Pod Insights You're Dead to Me Lena Horne (Radio Edit) About this episode Greg Jenner is joined in 20th-century America by Dr Hannah Thuraisingam Robbins and comedian Desiree Burch to learn all about singer and Hollywood actress Lena Horne.
Born into a middle class Black family in New York, a young Lena Horne soon followed in the footsteps of her actress mother and made her début at the famous Cotton Club aged only 16. After making her name as a singer and performer – and following the end of her tumultuous first marriage – Horne transferred to the west coast and bagged a Hollywood contract with MGM. There, she appeared in a number of classic films, including Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky. Over the next several years, she would also perform for the troops in the Second World War, fall in love with and marry a white composer and arranger, undertake an international tour, and become one of the most popular nightclub performers of the post-war era. But the racism of segregation-era America would also shape and limit the career of the woman known as ‘the first Black pin-up girl’, eventually leading her to the civil rights movement and Black activism in the 1960s.
This episode traces Lena’s journey from young dancer to Hollywood star and renowned vocalist, along the way exploring her connections with figures including Billie Holliday and Martin Luther King Jr., and the injustice she spent so much of her career fighting against.
This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.
Hosted by: Greg Jenner
Research by: Rosalyn Sklar
Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner
Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner
Audio Producer: Steve Hankey
Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett
Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse
Executive Editor: Philip Sellars
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:09 Greg Jenner? Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster, and today we are donning our glad rags and finding our spotlight as we learn all about the legendary singer and Hollywood actress Lena Horne. And to help us, we have two very special fellow performers in history corner. They're associate professor in popular music and director of Black Studies at the University of Nottingham. They're an expert on musical theatre and especially race and gender identity in popular culture. You'll remember them from our episode on the history of Broadway. It's Dr Hannah Tureisingem-Robins. Welcome back Hannah.
1:42 Speaker 05 Thanks for having me back.
1:43 Greg Jenner? Delighted to have you back. And in comedy corner, an introduction feels completely redundant for such a stalwart of You're Dead to Me. She's a comedian, actor and writer. You've seen her all over the TV, on Taskmaster, Frankie Boyle's New World Order, QI, Too Hot to Handle. Maybe you've seen her incredible new stand-up show, The Golden Roth. And you'll know her from so many episodes of this very podcast, including recent highlights to Journo Truth and the history of Broadway. Not one episode, what an episode that would be. Yes, we're getting the band back together. It's Desiree Birch. Welcome back Desiree.
2:09 Speaker 05 Thanks so much for having me back Greg. It's so nice to be back and find out what the heck happened before.
2:15 Greg Jenner? That's the alternative name of the show.
2:19 Greg Jenner? Desiree, we have covered several performers before. We have Diane Josephine Baker together, Paul Robeson, P T Barnum to an extent.
2:26 Speaker 05 Yeah, true. Yes, he performed Being a Human just about.
2:30 Greg Jenner? Just about. So if I come to you and I say the name Lena Horne, what comes to mind?
2:36 Speaker 05 So what comes to mind is Glinda the Good Witch from The Wiz. Because I grew up, that was the Black Wizard of Oz that we grew up on in the 80s. And so that's sort of, I think, was my introduction to her and also seeing her perform on The Cosby Show, R I P.
2:54 Speaker 05 Were my, I mean, I'm just saying, but those were my interactions with her and she kind of, I think, in my head occupies a similar sort of like Harry Belafonte status of being a performer and an activist as well. Yeah.
3:08 Greg Jenner? This is good knowledge.
3:09 Speaker 05 Okay.
3:09 Greg Jenner? Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's spot on, I think. Yeah, it's quite the life. I mean, I, I didn't know half of this stuff and I'm, I'm really excited. So we'd better crack on. So what do you know?
3:23 Greg Jenner? This is the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subjects. And I'm guessing there's a lot of people who've heard the name Lena Horne, but maybe don't quite know who she is. Maybe it's the Desiree thing of, of The Wiz. If you're a fan of classic Hollywood movies, maybe you've seen her in Cabin in the Sky or Stormy Weather. Or you watched A Star Turn, as Desiree did, as Glinda, in the Wizard of Oz adaptation, The Wiz. Music lovers might recognise the song Stormy Weather, which is how I know about Lena Horne, or know her incredible voice from her dozens of albums. And of course, if you were a kid or a grown up, you maybe grew up watching Sesame Street and The Muppets and saw Lena Horne there. But what about Lena Horne's life story? How did she become the star of stage and screen? And what colour exactly is light Egyptian?
