How Lena Horne Won Over MGM — and Became a “Test Case” for Hollywood

In the early 1940s, a young Lena Horne began an engagement at an intimate L.A. club called Little Troc, where her silken voice — with her perfect enunciation and her sophisticated interpretation of the lyrics — dazzled the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Cole Porter, Lana Turner and Greta Garbo. Among the many eyes that observed her during her run were those of the astute, sensitive Roger Edens, who was an integral member of the Freed Unit at MGM Studios. Led by innovative producer Arthur Freed, the unit consisted of musical artists who created many of MGM’s great musicals from the golden age: It had recently produced Babes in Arms (1939) and would strike gold with An American in Paris (1951), Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and Gigi (1958).

Within the Freed Unit, Edens stood out as a highly respected composer, arranger and associate producer who eventually won three Academy Awards. After seeing Lena perform, he pushed hard for MGM to sign her and kept up the pressure until an appointment was set up.

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When Freed was informed that there was a great young Negro singer he should see, he was hardly enthusiastic. “Here we go again,” he was reported to have said. “I haven’t any place for a girl like that right now.” But he was urged to reconsider. “Hear her sing a song or two,” it was suggested. Finally, Freed relented. “Bring her in for 15 or 20 minutes.”

In mid-January 1942, Lena arrived at MGM in Culver City to audition. She was not sure that the meeting would lead anywhere. But she had come to know the mild-mannered Edens. Not only did she like him, she trusted him. Edens would accompany her on the piano and put her at ease with his relaxed charm and reassuring manner.

“Instead of 15 minutes, we were in there for two hours listening to her,” recalled Freed. He knew immediately that she was wholly different from any other Black performer — or white one, for that matter — that he had seen. Like everyone else, he found her magnificent looking, which was important from the studio’s perspective. He decided to immediately contact studio head Louis B. Mayer. “I called L.B. on the phone and took her up there,” said Freed. “I had her sing a couple of songs, and L.B. went crazy.” Also at the studio that day was actress Marion Davies, who casually wielded influence and power, not only as a major star but as the mistress of powerful publisher William Randolph Hearst. She too was impressed by Lena. A deal was in the making. “So instead of hiring her for one song in a picture,” said Freed, “we put her under a long-term contact.”

Lena herself remembered it all a bit differently. Everything was moving quickly, really too quickly, and frankly, she felt she needed advice. Though it was never stated outright, Lena — like many Black entertainers who made the move to mainstream stardom out of the clubs and into the studios or major-league theater — found herself operating in an almost exclusively white world. Producers, directors, agents, attorneys, advisers were white. Few African Americans had been able to enter the upper echelons of the entertainment world — to become the people who made decisions — no matter how talented or skilled. Feeling vulnerable and isolated, Lena took an unusual action that no one in Hollywood could have anticipated. “I finally got home that night, and I called my father in Pittsburgh. Real bright, sharp, a beautiful man. I said, ‘Would you come out here, because these people are crazy. They’re talking about putting me in the movies.’ ” Teddy agreed to fly to Hollywood.

Certainly, Mayer must have been taken aback by the request that he meet with Lena’s father. Yet despite the fact that the studio chief was feared as a tyrant — demanding, ruthless and insensitive, ready to make or break a career at a minute’s notice — he was also known to have a sentimental streak when it came to familial relationships, notably of those between mothers and their children. Lena herself, in public statements, did not seem to object to Mayer at this time. Thus, the door to his office was opened for a meeting with Lena and Teddy Horne, along with representatives by their side.

Lena glowed with pride as she remembered her father’s presence that day. “And my dad walks in, and he’s sharp. He had on a diamond stick pin and a very conservative dark suit,” she recalled. Mayer and Teddy Horne talked. Cognizant of the history of African Americans being consigned to servant roles in the movies, Teddy wanted Lena presented with dignity and class. Lena recalled that her father said, “Mr. Mayer, it’s a great privilege you’re offering my daughter.” But Teddy Horne was insistent that she not be cast as a maid. “I can buy my own daughter her own maid,” he said.

“He was just jiving,” Lena said years later.

But the point had been made. “I don’t think he [Mayer] had ever been with a Black man like that.” Mayer assured Teddy Horne that Lena would be treated well — and with respect.

At the same time, the NAACP’s leader, Walter White, developed a keen interest in Lena’s burgeoning film career. A staunch opponent of the movie industry’s treatment of African Americans, White had his fill of the giggling maids, the dim-witted butlers, the parade of nonsensical comic servants who popped their eyes, grinned or made faces and performed caricatured antics and shenanigans in one film after another. He was especially perturbed by the roles Hattie McDaniel played. Though she had reached the pinnacle of movieland success with her Oscar-winning performance in Gone With the Wind (1939), he believed her to be detrimental to the call for new roles for African Americans in U.S. motion pictures.

