Lena Horne Revealed Her 3 Real Friends and the 3 Who Faked Their Friendship in Old Hollywood

Lena Horne's seven decades inside the American entertainment industry as the first Black actress ever signed to a long-term Hollywood studio contract gave her direct observational access to six figures who publicly performed friendship at Hollywood industry events while doing nothing when her career and dignity were on the line, and three who stayed real when standing with her cost them something. Her 1965 memoir Lena and the extensive interviews she granted James Gavin for his 2009 biography Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne finally named which was which. The video traces Horne from her Cotton Club debut at age 16 in 1933, through her 1942 groundbreaking MGM contract signed personally by Louis B. Mayer, through her seven-year McCarthy-era blacklist triggered by her friendship with Paul Robeson, through her 1963 March on Washington participation, through her 1981 Tony-winning Broadway show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, and into her May 2010 death at age 92 in Manhattan. Anchored by James Gavin's 2009 biography and David Hajdu's 1996 biography Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn, the video examines Bing Crosby, Paul Robeson, Louis B. Mayer, Ava Gardner, Arthur Freed, and Billy Strayhorn through the documented public record. What's covered in this video: Bing Crosby's public cordiality with Horne at industry events across the 1950s while maintaining all-white orchestras across his radio programs, film soundtracks, and touring musical acts during the years when Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie were building the greatest Black musical tradition in American history. Paul Robeson's mid-1940s mentorship of Horne, his 1950 Red Channels listing among 151 alleged Communist sympathizers that triggered Horne's own seven-year blacklist, and the friendship Horne refused to publicly disavow across the remaining sixty years of her life until her 2010 death. Louis B. Mayer's 1942 signing of Horne to the first long-term Hollywood studio contract for a Black actress, the contract provision barring her from maid roles that Black newspapers celebrated as a breakthrough, and Mayer's actual eight-year management of her career that produced no leading roles and systematically filmed her musical performances as isolated production numbers cut from film prints shipped to Southern markets. Ava Gardner's early 1940s friendship with Horne that survived every test the mid-century industry had discouraged cross-racial friendships from surviving, her 1951 casting as the mixed-race Julie LaVerne in Show Boat in the role that should have gone to Horne, and Gardner's stated position across her remaining thirty-nine years preserved in her personal papers, in Rene Jordan's Living With Miss G, and in Horne's 1994 interview for That's Entertainment III. Arthur Freed's Freed Unit at MGM that produced Meet Me in St. Louis, Easter Parade, An American in Paris, and Singin' in the Rain, his 1946 casting of Horne as Julie LaVerne in the Till the Clouds Roll By Show Boat medley segment, and his 1950 casting decisions on the 1951 Show Boat that considered Judy Garland first then Dinah Shore second then Ava Gardner third without ever considering Horne. Billy Strayhorn's three-decade creative partnership with Duke Ellington that produced Take the A Train, Lush Life, and Chelsea Bridge, his 1941 friendship with Horne beginning during the Jump for Joy production that Horne named across her memoirs as her only real friend and the only man she ever loved, his 1955 composition You're The One as his public love letter to her, and his May 31, 1967 death at age 51 from esophageal cancer. Mentioned in this video: Lena Horne, Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, Bing Crosby, Paul Robeson, Louis B. Mayer, Arthur Freed, Billy Strayhorn, Judy Garland, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Shore, W.E.B. Du Bois, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bob Hope, George Sidney, James Gavin, David Hajdu, Rene Jordan, Roy Brewer, Artie Shaw, Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne, Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn, Living With Miss G, That's Entertainment III, Lena, Show Boat, Till the Clouds Roll By, Cabin in the Sky, White Christmas, Holiday Inn, Going My Way, Meet Me in St. Louis, Easter Parade, An American in Paris, Singin' in the Rain, Jump for Joy, Take the A Train, Chelsea Bridge, You're The One, Red Channels, Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, House Un-American Activities Committee, Cotton Club, MGM, Twentieth Century Fox, NAACP, March on Washington, Lena Horne Recognition Act, Old Hollywood Golden Age.