4:09 Greg Jenner? Let's find out. Right. Professor Hannah, starting at the beginning. When was Lena Horne born and what was her family background? Are we, we're 20th century, right?
4:20 Speaker 06 Yeah, absolutely. So she was born on June the 30th, 1917, to what was a middle-class black family. Her father Edwin was kind of a Renaissance man. He spoke six languages. He owned a restaurant and a hotel. But eventually he got caught up in gambling. Her mother Edna was an actress. However, her parents separated when she was three and she went to live with her paternal grandparents. Lena's grandmother Cora was an amazing character. She was an early feminist. She was a community activist and she took Lena to organising events and meetings alongside her schooling. She was very restrictive about Lena's original education and Lena remembered that as the period of sort of stability and comfort during her childhood, living with her grandparents.
5:03 Greg Jenner? So Desiree, quite a nice start to life, judging by the, you know, 1917 could have been a lot worse.
5:09 Speaker 05 Could have been extraordinarily a lot worse.
5:11 Greg Jenner? Yeah, absolutely. Her father Edwin was out of the picture?
5:15 Speaker 06 Edwin didn't really like working and he discovered gambling.
5:20 Speaker 05 I was gonna say, if you start getting into gambling, you start getting really out of working really quickly because why work if you can just win money?
5:26 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
5:26 Speaker 06 So this is it. Sometimes he was extremely successful and sometimes he was extremely not successful. And he was not closely connected with her grandparents. So when her grandmother died, she was forced to go back to living with her mother and her new stepfather Mike. And she said that she couldn't really relate to this white man that her mother had married and they fell on fairly hard times. Obviously, this was the depression, as you mentioned, and that led to them relocating from a fairly nice house initially to the Bronx and then to Harlem and trying to figure out how to make ends meet with both Edna and Mike losing their jobs in this time.
5:59 Greg Jenner? Let's meet teenage Lena. Tina the Lena? Lena the Lena? I don't know. I haven't worked out what I'm doing with that yet, but let's, let's meet her. What does she do to revive the family finances, Desiree?
6:10 Speaker 05 I am guessing that she has figured out some kind of song and dance situation to kind of help out, like she's performing or doing something in the family business.
6:18 Greg Jenner? No, you're you're spot on, I think. We start our story with not singing yet, dancing?
6:24 Speaker 06 Yeah, absolutely. So she's sixteen years old. Neither her mother or her stepfather have a job, so she secures an audition at Harlem's legendary Cotton Club.
6:34 Greg Jenner? Yes.
6:34 Speaker 06 And it's worth saying that the Cotton Club, although kind of legendary to us now, was a really complicated space. It didn't allow black patrons in. The black musicians and chorus people were not allowed to use the bathrooms. They could only rehearse the final rehearsals in the building. It was quite a tense setup. But at the same time, a number of major artists like Cab Calloway, Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, Adelaide Hall, were all working there. And Duke Ellington was crucial.
7:04 Speaker 05 Make a welcoming space for black people, you don't call it the Cotton.
7:06 Speaker 06 Well, there is that.
7:09 Speaker 05 Guessing it's not a vibe. Like, hey, come on down to the Cotton Club.
7:13 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
7:14 Speaker 05 Was she working solely as a dancer? Or was she singing at this point and dancing as well? She's been there for a while.
7:19 Speaker 06 So she began as a dancer, but she was singing as well. Like, the chorus was multifaceted.
7:24 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
7:24 Speaker 06 And she certainly started to get spots during this time. She stars in her first Broadway musical called Dance With Your Gods. And she would go do that and then come back and perform at the Cotton Club.
7:35 Greg Jenner? So in nineteen thirty five, aged eighteen or so, she does leave the Cotton Club and she's off on tour.