In the early 1940s, White traveled to the film capital with Wendell Willkie — the 1940 Republican presidential candidate who was on the board of 20th Century-Fox — where he met with those leaders who agreed to see him and earnestly spoke of a new depiction of Blacks in films. Mayer was aware that roles must change. During the war years, the Negro press also started to urge that Hollywood give Black performers different types of parts. Determined that Lena not play maids, White saw her as part of a new day, ushering in a new image of African Americans in Hollywood. He also sought to integrate more Blacks into technical positions and open up the guilds. When Lena attended the NAACP’s 1942 convention in Los Angeles, White told her: “You’re our test case, Lena.”

“I was just a pawn,” said Lena. But, of course, she was altogether more than that.

On Jan. 31, 1942, the Pittsburgh Courier announced that MGM had signed Lena. It was a seven-year contract. Her salary would be $350 a week for 40 weeks her first year; $450 a week the next year; and a $100 a week raise annually afterward. Other contract stipulations included a cap on her weight: It could not be more than 122 pounds. Otherwise, during the three months of the year she was not occupied at MGM, she would be free to continue her thriving nightclub career. She could also play Loews theaters (such as the Capitol in New York) at $700 a week. Loews was the parent company of MGM. In some respects, it was a very good deal — though her salary would later be an issue.

Throughout the 1940s, Lena would be MGM’s treasured Black Beauty in Residence, one of the few African American performers then under a major contract, and would go on to appear in 13 MGM feature films, including Cabin in the Sky and Swing Fever, both from 1943. But presenting her in the best light — literally — posed difficulties at first.

The studio poured its energies into correctly handling her. Makeup tests were in order as no one was accustomed to showcasing a beautiful young Negro woman. MGM strove to highlight her skin tones yet give her a relatively natural but glamorous look. The result was a product called Light Egyptian. But it proved too dark. She looked made up, not at all natural. In the end, said Lena, the makeup was used only to make white actresses who played exotics, such as Hedy Lamarr in White Cargo (1942), intentionally darker. Ultimately, it was decided to use the same makeup on Lena as was used with white actresses at the studio, except of course with a suitably browner base, not an extreme one. MGM’s Jack Dawn usually did her makeup.

Then came the issue of styling Lena’s hair. The head of MGM’s hairstyling department was the legendary Sydney Guilaroff, who tended to the tresses of everyone from Garbo to Joan Crawford to Ava Gardner. He grew distressed and disturbed by the reaction of his staff. “No one wanted to touch Lena’s hair,” he said. “No one!” In the end, Guilaroff styled Lena’s hair himself. But because he ultimately would not be able to be on set when she filmed, he hired a Black woman named Tiny Kyle to do Lena’s hair. Lena developed a warm relationship with Guilaroff and a lasting friendship with Kyle.

MGM also experimented with ways to light and photograph Lena. Lighting was crucial for all stars, but with Black performers of the time — then playing supporting roles or bits — its subtleties were often overlooked. Generally, when Black performers appeared with white stars, the scenes were lit for the white performers, and Black actors could look lost in darkness. It was to MGM’s credit that the best technicians and photographers worked hard to properly showcase Lena.

Interestingly, during this very early period at MGM, a test for a new movie was shot with Lena and one of the most popular Black performers of the time, Eddie Anderson, of radio’s The Jack Benny Program. 

In the test — for a 1942 movie ultimately called Cairo that starred Jeanette MacDonald and Robert Young — Lena and Anderson played the servants Cleona Jones and Hector. Though she would have been cast as a maid, Lena always maintained that the character was well developed and not a stereotype. The test, however, proved something of a disaster. Her makeup had not yet been perfected, and she looked made up. Ironically, when Cairo was finally produced, the role of Cleona was given to Ethel Waters, who had forsaken New York and Broadway and now had her sights set on making it in the movies. No doubt Waters heard that Lena had been considered for the part, and the hot-tempered, often suspicious star may have seen Lena even then as a threat, a younger threat at that. Their paths would eventually cross. For Lena, two women would long loom in her career path whether she liked it or not: at first, Waters, the great tyrannical older star — and later, in the early 1950s, the luminous and younger but emotionally fragile Dorothy Dandridge.

MGM went back to the drawing board on what to do with Lena.

Eventually, MGM featured her with the dancing Berry Brothers in two musical sequences in Panama Hattie (1942), starring Ann Sothern and Red Skelton. Performing “Just One of Those Things” and a new song, “The Sping,” she was utterly captivating. The critics raved over her, and Lena’s Hollywood career had officially begun.

Adapted from Lena Horne: Goddess Reclaimed by Donald Bogle. Copyright © 2023. Available from Running Press, an imprint of Hachette Book Group Inc.

Donald Bogle is the author of Toms, Coons, Mulattos, Mammies and Bucks, featured on THR’s list of the Greatest Film Books of All Time.

This story first appeared in the Oct. 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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