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Friday, February 19, 2016

FEBRUARY IS AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH - LENA HORNE

Lena Horne - so many beautiful and talented and complex women have passed through our world. A load of questions have passed through my mind as I write these short biographies of famous and not so famous African Americans. Why aren't they better known? How did they manage in such a negative world to project their talent and beauty and leave us all with lasting memories of them? Why didn't they give up in despair? All of these women were fighters, not just for themselves, but for all African Americans - and therefore, all people.
Lena Horne was born in 1917 and died in 2010, a long life truly! Not only was she a talented and beautiful singer and actress, she was also a civil rights activist. How many people knew that about her? That she refused to accept roles that were stereotypical about African Americans meant that her career was much more difficult for her. Success while there was not fulfilled.

Ms Horne became part of a well known white swing band that was one of the first to integrate, yet she had to quit due to the fact that she couldn't stay with them when she traveled. In 1941 she returned to New York to work at the Cafe Society nightclub, a popular venue for both Black and white patrons and artists. [My parents told me how they went to see Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Art Tatum and more. Billie Holiday debuted her song "Strange Fruit" at Cafe Society. Located at One Sheridan Square, it was opened precisely to give a venue for ordinary people by Barney Josephson, brother of Leon Josephson, a communist friend of my parents. Most vividly they told me they took their shell-shocked friends who had returned from the Spanish Civil War in order to help them feel better, if possible.]

Lena Horne's career began to take off -- "A long run at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel nightclub in 1943 gave Horne’s career a boost. She was featured in Life magazine and became the highest-paid black entertainer at the time. After signing a seven-year contract with MGM Studios, she moved to Hollywood, where she filmed movies like Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky. Producers quickly realized that she was a difficult woman to cast, however. She could only get limited roles in films with whites, and her light skin made it difficult to cast her alongside popular African-American actors in full-color films. Horne also refused to accept parts that stereotyped African-American women, and she was shunned by the community of black actors."

Now that we have a President who is half African-American, half white we can perhaps one day talk about the difficulties of "mixed race" people such as Lena Horne. Generally shunned by both Blacks and whites, their lives were so much more fraught with loneliness and pain. I will never forget taking my daughter to a movie at the African American Movie Festival in Los Angeles which was basically about how the one mixed-race person was the traitor on the plantation, working in the master's house, having an easier life. The movie was ground-breaking in many ways - Sankofa - because it openly detailed slavery. But I felt to put the blame on a mixed race person was egregious at the least.

Lena Horne suffered this type of discrimination - shunned by both sides. "By the end of the 1940s, Horne had sued a variety of restaurants and theaters for discrimination and become an outspoken member of the leftist group Progressive Citizens of America with Paul Robeson. McCarthyism was sweeping through Hollywood, and Horne soon found herself blacklisted. Since she was unable to work in film, television, theater or recording, she performed primarily in posh nightclubs around the country. The ban eased in the mid-1950s, and Horne returned to the screen in the 1956 comedy Meet Me in Las Vegas." She was still active in the civil rights movement despite being blacklisted. She participated in the March on Washington in 1963.

From the NY Times Obituary -
“The whole thing that made me a star was the war,” Ms. Horne said in the 1990 interview. “Of course the black guys couldn’t put Betty Grable’s picture in their footlockers. But they could put mine.”

"Touring Army camps for the U.S.O., Ms. Horne was outspoken in her criticism of the way black soldiers were treated. “So the U.S.O. got mad,” she recalled. “And they said, ‘You’re not going to be allowed to go anyplace anymore under our auspices.’ So from then on I was labeled a bad little Red girl.”