7:41 Speaker 06 She decides the only way to break her contract at the Cotton Club, given the environment, is to run away. So she flees. And she runs off to, I think, Philadelphia and she
7:55 Speaker 05 Not that far.
7:56 Speaker 06 I mean, yeah.
7:57 Speaker 05 And those times, I mean, that was more than just an Amtrak. All right.
8:00 Greg Jenner? Yeah, cool.
8:01 Speaker 06 And she secures an audition with Noble Cecil, who some listeners may remember from his involvement in Shuffle Along and various other Harlem Renaissance activities. He is now running a major orchestra called the Society Orchestra. And he signs her, but she was under considerable pressure because her stepfather, Mike, and her mother travelled with the band.
8:23 Greg Jenner? Right.
8:23 Speaker 06 And she was constantly on edge, expecting that Mike was going to lose his call and cause a problem. And actually, he does yell at Noble Cecil for letting the musicians use the kitchen exit in a segregated hotel and not respecting his players. And eventually, Mike is kicked off the tour.
8:39 Greg Jenner? She manages to escape her parents. Desiree, what is the classic escape your parents move at nineteen?
8:44 Speaker 05 She picks up a Lime bike and just floors it. She's like, this is the only way. They'll never keep up. Mike's in the back running like Tom Cruise and she's like, you'll never catch me.
8:55 Greg Jenner? She does an ET thing. She just cycles away from the government.
9:00 Speaker 05 Just a scooter. Just her in her heels and a big dress like, I'm gonna get out of here.
9:06 Greg Jenner? Doesn't pick up a bike.
9:07 Speaker 05 Okay, fine.
9:07 Greg Jenner? Picks up a fella.
9:08 Speaker 05 Oh, okay. The original bike.
9:14 Greg Jenner? Hannah, who is her beloved hubby?
9:16 Speaker 06 Yeah, in 1937, she runs away to Pittsburgh this time and she marries this guy Louis Jordan Jones, or Louis Jordan Jones, I think it is actually. And he is from a similar middle-class, black background. He's the son of a minister. He's a college graduate. He's an aspiring politician. But their marriage is made challenging by the fact that Lena Horne continues to work.
9:36 Greg Jenner? Right.
9:36 Speaker 06 And he was looking for a different kind of wife. He was going to support his political aspirations rather than make her own money.
9:42 Greg Jenner? She moves to New York and that does go well, or at least that's the plan.
9:46 Speaker 06 She doesn't get work immediately, but once she does, it starts to gain momentum. And she secures an audition via the record producer John Hammond, who's aware of her from Decca, to audition at Cafe Society Downtown. So there were two Cafe Societies, one uptown and one downtown, as a solo artist. And it is the up-and-coming cabaret venue in New York, and it boasts artists like Billie Holliday. Paul Robeson is a regular performer, and that's how they become friends. And it is really the beginning of Lena Horne becoming Lena Horne.
10:21 Greg Jenner? This is a very beautiful, glamorous young woman in her mid twenties or so. Desiree, the obvious question, is showbiz all about image first, technique later?
10:30 Speaker 05 Yes.
10:31 Greg Jenner? Okay.
10:33 Speaker 05 There's an incredible amount of talent, I think, probably in showbiz at that time. She's meeting them all over the place. But clearly, she was already making quite a bit of money on the image factor. So I imagine that that and just sort of a general being comfortable around artists in that world got her a lot further than actually needing to employ talent.
10:57 Greg Jenner? We're now into the 1940s. She's a singer, she's a performer. But in 1942, she did whatever performer with a song in their heart and a dream in their soul does. She headed to Tinseltown.
11:08 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's really interesting. She always said she never wanted to be a film star. She was never interested in Hollywood. She didn't like California. But her agent-
11:16 Speaker 05 She wanted to run away from her parents? And that's as far as you can get in America?
