own fault. She became a symbol of studio era Hollywood's inability to deal with African American actors and musicians who desired to be cast as something other than servants or dimwits.
Horne was lightly pigmented enough to pass off as white and sufficiently charismatic to achieve major stardom. She was born to play Julie LaVerne, the 'mulatto' river entertainer in the great Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein musical "Show Boat". The part is a poignant one, dealing with 19th century racism in a manner that reflects contemporary prejudice in the American South. Like Horne herself, LaVerne has ability but her professional progress is undone by her race. It is not even a matter of the colour of her skin for, as "Show Boat"'s most telling line of dialogue puts it, "just one drop of negro blood is enough to make you coloured in these parts".
Horne dreamed of playing LaVerne. She did, in microcosm, featuring in a single scene reenactment of the stage show in the 1946 Kern biopic "Till the Clouds Roll By". However, when it came to casting the 1951 remake of "Show Boat" Horne lost out to Ava Gardner, a Caucasian who lightly 'blacked up' for the role. With the studio afraid of the very miscegenation the material was meant to be critiquing, life imitated art in the cruelest way.
Horne's Hollywood career was reduced to bit parts and specialty numbers that could be cut out when shown in the south. The solitary lead role that she did enjoy, singing a number that became her theme song, was in "Stormy Weather" (1946), one of the all black musicals of the era, full of shuffling stereotypes and 'Uncle Tom' humour. Horne's last part, 32 years later, was also in an all Negro abomination, "The Wiz", the role of translucent fairy apt for an inspirational yet sadly insubstantial legend.
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