In 1970 and 1971 Lena Horne's son, husband, and father all died and she spent much time in mourning. "Horne made her final film appearance in the 1978 movie The Wiz. The film was a version of The Wizard of Oz that featured an entirely African-American cast including Michael Jackson and Diana Ross, and Horne played Glinda the Good Witch." She made a triumphant return to Broadway in a one-woman show for which she won a Drama Desk Award, a Tony, and two Grammy Awards for soundtrack.
"In 1994 Horne gave one of her last concerts, at New York’s Supper Club. The performance was recorded and was released in 1995 as An Evening With Lena Horne: Live at the Supper Club, which won a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Though she contributed occasional recordings after this, she largely retreated from public life."
"Lena Horne died of heart failure on May 9, 2010, in New York City."

As IMDB states in its biography of Lena Horne - "Had it not been for the prevailing racial attitudes during the time when Lena was just starting her career, it's fair to say that it would have been much bigger, and come much sooner, than it was. Even taking those factors into account, Lena Horne is still one of the most respected, talented and beautiful performers of all time--and she's still singing!"

From Notable biographies - "In the 1990s Horne cut back on performing. She was drawn back from semiretirement to do a tribute concert for a long-time friend, composer Billy Strayhorn, at the JVC Jazz Festival. At age seventy-six she released her first album in a decade, We'll Be Together Again. In 1997, on the occasion of her eightieth birthday, Horne was honored at the JVC Jazz Festival with a tribute concert and the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement in Vocal Artistry. In 1999 she was honored at the New York City's Avery Fisher Hall with an all-star salute."
"Lena Horne is an amazing woman. Her pride in her heritage, her refusal to compromise herself, and her innate elegance, grace, and dignity has made her a legendary figure. Her role as a person who has helped to improve the status of African Americans in the performing arts has provided a permanent legacy."

Read more: http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ho-Jo/Horne-Lena.html#ixzz40d6ejtco

Lena Horne Biography - http://www.biography.com/people/lena-horne-9344086
Ephemeral Cafe Society - https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/tag/cafe-society-1930s/
IMDB lists 55 soundtracks - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0395043/
IMDB biography - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0395043/bio
Notable biographies - http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ho-Jo/Horne-Lena.html
NY Times Obituary - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/arts/music/10horne.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Books:
Buckley, Gail Lumet. The Hornes: An American Family. New York: Knopf, 1986.

Haskins, James, and Kathleen Benson. Lena: A Biography of Lena Horne. Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House, 1991.

Palmer, Leslie. Lena Horne: Entertainer. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989.

Read more: http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ho-Jo/Horne-Lena.html#ixzz40dOoiHsM

Saturday, February 6, 2016

FEBRUARY IS AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH - EARTHA KITT

Eartha Kitt's name always conjures up a memory of her singing "Santa Baby" and also her beautiful face. I thought she was a very accomplished singer, dancer, movie star, and more. Most people remember her as the infamous CATWOMAN in the Batman TV series. I don't think I owned a TV at that time.
Here is her "official" website which gives quite a good deal of information about her. And this image:

The Guardian wrote a sympathetic column about Eartha Kitt, especially the fact that she never learned who her white father was. She wasn't permitted to see his name as it was blacked out of her birth certificate by the white racist South Carolinian authorities. She was very bitter about this. Imagine being born in 1927 in the deep south and being shunned by both whites and Blacks. Her own mother gave her up to relatives who abused her.
Her daughter Kitt Shapiro had this to say about Eartha: "She never found out her father's name, but always assumed he was white. My mother was referred to as a 'yellow gal', which was not a compliment. It meant someone who thought they were better than everyone else even though my mother was just a child at the time. She was horribly abused in the South. She was beaten, mistreated, emotionally and physically."
"Kitt became a leading light in the civil rights movement in the 1960s but when she condemned the Vietnam war on a visit to the White House her career in the US ended and the CIA branded her "a sadistic nymphomaniac". By then Kitt had divorced the father of her daughter, Bill McDonald, who was a white businessman and wounded Korean war veteran addicted to painkillers, and mother and daughter moved to London to relaunch her career in Europe. Shapiro said: "We lived in Knightsbridge and later Fulham. I went to school in London and spent many a year in England. My mother regarded England as a second home."
From the N.Y. Times obituary: "As bookings dried up, she was exiled in Europe for almost a decade. But President Jimmy Carter invited her back to the White House in 1978, and that year she earned her first Tony nomination for her work in “Timbuktu!,” an all-black remake of “Kismet.”
Astonishing that people in this country know so little about Eartha Kitt other than her singing and Catwoman status.