11:25 Speaker 06 I would say that her transition into Hollywood is a reluctant one. And in the end, it's MGM, the producer Roger Edens, who sees Horne and takes her seriously and decides to take her to meet Arthur Freed. Arthur Freed is the head of the division, producing screen musicals. And they decide together, along with Vincent Minnelli, who they bump into, who she already knows, that she should go and audition for LB Mayer, the second M in MGM, himself. And she decides to take her father Edwin, who she's reconnected with at this point. It was a very surprising audition. LB Mayer is immediately taken with her. He can see the appeal. He immediately understands what Roger Edens, who was an
12:05 Speaker 06 associate producer, has recognized. But they are not prepared for her and Edwin to come in and negotiate what she is and isn't going to do. So with his help, she says that they're not going to accept any old part. And he says that he could just hire Lena Horne a maid with his own money. So she's not going to be playing servants on screen. They also negotiate that she won't play any illiterate or uneducated parts, and she won't play any jungle or Tarzan stereotypes.
12:37 Speaker 05 Thank God.
12:38 Greg Jenner? And she gets an extraordinary contract. For a first time debutante, a seven year gig.
12:43 Speaker 06 Wow. So she'd done a couple of independent black films at the end of the thirties, but you're basically, those had not been widely distributed. They were not prominent movies. She had the appeal. I think that's the thing we can say. She had the appeal, but also they saw an opportunity to represent a different kind of music within some of these film musicals that are made. She gets in the end a seven year film contract, which, and she was the first black actor of any gender to get such a major deal.
13:12 Speaker 05 This was that one year they were really doing D E I at M G M and they just really knocked it out of the park and nobody else ever got that deal ever.
13:20 Speaker 06 Nineteen forty two to nineteen forty three.
13:23 Greg Jenner? The golden year.
13:25 Speaker 05 Oh, my goodness.
13:26 Greg Jenner? So Lena Horne's debut, M G M debut, is a film called Panama Hattie.
13:31 Speaker 06 Yeah.
13:31 Greg Jenner? And she's playing herself.
13:34 Speaker 06 Panama Hattie is an adaptation of a stage musical by Cole Porter.
13:37 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
13:37 Speaker 06 And I think it's a really interesting insight into what M G M attempted to do with her. They deliberately immediately start to lean on the idea of her being slightly ethnically ambiguous. But I think it's also really important to say that this is also a time where black actors were sometimes listed as props and not as cast people in the paperwork at the studios. So the complexity of the ways in which they are conceptualizing race cannot be overstated.
14:06 Speaker 05 Can you give me an example of how they were listed as props?
14:10 Speaker 06 So they would produce these documents outlining the contents of the films. This would include the list of scenes, the number of songs, who the cast were, and then they would have a prop list where they would have table, kettle, six chairs. And in one, and Louis Armstrong.
14:26 Speaker 05 Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my.
14:28 Speaker 06 Like, it was, it, it's a bleak fact, but it is a really important nuance to understanding what it might have been like to be making a film for her at that time.
14:36 Greg Jenner? Her films that sort of have stood the test of time, I suppose, would be Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky. Those are the kind of classic early movies that, you know, you can still watch now, I guess. Those are all black casts or predominantly black cast. These are films with great stars in all the main roles. So she's part of a black ensemble.
14:53 Speaker 06 Yeah, and if you look at her filmography, really, those two films, Cabin in the Sky, which is an adaptation of a hit stage show, and Stormy Weather, which was an original film made by Fox, are really the highlights of her film career in the 40s. And yeah, as you say, they are all black cast, so it's important to say that everybody behind the camera was white. And what happened there was they got the great and good of black performance into these films and created these amazing celebrations.
15:19 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
15:20 Speaker 06 In those films, they are the only examples where Lena Horne has dialogue, where she gets to interact with other people, and she actually has character arcs. After that, she basically loses the opportunity to have a meaningful interaction with the plot of any musical film.
15:36 Greg Jenner? And you said, when we did our preparatory Zoom call, you said something quite shocking. She would sometimes not be allowed to stand too close to fellow actors so they could physically cut her out of movies.
15:45 Speaker 06 Yes, that's an amazing.
15:47 Greg Jenner? Desiree, your eyes went very wide there.
15:50 Speaker 05 Wow.
15:50 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
15:51 Speaker 05 Yeah, this is like before CGI. They're just literally like, we will just splice the film just in case.
15:56 Greg Jenner? They literally just had a sort of frame around her. The other thing I suppose we have to talk about in terms of racism or at least, you know, prejudice on set would be her hair and makeup, Desiree. Do you know what?
