Customer Reviews

Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne

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A great book about a great lady. Although there was nothing disclosed in the book that I didn't already know, it was a thoroughly facinating read and I couldn't put the book down until I had completed it. I did discover that there was an album released named "Lena Horne- Now". I have every record that Lena released except for this one and I would love to have it. I understand that it is an album of protest songs during the civil rights era but I don't think that it's out on CD. We will probably never understand or know what Lena's motivation truly was but whatever it was, it honed an entertainer that could interpret a love song in a way that has not been and will never be matched by any other. The original and only "Look" but "Don't Touch" Lady reigned supreme and lived long enough to laugh at those forces that attempted to stifle her and her talent. One thing I wish had been contained in the book was the comment of the stripper arrested in London while Lena was playing there. She said to the authorities - "I don't know why you are arresting me when Lena Horne playing down the street has more sex in one finger than I have in my entire body". Happy Birthday Lena and God Bless. We owe you a great debt of gratitude. By the way, Gavin,the cover photo doesn't do the great Lady Justice.

I have the cherished memory of seeing Lena Horne in her one-woman Broadway show back in 1981, The Lady And Her Music. At 64, she was a phenomenal force of nature perfectly in command onstage, and yet the source of her conviction, according to biographer James Gavin, appears borne out of anger as much as pure talent. In his meticulous account of her long life, full of well-documented archival material, Horne had good reason to be angry as she was deeply conflicted about her racial identity. The lightness of her skin was the source of constant taunting, and so traumatized was she that she separated herself from her darker-skinned relatives. Horne's middle-class childhood in Brooklyn is described in sharp contrast to her unstable, self-conscious adolescence. However, it was her unearthly beauty that forged her escape route, first as a chorus girl in the Cotton Club, then a meteoric rise to full-fledged Hollywood star, and finally as an unparalleled nightclub entertainer.

Her WWII-era MGM years prove to be a painful case study in racial discrimination at a time when African- American women were portrayed either as "yes'em" maids or mammy-type servants. Horne was the sole exception until Dorothy Dandridge in the 1950's, a beautiful token figure usually posed against a column wedged into big MGM musicals like Panama Hattie and Ziegfeld Follies. She would sing a song independent of the movie's narrative in order to allow studio honchos to edit her out of the film for theaters in the Deep South. Studio chief Louis B. Mayer liked Horne, but he just wouldn't cast her in a role that would have been ideally suited to her talents, Julie LaVerne, the biracial riverboat singer, in the 1951 remake of Jerome Kern's Show Boat. She saw her dream role given to her close off-screen friend, the more marketable Ava Gardner, whose singing had to be dubbed. Horne also lost the title role to Elia Kazan's Pinky to a white actress (Jeanne Crain) who played a black woman passing for white. Gavin asserts that her growing disenchantment with Hollywood dovetailed with her awakening political consciousness in the 1950's when she was blacklisted primarily for her association with supposed Communist sympathizer Paul Robeson.

Horne's second marriage to MGM musical arranger Lennie Hayton, a white Jewish-American, brought enormous pressure to the interracial couple. Her increasing resentment found an outlet in the 1960's when she became active in the civil rights movement, surprisingly favoring the more radical practices of Malcolm X over Martin Luther King Jr.'s more pacifist approach to racism. The downside to her dual focus on career and civil rights was an estrangement from her two children, although she later got closer to her daughter Gail (who was once married to director Sidney Lumet). The author paints an involving portrayal of a complicated woman that dismantles the myths that surround her, and yet, he still celebrates her considerable talents with admirable respect and historical accuracy. If she exaggerated her mistreatment for dramatic effect late in her life, Horne is understandably given license to do so by Gavin. With her mixed heritage, angular Caucasian features and exalted stature, the legendary entertainer became imprisoned by what was expected of her as an African-American. Now 92, she has reason to seal herself from a world that couldn't help her resolve her identity crisis.

"Stormy Weather" is not only a voluminous study of the life of Ms. Horne, but of the lives of many of the renown and the talented who lived through the years of the Great Depression and endured and/or participated in the poverty and the bigotry that was everywhere evident at that time.
"Stormy Weather" portrays Lena as a woman with the strength to endure a difficult life and the frailties that made her life difficult and untimately unrewarding. This is a book worth reading.

Just finished this amazing book and truly enjoyed it. I had the great pleasure to have met her backstage at Lincoln Center after her performance as part of a JVC Jazz Festival tribute to Billy Strayhorn. She was most gracious to my ex-wife and I and even took the time to pose for several photos with us. A few days later, I sent her a card to sign for us to frame with the photos and she obliged and mailed the card back in record time. We later saw her in concert at Carnegie Hall when she brought the house down with a spectacular performance.
James Gavin has done a great job with this book and I wish him and Ms. Horne all the best.

Get the book !!!!!!

There's a pervasive sadness to biographies of legendary black artists who came of age during the Harlem Renaissance and the Jim Crow era, a sense of possibilities never reached, opportunities denied, and crushed dreams and ambitions. Few stars shown as brightly as Lena Horne. Her innate talent and beauty translated easily to music, film and stage and yet at MGM she was relegated to race films of the era or cameos in white films that could easily be excised in the South. It was one of the many indignities blacks felt regardless of class, skin color, wealth or personal attainment and Horne felt the sting just as sharply as others. This is a recurring theme in biographies of other black entertainers, academics, scholars, and average citizens, and much of "Stormy Weather" chronicles Horne's attempts to combat and transcend the pervasive racism of the era. And like many other blacks, the discrimination hardened her and created an impression of someone profoundly dissatisfied.