Eartha Kitt's daughter has set up the Eartha Kitt Foundation to benefit the area where her mother was born. Apparently it is still suffering from the effects of the October 2015 floods and 40,000 people still don't have access to potable water. "The state’s infrastructure and agricultural industry are in disarray: more than 60 dams have been destroyed, and countless acres of farmland have been deemed barren and unusable. As is often the case, small businesses have been hit especially hard by this statewide downturn, shutting their doors at an alarming rate. The fiscal total of this damage is valued at roughly $1.2 billion. In the wake of this natural disaster, South Carolina’s economy has been devastated."

I hope that people will learn what a complex and accomplished person Eartha Kitt was but also a strong fighter for the rights of people, a supporter of the civil rights movement, and a person who risked her entire life opposing the war in Vietnam at a luncheon with Lady Byrd Johnson. I would love to be as courageous as she was.

Here is a photo of Eartha and daughter Kitt to whom she gave unconditional love.

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

February Is African American History Month -- Elizabeth Catlett

A little known fact is that several African American artists went to Mexico where they felt more welcomed and able to create amongst the largesse and hospitality of David Alfaro Siquieros, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and other great artists of the 1930s and 40s. One was Elizabeth Catlett, a sculptress and painter who should be widely known in the United States. Here is a website devoted to Catlett and her sculpture. It includes a timeline of her life. Beautifully included are videos of Catlett telling her own story. Don't miss taking a look.

Catlett moved to Mexico, stayed in the house of Siquieros' mother and fell in love with Francisco Mora a painter. She was still married to Charles White, a famous artist from the United States with whom she traveled to Mexico. She divorced him to marry Mora.

Here's what the website says about Elizabeth Catlett:

"In a career spanning more than 70 years, Elizabeth Catlett has created sculptures that celebrate the heroic strength and endurance of African-American and Mexican working-class women. With simple, clear shapes she evokes both the physical and spiritual essence of her subjects. Her hardy laborers and nurturing mothers radiate both power and a timeless dignity and calm. Whether working in wood, stone, bronze, or clay, Catlett reveals an extraordinary technical virtuosity, a natural ability to meld her curving female forms with the grain, whorls, color, or luster of her chosen medium. The beauty of her subjects is matched by the beauty she reveals in her sculptural materials.

"Throughout her career, Catlett has been a political progressive committed to improving the lives of African-American and Mexican women, and she has often used her art explicitly to advance their cause. She has also protested, picketed, and even been arrested in her quest to win justice for those she describes as "my people." Moving from the United States to Mexico in 1946, she was eventually identified as an "undesirable alien" by the U.S. State Department. For nearly a decade she was barred from visiting the United States.

"Despite these struggles, Catlett's art reveals no trace of bitterness or despair. Indeed, she has remained true to the universal, life-affirming themes that first animated her sculpture in the 1940s'the beauty of the human form and the nobility of the human condition. At age 95, she continues to create, guided by those unshakeable ideals." Jeff Harrison, Chief Curator, Chrysler Museum of Art

Vendedoro de Periodicos is the title of this drawing by Catlett. She excelled in sculpture, painting, printmaking, and more. She was a professor of fine art as well. Clearly her progressive political ideals affected the kinds and themes of her sculptures and paintings. "Her work blends art and social consciousness to confront the most disturbing injustices against African Americans. She is best known for her work during the 1960s and 70s, when she created politically charged, black expressionistic sculptures and prints."

Elizabeth Catlett taught at the National School of Fine Arts in Mexico from 1958 to 1976. She continued to produce art, dividing her time between New York and Mexico. She died in 2012 at the age of 96 in Cuernavaca, Mexico.