16:06 Speaker 05 I'm like, I know her hair and makeup was bad because it's not good now, so I can only imagine.
16:11 Greg Jenner? We mentioned it very early on. You may recall Light Egyptian.
16:15 Speaker 05 Oh, my goodness.
16:17 Greg Jenner? Do you know what that might refer to?
16:18 Speaker 05 Light Egyptian, I mean, Light Egyptian, I imagine that that was the makeup color, skin tone that they were going for and not like the name of the perm they were using on the hair, but either way.
16:29 Greg Jenner? Hannah, what is Light Egyptian? And how was her hair and makeup, in some ways othering of her, in other ways sort of glamorizing?
16:36 Speaker 06 In the 40s, the white press couldn't decide what her skin tone was, but one of the ways in which she was racialized is that they always refer to her skin color. But in headlines, she was referred to as sepia, as copper, as chocolate. Like, these are not the same shades of foundation, to put it a horrible way. And I think there's a really important point about how she was lit and how she was represented. So yeah, you're right. The Max Factor, Max Space Factor. Was working for MGM and was used to making bespoke foundation shades. So he made one called Platinum for Jean Harlow. Right. Um, and he makes Light Egyptian for Lena Horne. But we also have the reality that the hairdressers' union banned their members from touching her head.
17:20 Speaker 06 Not only is she subject to this appalling condition, but she can't have her hair and makeup done in the same room as the white actors who are being treated by union members. So some of the stories about her being isolated, about her being cold and aloof from other performers, and particularly from other black performers, was specifically to do with the way in which the hairdresser union treated her.
17:40 Speaker 05 I may need you to repeat half of that because I went for a tailspin the second you said that the hairdresser was not allowed to touch her head. Is this like a Jim Crow thing? Like no water fountains, no hair, you can't touch her head because it'll bite your fingers off?
17:52 Greg Jenner? Hannah, when we talk about the Jim Crow laws, these are segregation laws, keeping white and black people apart in public spaces?
17:59 Speaker 06 Yeah, the Jim Crow laws were about protecting, quote unquote, white interests. They were about restricting interracial marriage. They were about restricting employment rights post the abolition of slavery, and they existed well into the 20th century.
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20:04 Greg Jenner? Our unlucky in love, Miss Horn, does get married again. So I've got, I've got good news there. And hubby number two, is this someone Lena can lean on? Is he going to be a kind of loyal, loving hubby who lets her be the star?
20:17 Speaker 06 Certainly at the beginning, yes.
20:18 Greg Jenner? Okay.
20:19 Speaker 06 He is. Lena Horn marries the MGM arranger and conductor Lenny Hayton. Initially, they didn't get on. She didn't trust white men, in her words, and he didn't trust singers. But eventually they get acquainted.
20:33 Greg Jenner? That's the best way that sentence could have ended. Cause I was worried.
20:36 Speaker 06 Yeah. Yeah, could have framed that better, never mind.
20:40 Speaker 06 They build this relationship together and eventually in 1947, they get married in Paris. But their partnership is extremely controversial in public and private because interracial marriage is still illegal in California.
20:53 Greg Jenner? So they're married in Paris simply because it's illegal in the place they live and work?
20:57 Speaker 06 So they marry interracial marriage is made legal in California the year later, a year later in 1948.
21:03 Greg Jenner? Okay.
21:03 Speaker 06 This comes at a time where Lena's. Film career is starting to stall. She's refusing to play these anti-black stereotypes and they're trying to push her to do it. She and that leads her to be suspended from MGM's payroll for a period in 1945 because she won't take the part she's being given. She's also got these associations with radical black groups. She's pouring her income into union organising and she's known to be a friend of Paul Robeson. So they have a context in which the studio is starting to see her as a problem and then she goes and marries Lenny.
21:33 Speaker 05 I mean, if she's hanging out with Paul Robeson and doing all the organising, is she about to get the big C stamped all over her because this is that time, right?
21:41 Greg Jenner? Absolutely right. I mean, I suppose Senator Joe McCarthy.
21:44 Speaker 05 Not cancer kits.
21:45 Greg Jenner? No, no, I mean, we're talking here about the communist witch hunt in Hollywood.
