Lena Horne dies at 92: Hollywood's first major black signing

She was one of the great Hollywood beauties, but being black meant she could perform only as torch-singer or maid.

Lena Horne died yesterday at 92, having pioneered the visibility of black performers in the entertainment industry. She was a mix of African-American and Native American with a fascinating background as a member of the middle-class black intelligentsia. Her relatives included actors, an inventor, and an adviser to FD Roosevelt.

She joined the Cotton Club as a nightclub singer in the 1930s and signed to MGM, becoming the first black artist to have a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio. Films included Stormy Weather (on loan to 20th Century Fox) for which she sang the title song, and Cabin In The Sky, an all-African-American extravaganza.

Race laws and codes prevented her from being given leading roles and her appearances were often edited out for screenings in the most backward states. Lenny Bruce had a routine contemplating the racists' choice between Kate Smith (a patriotic Valkyrie famous for glass-shattering performances of "God Bless America" and not known for pulchritude) and the divine Ms Horne.

"You are a white. The Imperial Wizard. Now, if you don't think this is logic you can burn me on the fiery cross. This is the logic: You have the choice of spending fifteen years married to a woman, a black woman or a white woman. Fifteen years kissing and hugging and sleeping real close on hot nights. With a black, black woman or a white, white woman. The white woman is Kate Smith. And the black woman is Lena Horne. So you're not concerned with black or white anymore, are you? You are concerned with how cute or how pretty. Then let's really get basic and persecute ugly people!"

She was blacklisted (pun fully intended) in Hollywood due to her progressive views: support of the civil rights movement alongside Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte and others, working on anti-lynching laws, and refusing to perform before segregated audiences when she played for American troops. Due to army bloody-mindedness, she ended up with a bizarre mix of black GIs and white German POWs.

Her movie career in the doldrums, she focused on her nightclub work and eventually did well in television.

Nevin recommends an appraisal of Lena Horne's life by Amy Goodman here


Lena Horne as the vamp, Georgia Brown, in Cabin In The Sky

Lena Horne dies at 92: Hollywood's first major black signing

She was one of the great Hollywood beauties, but being black meant she could perform only as torch-singer or maid.

Lena Horne died yesterday at 92, having pioneered the visibility of black performers in the entertainment industry. She was a mix of African-American and Native American with a fascinating background as a member of the middle-class black intelligentsia. Her relatives included actors, an inventor, and an adviser to FD Roosevelt.

She joined the Cotton Club as a nightclub singer in the 1930s and signed to MGM, becoming the first black artist to have a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio. Films included Stormy Weather (on loan to 20th Century Fox) for which she sang the title song, and Cabin In The Sky, an all-African-American extravaganza.

Race laws and codes prevented her from being given leading roles and her appearances were often edited out for screenings in the most backward states. Lenny Bruce had a routine contemplating the racists' choice between Kate Smith (a patriotic Valkyrie famous for glass-shattering performances of "God Bless America" and not known for pulchritude) and the divine Ms Horne.

"You are a white. The Imperial Wizard. Now, if you don't think this is logic you can burn me on the fiery cross. This is the logic: You have the choice of spending fifteen years married to a woman, a black woman or a white woman. Fifteen years kissing and hugging and sleeping real close on hot nights. With a black, black woman or a white, white woman. The white woman is Kate Smith. And the black woman is Lena Horne. So you're not concerned with black or white anymore, are you? You are concerned with how cute or how pretty. Then let's really get basic and persecute ugly people!"

She was blacklisted (pun fully intended) in Hollywood due to her progressive views: support of the civil rights movement alongside Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte and others, working on anti-lynching laws, and refusing to perform before segregated audiences when she played for American troops. Due to army bloody-mindedness, she ended up with a bizarre mix of black GIs and white German POWs.

Her movie career in the doldrums, she focused on her nightclub work and eventually did well in television.

Nevin recommends an appraisal of Lena Horne's life by Amy Goodman here


Lena Horne as the vamp, Georgia Brown, in Cabin In The Sky

Titanic election boat of celebrities fails to sink. Millions disappointed

Millions of BBC license-payers were disappointed as the D-list celebrity-laden BBC election speshul boat, "SOS UK PLC", failed to sink in the early hours of Friday morning.

"They couldn't even get that right", said Ms A Chen from North London. "Pissed as a truckload of second-hand double-colostomy bags and they couldn't even give the electorate the little bit of pleasure of a very apt metaphor."

Described by some as "embarrassingly awful", at first it looked like the revellers were speaking an unknown language but then viewers realised that if they put their TVs onto the "drunk as skunk" setting, they could make out every second word.

Tory and Labour grandees and their minions took up the mantra, "You're my mate, you are" whenever the Lib-Dems hove into view.

Our most popular starry slebs such as Piers Morgan, Joan Collins, Martin Amis, Bruce Forsyth, Maureen Lipman, Fern Britton and Sir Ben Kingsley added the glamour befitting their enormous stature in the culture, showing the rest of us how to have a good time when civilisation as we know it draws to a close. Joan Collins mooned the TV cameras. Or did I imagine it? She might as well have done for all the respect we were shown.

