Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne

Just finished this amazing book and truly enjoyed it. I had the great pleasure to have met her backstage at Lincoln Center after her performance as part of a JVC Jazz Festival tribute to Billy Strayhorn. She was most gracious to my ex-wife and I and even took the time to pose for several photos with us. A few days later, I sent her a card to sign for us to frame with the photos and she obliged and mailed the card back in record time. We later saw her in concert at Carnegie Hall when she brought the house down with a spectacular performance. James Gavin has done a great job with this book and I wish him and Ms. Horne all the best. Get the book !!!!!!

James Gavin's book is riveting drama. The author takes the middle road in tracing Horne's overwhelming anger. Neither blaming nor defending MGM, relating Horne's stormy career from the Cotton Club to the Broadway and concert stage is a history of the black experience in the entertainment world of the 20th century. The other great success of this book is that Horne's rage and anger somehow never becomes boring or monotonous. Gavin keeps a weather eye on all of the famous people Horne knew, loved or hated (and sometimes both, depending on the time in her career) and provides fascinating sketches of them all.

I have the cherished memory of seeing Lena Horne in her one-woman Broadway show back in 1981, The Lady And Her Music. At 64, she was a phenomenal force of nature perfectly in command onstage, and yet the source of her conviction, according to biographer James Gavin, appears borne out of anger as much as pure talent. In his meticulous account of her long life, full of well-documented archival material, Horne had good reason to be angry as she was deeply conflicted about her racial identity. The lightness of her skin was the source of constant taunting, and so traumatized was she that she separated herself from her darker-skinned relatives. Horne's middle-class childhood in Brooklyn is described in sharp contrast to her unstable, self-conscious adolescence. However, it was her unearthly beauty that forged her escape route, first as a chorus girl in the Cotton Club, then a meteoric rise to full-fledged Hollywood star, and finally as an unparalleled nightclub entertainer. Her WWII-era MGM years prove to be a painful case study in racial discrimination at a time when African- American women were portrayed either as "yes'em" maids or mammy-type servants. Horne was the sole exception until Dorothy Dandridge in the 1950's, a beautiful token figure usually posed against a column wedged into big MGM musicals like Panama Hattie and Ziegfeld Follies. She would sing a song independent of the movie's narrative in order to allow studio honchos to edit her out of the film for theaters in the Deep South. Studio chief Louis B. Mayer liked Horne, but he just wouldn't cast her in a role that would have been ideally suited to her talents, Julie LaVerne, the biracial riverboat singer, in the 1951 remake of Jerome Kern's Show Boat. She saw her dream role given to her close off-screen friend, the more marketable Ava Gardner, whose singing had to be dubbed. Horne also lost the title role to Elia Kazan's Pinky to a white actress (Jeanne Crain) who played a black woman passing for white. Gavin asserts that her growing disenchantment with Hollywood dovetailed with her awakening political consciousness in the 1950's when she was blacklisted primarily for her association with supposed Communist sympathizer Paul Robeson. Horne's second marriage to MGM musical arranger Lennie Hayton, a white Jewish-American, brought enormous pressure to the interracial couple. Her increasing resentment found an outlet in the 1960's when she became active in the civil rights movement, surprisingly favoring the more radical practices of Malcolm X over Martin Luther King Jr.'s more pacifist approach to racism. The downside to her dual focus on career and civil rights was an estrangement from her two children, although she later got closer to her daughter Gail (who was once married to director Sidney Lumet). The author paints an involving portrayal of a complicated woman that dismantles the myths that surround her, and yet, he still celebrates her considerable talents with admirable respect and h

When I ordered this book I had reservations it was going to be another ordinary biography with information I already knew about the lady. How wrong I was! The book has been extremely well researched resulting in a fascinating read. The author, James Gavin, has been honest with his observations and I enjoyed this book very much. Highly recommended!Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne

A great book about a great lady. Although there was nothing disclosed in the book that I didn't already know, it was a thoroughly facinating read and I couldn't put the book down until I had completed it. I did discover that there was an album released named "Lena Horne- Now". I have every record that Lena released except for this one and I would love to have it. I understand that it is an album of protest songs during the civil rights era but I don't think that it's out on CD. We will probably never understand or know what Lena's motivation truly was but whatever it was, it honed an entertainer that could interpret a love song in a way that has not been and will never be matched by any other. The original and only "Look" but "Don't Touch" Lady reigned supreme and lived long enough to laugh at those forces that attempted to stifle her and her talent. One thing I wish had been contained in the book was the comment of the stripper arrested in London while Lena was playing there. She said to the authorities - "I don't know why you are arresting me when Lena Horne playing down the street has more sex in one finger than I have in my entire body". Happy Birthday Lena and God Bless. We owe you a great debt of gratitude. By the way, Gavin,the cover photo doesn't do the great Lady Justice.