21:48 Speaker 05 Okay, okay.
21:49 Greg Jenner? That is what brings down Paul Robeson. To a certain extent, she dodges it by going abroad, right? Is that is that fair? Or is she forced abroad? I mean, her and Lenny, I'm going to call them Leeny, that's their couple name. Lena and Lena and Lenny, Leeny. They're overseas, right? From 50 to 52?
22:05 Speaker 06 Yeah. So Lena Horne is named in red channels as a communist and that's basically the end of her time at MGM for a number of years. She goes to Europe, as you say. Ultimately, I think the civil rights movement is a turning point in her life. And she meets Martin Luther King early on in that process, who asked her to sing at a rally. And through that, she becomes involved in fundraising for him, fundraising for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She works with Eleanor Roosevelt on anti-lynching legislation. She attends the march on Washington with Josephine Baker. There's a beautiful photo of them standing in front of the monument.
22:41 Greg Jenner? Oh, nice.
22:42 Speaker 06 And this is kind of the beginning of her being very prominently vocal about, you know, political activism. In the 1970s, she speaks out for black women radicals like Angela Davis when she's incarcerated.
22:53 Greg Jenner? Fantastic.
22:53 Speaker 06 But I think it's also worth saying that through the 40s, she had been supporting radical politicians, helping with union fundraisers and thinking about the ways in which like black political organising could function. And then in civil rights, she came to understand that the way she'd been used as a figurehead or an aspirational symbol of blackness was actually really negatively loaded and started to talk publicly. About that and kind of relearn her black radical consciousness, I guess.
23:21 Greg Jenner? The the sort of stormy weather that she'd sung about in in forty three. Unfortunately, stormy weather came for her in nineteen seventy seventy one. She had a sort of a really tragic eighteen months or so, which she she lost a lot of people she loved.
23:33 Speaker 06 Yeah, so by this point, she and Lenny have separated because she was just less interested in her music career and more involved in political activism.
23:42 Speaker 05 I have no idea what Lenny did or what he was like. He was just a white man she didn't trust, but then she did enough to marry him. He gave her a career in Europe and then he dipped. He was just like, I'm a I'm a plot device, bye.
23:56 Speaker 06 Well, sometimes it's nice that it goes that way.
24:00 Greg Jenner? Lenny McGuffin.
24:03 Speaker 06 I mean.
24:04 Greg Jenner? And Lenny passed away.
24:05 Speaker 06 So they separate and then her father and her son both pass away within six months of each other.
24:11 Greg Jenner? Tell us about her music career in the eighties.
24:14 Speaker 06 Hmm. So the appearance on the Wiz is really symbolic.
24:19 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
24:19 Speaker 06 Because she has transitioned into being essentially an industry veteran and she gets to basically sing a song that Diana Ross has just performed and we have a kind of classic version. And then we have this blues gospel reworking of it specifically for her and that throws out what she sounded like at MGM and completely reforms her sound. As a result, she starts working live again and she has a one woman show called The Lady and Her Music, which opens in nineteen eighty one and runs on Broadway for a year. She has some time in Las Vegas as well. And from that, she wins a Special Tony Award. That is a speech worth watching if anyone has five minutes.
24:58 Speaker 06 And she wins two Grammys. And in this moment, she really moves from interpreting music by other people, kind of being told where to stand and what to sing, to becoming Lena Horne, truly herself on stage, I think.
25:10 Greg Jenner? Amazing. I'm getting a sense here that she's reached icon status, like
25:14 Speaker 06 Yeah.
25:15 Greg Jenner? important to the community, but important to culture institutions. They're all going, this person deserves awards.
25:19 Speaker 05 When you see her in the Wiz, there is no question that she has gotten icon status because she just appears like ethereally and is like, believe in yourself, I'm out.
25:29 Greg Jenner? Mic drop.
25:30 Speaker 05 Yes.
25:32 Greg Jenner? She lived until 92, so she was born in 1917. She lived to, well, presumably to vote for Barack Obama, right?
25:39 Speaker 05 Yeah, because I'm like, I remembered her dying like in two, yeah, in a whole different millennia.
25:44 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
25:45 Speaker 05 Yeah.
