I get in moods. Sometimes I have this great desire to cut myself and bleed all over this page and then, having been put in really weird positions because of what I say here, I second guess myself. I’m a hesitator! So that’s why I can go long bouts of “I’m not here” and be fine.
Lena Horne just brought me out from my cave.
My first encounter with her was through Fred Sanford (hey, I was a wee kid then so don’t get all hot and bothered about how uncultured I must have been). He loved her so much that every other word was “Lena Horne.” And then the real introduction happened: The Wiz. Her song at the end literally made me cry and I didn’t even really get the whole movie just yet (I was still a kid — I had just enough comprehension to be in my pre-school’s recital to “Brand New Day” - we basically just danced around in a circle but I took it seriously.
Detroit in the 80s and 90s was the best place to grow up. TV 50 played old movies all day on Sunday and my mom would make us omelets while we went from “Abbott and Costello” to “Roman Holiday.” Double feature afternoons were my joy. Every once in a while, they played a great black movie. I do remember “Cabin In The Sky” and being mesmerized by this woman who looked white but surely did not sound white singing.
Later she would have a guest appearance on my other favorite show, “A Different World” playing herself, still beautiful, still high yellow and still sounding like she was one of my distance cousins from Mississippi. No wonder men of my grands age loved her so. She seemed like she would TELL you a thing or two.
In college I researched everything about the then lost age of black film from Oscar Micheaux to Freddie Washington. I devoured Donald Bogle’s Dorothy Dandridge’s bio and ate August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” daily.
There aren’t many Lena Horne-types around anymore and, at 92, her death leaves a gaping hole in our cultural fabric. We are lucky enough that her granddaughter is penning really interesting screenplays right now (”Rachel Getting Married”, etc.) but they don’t come like Lena anymore.
Not sure what box we get to put these losses in: Eartha, Lena…but thank god for celluloid.
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