Jazz Memories: The Incomparable Lena Horne

Lena Horne--singer, actress, star of a long-running solo show on Broadway, civil rights activist, and a renowned beauty--is undoubtedly one of the more notable American artists of the 20th century. Now in her late eighties, this is a woman whom Duke Ellington memorably described as “an American standard, and the essence of total agreeability.” Unfortunately, this rather dry documentary doesn't fully do her justice. Granted, there are plenty of film clips of Horne in action, including a full performance of her hit “Stormy Weather,” and some interesting biographical notes: plagued by racism throughout her long career, she was scorned when she married white bandleader Lennie Hayton, blacklisted during the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s, and limited to minor singing roles in the mainstream (i.e., non-black) movies in which she appeared; ironically, when the Max Factor cosmetics company created the so-called “Light Egyptian” makeup for the light-skinned Horne (to make her darker and thus more apposite for black films), the product ended up being used by white actresses to secure “mulatto roles" for themselves! But what The Incomparable Lena Horne sorely lacks is any input from the lady herself. Neither Horne nor anyone else is interviewed (it would have been nice, for instance, to hear her take on an incident at a Beverly Hills restaurant where she broke the nose of a drunken idiot hurling racial epithets from the next table). On the extras side, the disc includes (in its 75-minute entirety) The Duke is Tops, a 1938 trifle in which Horne sings aplenty; but even here, the most entertaining scenes feature a couple of smarmy snake oil salesmen peddling their patented “elixir.” A strong optional purchase. [Note: also newly available in the Jazz Memories series is The Legendary Nat "King" Cole.] Aud: P. (S. Graham)