25:45 Greg Jenner? So she lived to see a black president and still be an icon and receive all of her flowers and get all her awards.
25:50 Speaker 05 Yeah.
25:50 Greg Jenner? It's the real end of the story we wanted, right? So she died in 2010, aged 92. Genuinely extraordinary life, Lena Horne. And it's not a story I knew at all, other than the song Stormy Weather. That's all I knew as a reference point. And you had your own reference point, so.
26:04 Speaker 05 Yeah, from encountering that. And also, like, when you talked about her at the beginning, like, obviously, I lived long enough to see her in her later years and her past ways. So I knew that, like, things were relatively happy. But when you talked about her beginning being sort of like, oh, things were actually pretty well set up in black middle class. That usually goes one of two ways. Like, usually it's sort of like stable or it's like a Miles Davis version where it's like, everything just sort of careens into insanity.
26:28 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
26:28 Speaker 05 I was waiting to see if there was ever any of that element. But it seemed like she was just trying to be resilient against like being buffeted by society and all of these various odds. Like being expelled from Hollywood as a communist and going to Europe and coming back from that and having a whole renewed phase of your career. Where everyone's like, oh, actually, here's all of your flowers and a Broadway show. And, you know, all of this work is really incredible and rarely happens.
26:57 Greg Jenner? Absolutely. The nuance window.
27:04 Greg Jenner? Well, it's time now for the nuance window. This is where Desiree and I stand quietly in the chorus line for two minutes, doing some jazz hands, but, you know, no singing. While Professor Hannah takes centre stage to tell us something we need to know about Lena Horne. So my stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Professor Hannah.
27:20 Speaker 06 So Lena Horne relentlessly talks about the loneliness and isolation that she felt at MGM and that it made her seem like she didn't want to be in community with other black performers. She came to believe that she was chosen by movie executives so that they could capitalize on her perceived racial ambiguity. And that made her work and the profile of her success understandably contentious for a really long time. And yet, the peaks of her career, and I would say her story more generally, were always in community with other black artists. Meanwhile, she balanced pouring her fortune into grassroots movements. She got involved in national organising and she was essential in helping up and coming black performers make choices about their contracts, their working conditions, based on her experience.
28:03 Speaker 06 Lena Horne became a star because she was crowded by support and whatever storm she was weathering. Unlike many others, she was willing to admit her mistakes and to grow intellectually in public. Her story shows the appeal of having had a figurehead, but also the limitations of having one person embody such a diverse community of people. And Horne really tried to pay that investment back to others, but while making the most of the platform she was given. I would say her custodianship and her commercial impact paved the way for public acceptance of a lot of black artists, including the megastardom of Diana Ross, who took over from Horne as the world's most photographed black woman.
28:47 Speaker 06 Her survival and endurance was remarkable, but it was also sometimes messy. She reminds us to embrace the complex stories behind the successes and that, however exceptional and isolated people tried to make her, she relentlessly returned to her people, her values and to paying her luck forward.
29:07 Greg Jenner? Amazing. Thank you so much. Desiree, any final thoughts?
29:12 Speaker 05 That's really incredible. What an amazing woman. I mean, she never called me and helped me out. That's why I'm like.
29:20 Greg Jenner? Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Desiree. Thank you so much, Hannah. Listener, if you want more musical icons with Desiree, we've obviously got episodes on Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson, the Broadway musicals episode with Dr Hannah and Desiree. I think we also talked today about all sorts of other things intersecting, the Harlem Renaissance episode, you can go back to that too. For more film actors, we've got the history of Bollywood episode and the Sarah Bernhardt episode. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at bbc.com. Or wherever you get your podcasts. And I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guest. In history corner, we had the incredible Dr Hannah Toreisingham Robbins from the University of Nottingham. Thank you Hannah.
30:00 Speaker 06 Thank you.
30:01 Greg Jenner? And in comedy corner, we had our leading lady, Desiree Birch. And to you lovely listener, join me next time as we launch our comeback tour for another forgotten historical star. But for now, I'm off to go and get my dad to renegotiate my BBC contract. Bye.
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Previous Philippe, Duc d’Orléans (Radio Edit) Next Geoffrey Chaucer (Radio Edit) Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated