The Black Calhouns

by Gail Lumet Buckley

  The Harvard football team included Robert F. Kennedy, who was in Charlottesville for the game.

  Many of the party line columns, of course, make Lena sound something like the characters Boris and Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle—calling herself “a cultural worker,” for example. Some columns contained a smidgen of truth. In September 1947 she wrote about a backstage visit (probably at the Capitol Theatre, where she was having a spectacularly successful run) from Howard Fast:

  Howard Fast, one of America’s greatest people’s writers … honored me with a visit … I have unbounded respect for Howard, not only for his writings which have moved me deeply, but because he represents a good healthy social point of view and is fearless in expressing it … I think it’s an indictment of our own democracy when a great artist like Howard Fast is persecuted because of his viewpoint. Let me say here and now that I’m for the guy all the way. For I love a fighter.

  Lena never called anyone a “guy” unless it was plural and referred to musicians.

  Howard Fast was a special figure in the real left-wing world. He was a proud and open Communist, and had been since 1943. New York-born Fast, three years older than Lena and one of America’s most celebrated authors, was also, according to Phillip Deery’s Red Apple: Communism and McCarthyism in Cold War New York, “the single most important literary figure in the Communist Party of the United States of America.” Fast published the first of his sixty-five novels in 1933 at the age of eighteen. His most famous and celebrated novel thus far was Citizen Tom Paine, published in 1943—the year that he, like many others during the siege of Stalingrad, joined the Communist Party. Citizen Tom Paine sold more than a million copies. From 1944 to 1946 it was distributed to U.S. servicemen abroad as well as to citizens of liberated countries by the Office of War Information, and it was on the “approved list” for all New York City public schools. By 1947 Fast’s books were out of schools and out of public and government libraries—and the American Legion was burning copies of Citizen Tom Paine. By 1950 Fast would be in prison for refusing to disclose to HUAC the names of contributors to a fund for a home for orphans of American veterans of the Spanish Civil War (Eleanor Roosevelt was a contributor). The Spanish Civil War was more than a “red flag” to blacklisters, many of whom were Catholic. Because a small group of Abraham Lincoln Brigade vets had served in the Office of Strategic Services in World War II as experts in guerrilla and urban warfare, some blacklisters had the notion that these survivors represented the vanguard of a future armed revolution. Fast finished his next novel, Spartacus, in prison but could find no publisher when he was released. In 1951 he decided to self-publish:

  I had no money with which to publish the book, but I had friends and I knew that over ten million people in America had read my books. I wrote to these friends. I asked them to buy in advance, sight unseen, a novel called Spartacus, which I would publish if and when enough of them sent me five dollars for a subscription to it. It was a strange offer on my part, and I got a strange response.

  Within three months, forty-eight thousand copies were sold across America, although the book was never reviewed by mainstream critics or papers. Fast and his wife started Blue Heron Press on their Spartacus proceeds and republished W. E. B. Du Bois’ out-of-print The Souls of Black Folk.

  In November 1947 Lena made her first trip abroad and, in the People’s Voice, went after HUAC. Again, Lena did not write this herself:

  Aboard the S.S. Mauretania en route to England … I’m troubled about the state of freedom back there in the country I’ve just left. I’m troubled about the current attack on progressives in the movie industry that has been launched by the House Un-American Activities Committee … I am concerned about this Washington sideshow because it represents an invasion of cultural freedom in my country. As a cultural worker [italics mine], I am directly affected. As the national audience of the movies, the great mass of the American people are also affected …

  Despite the terrible shortages of the postwar austerity program, Lena found ready-made fans and had a wildly successful run when she made her first trip to the British Isles in 1947. Although Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather were never shown to white American troops, they had been shown throughout the British fleet. There was a whole coterie of British jazz lovers who knew Lena’s early records. There was all the excitement of a royal wedding. And Lena fell in love with British fans—some of whom (actor James Mason’s mother, for one) brought her rationed gifts like eggs and chocolates. She loved touring the British Isles almost as much as she hated touring at home in America, where she never knew when Jim Crow would swoop in to spoil the trip.

  Lena did not have to wait to get home to get a sense of political turmoil. She got it in mid-ocean, sailing from Plymouth to New York on the SS America. She received a letter on board on December 19, 1947, from a member of the crew:

  Miss Lena Horne, Stateroom U-48, S.S. America

  Dear Miss Horne, We regretfully inform you that permission to attend our meeting has been refused you on the part of Mr. Alexanderson, Executive officer, and by Captain Anderson, Master of this vessel. We, the crew members are not surprised at this attitude being fully aware of the consistent anti-union attitude constantly and consistently manifested on the part of the authorities on board this ship, representing, as we know, the U.S. Lines policy of hostility toward us, members of the National Maritime Union. Nor is the fact that you are a member of a minority irrelevant to the case. We know that the crew members will be greatly disappointed and will certainly protest this action on the part of the Master in the vigorous manner peculiar to us seamen. For your information, we had also invited the Hon. Rhys J. Davies, Member of Parliament, to attend. He, too, accepted. Permission has also been denied him. Mr. Davies occupies Cabin S-5.

  Most regretfully yours,

  For the crew, Scipio Collins, Ship’s Chairman

  Lena politely refused to perform at the captain’s gala.

  The end of 1947 had been momentous in her life. Far more important than finding a whole new audience when she toured the British Isles was marrying Lennie in Paris. They sailed home from Europe with the happy, if criminal, secret of their French marriage. They called ship-to-shore and told me to keep the secret—which I did. They got back in time for my tenth birthday, four days before Christmas, and I remember finding Lennie the same—not like a bridegroom at all. From the very beginning, he was a wonderful stepfather: loving, kind, supportive, and funny. He could always make me laugh at myself. Any children of divorce who have this sort of stepfather know how special and important he is—especially for adolescent girls. I considered him my father. There was also good news from California. Lena and Lennie were no longer in fear of imminent arrest—the California Supreme Court had found the antimiscegenation law unconstitutional. Happily New York, which became their Eastern base camp, as Lena toured the world of international nightclubs and music halls, had no such laws.

  January 1948 saw the beginning of the Henry Wallace campaign for the presidency on the Progressive Party ticket. At Robeson’s urging, Lena actively campaigned for Wallace—until August, when Truman sent the first Civil Rights Message to Congress and announced the desegregation of the military. Lena switched her endorsement from Wallace to Truman—and sang at Truman’s inauguration. The black vote definitely helped Truman defeat Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats on the right and Henry Wallace and the Progressives on the left. The Dixiecrats, Southern Democrats pledging “segregation forever,” had formed their own party when Truman desegregated the military. Truman actually had a history of good relations with black voters as part of the Democratic machine of Kansas City, Missouri, where he had a large black constituency. The Truman inauguration, thanks to his show of friendship with blacks, was the most integrated since James A. Garfield’s. Garfield, an abolitionist and Union war hero, ran on a pro-Reconstruction platform and won the presidency in 1880 without a single Southern state—but with the black vote. Garfield was assassinated in 1881.
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br />   The NAACP was clearly on the wrong track in 1948 when the board of directors refused to renew the contract of W. E. B. Du Bois, who, the year before, had organized and prepared the 155-page petition An Appeal to the World. The subtitle said it all: A Statement of Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress. Du Bois had founded and created the NAACP, but now he was kicked out because he “supported certain ideologies that were alien to the Association.” Too bad the NAACP went the way of New York University, the first privately endowed school to take disciplinary action against individuals whose political opinions did not comply with HUAC—and not the way of Harvard, where Chancellor James B. Conant upheld the right of dissent and criticized “governmental agencies” that inquired into educational institutions (although he did not approve of individuals who invoked the Fifth Amendment while testifying).

  Despite her political activities, for which she had not yet been “named,” 1948, like 1943, was a career breakthrough year for Lena. All through the 1940s she made $10,000 a week in nightclubs. Now she was paid $60,000 a week by New York’s Copacabana on East Sixtieth Street, where she broke every house record. After the lights went down, I was sometimes allowed to peek at the show. I watched my mother and the audience. I remember crowds—there seemed to be standing room only even in the club. Except for a trio of musicians—bass, piano, and drums—and my mother’s voice, there was absolute hushed silence (no waiter service). The audience seemed rapt—the women as well as the men. And the women were smiling. I know I was smiling because I had never seen anyone look so beautiful. She was wearing a white dress—which meant, by superstition, that it was the first show, opening night. The Copa loved Lena and she loved the Copa. That is, she loved Jack Entratter, the man who ran the nightclub. A large, hulking man (a Jewish Tony Soprano) with bad feet, Entratter wore shoes that looked like leather boxes. He was very protective of Lena. She called him “Big Creep” and he called her “Little Creep.” In her previous engagement at the Copa, in 1945, Lena had discovered that Negro friends and ordinary Negro members of the audience had their reservations refused. This time an integrated audience was written into her contract.

  After the Copacabana group moved to the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas a year or two later, Lena performed there every year for a decade, and Jack Entratter’s two daughters became my best Vegas friends. Hollywood choreographer Robert Sidney wrote about Lena in Vegas in a memoir, With Malice Towards Some:

  Jack Entratta [sic], the entertainment director at the Sands Hotel, chose Lena above everyone else as his favorite performer. That was a big order because the Rat Pack—Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin and company—all played there. But in Jack’s book Lena was number one …

  Lena broke all social tradition at the Sands. She was probably the first black performer ever permitted to actually stay, sleep and live at the same hotel where she worked … One day at the Sands, this bigoted woman came flying into the office and wanted to see the manager. Jack Entratta happened to be there. He said, “What’s the problem madam?” And she said, “There’s a black person in the swimming pool.” The black person was Lena’s daughter Gail. Jack said “And?” She said, “I want her out of that pool or I check out.” Jack said, “Ma’am, may I carry your bags now?”

  The Sands clearly decided that integrating the pool was a small price to pay for attracting the highest rollers, breaking attendance records, and giving no trouble to the management.

  The story of the Sands swimming pool was something of a Vegas legend—sometimes I was the swimmer and sometimes it was my brother, Teddy. I think Entratter chose Lena as his favorite because by Vegas standards, unlike the Rat Pack, which wanted to make every night a stag party, Lena and Lennie were practically Victorian—no wild drinking, no brawling, no trashed rooms or trashed chorus girls, no heavy gambling, and no entourage of badly behaved hangers-on. After all, despite no clocks and despite the curtains drawn against the day, the Sands was a spit-and-polish high-end resort. Vegas standards, however, did permit every gay male dancer on the Strip to come between shows to offer homage to Lena. Gay men were a very small Vegas subculture, as necessary and as familiar as showgirls—and they were always nice to me. Our family favorite was Jimmy Barron, an agelessly handsome young blond man from an old Virginia family who, to that family’s chagrin, first skated with Sonja Henie, then, worse, after an injury became a Vegas chorus boy. One of the clubs—not the Sands—had a famously beautiful showgirl who was really a boy. I met her with my mother and Jimmy Barron, having no idea until many years later that she was anything other than she appeared. She was sitting by herself in the empty chorus dressing room, staring into the mirror. My mother said to me, in a rather loud voice, “Isn’t she beautiful.” It was not a question; it was a statement of fact. Everything about the person we were visiting was dazzlingly white, from her white, white skin to her platinum hair to the white ostrich plumes of her costume. I have never forgotten her face. She was exquisite, almost too delicately beautiful to be real—an angel crossed with Marilyn Monroe. But I had never seen anyone look so sad. She never smiled—even as my mother showered her with compliments.

  Robert Sidney also wrote something about Lena that I have heard so many times—how the movies never “got her”:

  The magic of Lena had to be seen. It was never captured on a recording or on film. When you were in the audience watching her, your emotions were raised to the highest level you had ever known. This woman was magic.