A frighteningly orange-haired elderly gentleman with Botox Freeze, going by the name of Andrew Neil, demonstrated his popularity with his high-falutin' chums. Michael Portillo, Ian Hislop, Alistair Campbell and Michael Ashcroft, not short of a bob or two (where's our £120 million?!!!), had a high ol' time at our expense, thus demonstrating how they mean to carry on.

The only thing missing was Conrad Black and his missus dressed up as Richelieu and Marie-Antoinette. It all made me nostalgic for tumbrils and Workers Councils. Or at least pitchforks and torches.

Titanic election boat of celebrities fails to sink. Millions disappointed

Millions of BBC license-payers were disappointed as the D-list celebrity-laden BBC election speshul boat, "SOS UK PLC", failed to sink in the early hours of Friday morning.

"They couldn't even get that right", said Ms A Chen from North London. "Pissed as a truckload of second-hand double-colostomy bags and they couldn't even give the electorate the little bit of pleasure of a very apt metaphor."

Described by some as "embarrassingly awful", at first it looked like the revellers were speaking an unknown language but then viewers realised that if they put their TVs onto the "drunk as skunk" setting, they could make out every second word.

Tory and Labour grandees and their minions took up the mantra, "You're my mate, you are" whenever the Lib-Dems hove into view.

Our most popular starry slebs such as Piers Morgan, Joan Collins, Martin Amis, Bruce Forsyth, Maureen Lipman, Fern Britton and Sir Ben Kingsley added the glamour befitting their enormous stature in the culture, showing the rest of us how to have a good time when civilisation as we know it draws to a close. Joan Collins mooned the TV cameras. Or did I imagine it? She might as well have done for all the respect we were shown.

A frighteningly orange-haired elderly gentleman with Botox Freeze, going by the name of Andrew Neil, demonstrated his popularity with his high-falutin' chums. Michael Portillo, Ian Hislop, Alistair Campbell and Michael Ashcroft, not short of a bob or two (where's our £120 million?!!!), had a high ol' time at our expense, thus demonstrating how they mean to carry on.

The only thing missing was Conrad Black and his missus dressed up as Richelieu and Marie-Antoinette. It all made me nostalgic for tumbrils and Workers Councils. Or at least pitchforks and torches.

Gulf of Mexico oil spill "containable" but BP incompetent

Bhopal's coming home. Katrina's bringing all her cousins. And now the corporations commit another stunning example of ecological and social vandalism.

I hear sickening news that the oil slick headed towards the Louisiana coast following the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig was entirely containable but that BP, already responsible for the catastrophic Exxon Valdez clean-up debacle in Alaska, has screwed up again. And this time, lives as well as livelihoods have been lost.

Greg Palast reminds us of BP's role in the Alaskan oil spill:

... rapid response is the key. In Alaska, that was BP's job, as principal owner of the pipeline consortium Alyeska. It is, as well, BP's job in the Gulf, as principal lessee of the deepwater oil concession. ... On that March night in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef in the Prince William Sound, the BP group had, in fact, not a lick of boom there. And Alyeska had fired the Natives who had manned the full-time response teams, replacing them with phantom crews, lists of untrained employees with no idea how to control a spill. And that containment barge at the ready was, in fact, laid up in a drydock in Cordova, locked under ice, 12 hours away.

Little has changed. Assurances that BP was equipped to deal with the sort of emergency we're seeing off the coast of Louisiana verge on the fantastical:

Where was BP's containment barge and response crew? Why was the containment boom laid so damn late, too late and too little? Why is it that the US Navy is hauling in 12 miles of rubber boom and fielding seven skimmers, instead of BP?... Becnel tells me that one of the platform workers has informed him that the BP well was apparently deeper than the 18,000 feet depth reported. BP failed to communicate that additional depth to Halliburton crews who therefore poured in too small a cement cap for the additional pressure caused by the extra depth. So it blew.

Will anyone be held accountable in any meaningful way? BP share prices are already on the rise again after an initial drop of $32 billion off its market value, so maybe heads won't roll after all. How about compensation for the loss of a way of life and the devastation of environment and community? The Exxon Valdez order to pay $5 billion was slashed to $500 million by the Supreme Court. According to Reuters, "A federal statute caps damage recoveries from oil spills at $75 million, if no negligence is established. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are working on a measure to increase that to $10 billion."

Will Americans stand up to the teabaggers who demand even fewer regulations for big biz?

Athens is interesting: a people who refuse to foot the bill for their Masters' mistakes. I hope they'll inspire all of us in the same leaky tub.

Abducted by Humans: St Ives Literature Festival May 2010

Rod Bullimore and his compadres had to put up some Big Weather when they performed Abducted By Humans at the St Ives Arts Club during the St Ives Literature Festival. The rickety old club was battered by waves and the show punctuated by the screams of the locals. Such sweet music they make ...

It was quite stunning. Even though you were warm and dry, the window being pounded by the sea made it all the more exciting.