Some artists found a way to express their anger and frustration and others quite simply were worn out or crushed by it. Horne poured herself into her work and her craft, but in her personal life sometimes invited scorn from both black and white society. Blacks tended to reject her because of her light skin color, for taking a white husband and lovers, and for generally attempting to assimilate into white culture through her music, dress and lifestyle. For whites, Horne would always remain as "other"; a black entertainer no matter how she attempted to reinvent herself. The Civil Rights era began to lift the constraints on black performers but the psychic damage had been done. The toll had to be tremendous and Gavin gives readers glimpses of that throughout his well written book, capturing it in words that sum it all up yet which also fail to describe the unending grief Horne had at the indignities she faced.

Like many of her contemporaries Horne enjoyed a renaissance late in life as fans, critics and historians started to reassess cultural relevancy. Horne was indeed groundbreaking, an image of black beauty, femininity, pride and power in an era where few examples existed. Yet as Gavin points out throughout "Stormy Weather," there was always a cool and aloof aura about her that made her remote and distant. She never exuded the warm sincerity or good humor of her peers like Eartha Kitt, Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker or Pearl Bailey or the tragic fragile drama of a Billie Holiday or Charlie Parker. While Gavin's writing keeps the reader engaged and enthralled there is a pervasive sadness you are left with. There's also little here that hasn't been covered before and there's nothing really earthshattering. And while we see Horne move from film to cabaret we see her but never really come to feel we know her. I found myself wondering what kept her going, what made her go onstage in front of an audience in a club where she could never be a patron. Was it the stubborn determination to carry on and never let them see her anger? Was it the need for validation in some respect? Was it the belief that times could change? Probably all of the above, but Horne is such an enigma we may never really know. "Stormy Weather" is as much a glimpse into the life of Horne as it is the era that produced her.

James Gavin's book is riveting drama. The author takes the middle road in tracing Horne's overwhelming anger. Neither blaming nor defending MGM, relating Horne's stormy career from the Cotton Club to the Broadway and concert stage is a history of the black experience in the entertainment world of the 20th century. The other great success of this book is that Horne's rage and anger somehow never becomes boring or monotonous. Gavin keeps a weather eye on all of the famous people Horne knew, loved or hated (and sometimes both, depending on the time in her career) and provides fascinating sketches of them all.

In 1981 when I heard that my aunt was going to see Lena Horne in her B'way show the Lady and Her Music I was stunned, but of course I could not afford to go.

When I wanted something to read on Lena Horne, I discovered this book, and when I got it Ms.Horne's was still alive, when I finished it she was dead about three days.

I cried through the ending because of the recent passing of Ms. Horne and felt that she was still talking to me after she passed. this book was well written not because of its opinions but because of its factual content and ocassional inserts of Ms. Horne's spoken dialogue. It bring us further into what life was like for black people even if they seemed to be passing like Lena was, but .....inspite of the Cotton Club where life was like being enslaved, Lena called servitude, her days in Hollywood stifled her talent as as actress (inspite of two good acting roles "Stormy Weather & Cabin In the sky") her subsequent roles as a decorum pillar in movie musicals was a far cry from the cotton club days where MGM attempted to glamourize her. But this did not sit well with Lena as she was never given a decent acting role, where she would interact with white people. If you want to count the role in 1969 with Richard Widmark "Death of a Gunfighter it was her last until the wiz. This book reveals a lot, for instance the conflicts with Ethel Waters, her friendship with Ava Gardner, her abandoning those close to her, her secret marriage to Lennie Heydon, her conflicts and dislike of Frank Sinatra, being blacklisted from performing. The civil rights movement that made her come out of herself, especially with the murders of her admired leaders Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Martin, & Kennedy. No wonder she got harder as the years went by she certaianly endured a lot of pain, and it showed in her performances. But the books ends with Lena saying if you don't feel pain you are dead. her pain ended in spite of all her triumpths on Mother Day May 9th, 2010. A Marvelous performer inside and out. Lena thank you for allowing us to look into your life even if it was told by a third person Mr.Gavin. You were our black star who lived a lifetime, and we are proud of you.

Rest in Heavenly Peace, Ms. Horne! I am reading both Mr. Gavin's and Ms. Lumet Buckley's books simultaneously. Both Mr. Gavin and Ms. Lumet Buckley wrote excellent books. I am a woman in my early fifties and, while I am certainly aware of Ms. Horne, I never fully understood. She endured so much racism, both familial and industry-wise and I never understood her name tags: beautiful, angry, distant and aloof, mesmerizing. Like so many, she was from a dysfunctional family, unloved, manipulated. I've been watching performances of Ms. Horne on the talk show circuit (Johnny Carson and Rosie O'Donnell)and her t.v. and club performances. I TOTALLY GET IT NOW. I have sympathy for her in her grief. Losing the three most important men in her life in a year or so, was devastating. I sympathize with her with the difficult relationships with both her children and how she felt guilty about the drug use and death of her only son. One thing I always admired about Ms. Horne was that she knew she was a black woman, no matter what anyone else tried to make her out to be ("Egyptian" makeup?!) No matter what else, one thing is certain: she is one of the most revered icons of Black America. We've been missing her for the last ten years and we will miss her more now that she's gone.

A candid and surprising look at the life of Lena Horne-----and how prejudice limited her ability to further her Hollywood Career-----an insight to the strength of a woman who overcame obstacles to become a modern legend-----a real page-turner!

This is a phenomenal, articulate, passionate story written with grace, and subtlety. Very deft touch to a great lady.