Amazon.com: In Person: Lena Horne: Lena as Told to Helen Arstein and Carlton Moss Horne: Books

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3.0 out of 5 stars Dipping a Toe in Racial Waters, October 14, 2008

By	Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

Lena Horne wrote many memoirs, and this was one of the earlier ones. It is a fascinating document of the times, "as told to Helen Arstein and Carlton Moss." About Arstein little is known, but Carlton Moss was one of the few African American screenwriters and directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Like Lena Horne he became fed up with the limited options for black talent in the movies, and eventually left the system. Lena Horne also walked out on a studio contract (with MGM) that relegated her to performing as a nightclub singer in dramatic or comic scenes in which white people, the main stars, would visit a club and see Lena Horne singing.

One feels also that Horne's social passions grew and grew as the 40s wore on, and it became politically dangerous for her to stay in the system. She would have been blacklisted methinks, so she cut her losses. "In Person" walks a thin line; on the one hand, it's Lena explaining to her black audiences why she quit MGM, but on the other hand she doesn't want to offend individual white people. And on top of that she has to explain to both groups why she has just entered into what they called then a "mixed marriage" by aligning herself with the white musician Lennie Hayton. She explains that it was a marriage not even legal in the state of California at the time!

The book shows her growth as a human being, traumatized by racial and class divisions that paralyzed her for decades. She was from a middle class black background but financial reverses saw her look for the only work she could, in clubs and on the stage (her picture of the Cotton Club is superb), but she felt guilty and sinful for doing so because it was a profession not much removed from the streets. Later she grew pride in her work. In a parallel development, she was afraid and resentful of all whites until the activist and singer Paul Robeson taught her that not all whites are evil. At that point she was working at the revolutionary NY club "Caf� Society Downtown" for impresario Barney Josephson, who sat blacks and whites together which was a radical innovation. She certainly "outs" Billy Strayhorn here as a "confirmed bachelor" and even in 1950 she must have known what that conveyed. I thought she was supposed to be so protective of her best friend? I wonder what Lena Horne is really like; she's so tentative in this book that one feels she's still hiding something, but I guess only time will tell.