  I certainly remember sensing some of the magic sitting in the Empire Room of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, and getting goose bumps on first hearing my mother sing Rube Bloom and Johnny Mercer’s “Day In, Day Out” or Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top”—both unique renditions with Lennie’s brilliant arrangements. I will never forget composer Saul Chaplin, father of my good friend Judy (the future Mrs. Hal Prince), solemnly telling us both, as we watched Lena perform at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, that we were watching “the greatest nightclub act in the world.” Lena loved San Francisco because it was not at all like Hollywood. And she loved the Fairmont’s owners, the charming and civilized Swig family. The other famous San Francisco hotel across from the Fairmont, the Mark Hopkins, did not admit Negroes, even as entertainers.

  As reigning queen of the nightclubs, through sheer talent and professionalism, Lena had made the best of a bad situation. “I hate show business!” she would scream in her dressing room to warm up her vocal cords. She did not pad her act with chatter. She sang. She really hated nightclubs, considering them unsanitary and unsavory. Her dresser and best friend, Irene Lane, a motherly white-haired figure who had been a Broadway dresser, draped every corner of the dressing room with clean white sheets. Her nightclub life was about delegating. She made her musical preferences known through Lennie—and all others through her manager, Ralph Harris, a former song-plugger friend of Lennie’s. Ralph, a handsome tennis-playing ladies’ man who looked a bit like Burt Lancaster, protected Lena from the most unpleasant aspects of life on the road. All of my friends had crushes on Ralph. I did not have a crush on him, because he was like another wonderful stepfather. Later, I would talk to him about boys, which I could not do with Mother and Lennie.

  Lena was a complete professional and expected the same from everyone she worked with. She was never late for a rehearsal or a performance. She was courteous to everyone. She never berated an underling—that was a job for Lennie or Ralph. Unlike the pals in the Rat Pack, she never drank before or during a show. She would plead the Fifth on drinking after the show—but could not have more than two drinks because alcohol interacted badly with the diet pills (Dexedrine or Benzedrine) she had been hooked on since 1943 at MGM. She usually went to bed at three or four in the morning, after a light supper of something like scrambled eggs. She and Lennie had separate bedrooms. They watched TV together in her room. She usually had breakfast aro
und three in the afternoon—something like a steak or beef stew. She never ever smoked. She also, all her life, ate lots of dark chocolate, which may have been one of the secrets of her basic good health. Stamina was important—she worked hard. Before TV killed nightclubs, this was a highly remunerative line of work.

  By now aged eleven, I was enrolled in one of Manhattan’s most progressive schools, an integrated school on the edge of Harlem at 110th Street and Fifth Avenue, where I learned no math or English grammar and never had homework. I went to live as a paying guest with what was surely one of the most progressive families on Morningside Drive. My hosts, the Reverend and Mrs. Richard Morford, known and loved as Dick and Aileen, were heroes on the left—not that I knew that at the time. What I did know about the Morfords, who had two daughters—Linda (a bit younger than I) and Susan (a Radcliffe freshman)—was that they seemed to have a wonderful marriage. They were the happiest people I had ever met. I had never seen two people more cheerfully devoted. Whenever they saw each other their faces lit up in the biggest smiles. (Mother and Lennie laughed a lot—they were both fun and funny. But she often complained, mostly about her love-hate relationship with her career. And he, Camel cigarette in one hand and drink in the other, was usually half tuned out, listening to music on the record player.) Aileen was an administrator at my progressive school. Today I would say that she looked like a twentieth-century American nun. Busy and energetic, with a trim figure in a well-cut suit and sensible shoes, Aileen did not bother with makeup. She had the brightest blue eyes, prematurely white hair, and naturally pink cheeks. (Aileen’s daughter Susan had salt-and-pepper hair at seventeen.) Like many white Protestant clergymen, Dick, a Presbyterian, was big, shaggy, and amiable. Unbeknownst to me, he had just been released from prison for refusing to give up the membership list of the National Council on American-Soviet Friendship, of which he was director from 1946 to 1980. The government took his passport away.