Pioneering Women

As seen in the movies that they made during the first half of the 20th century, Hattie McDaniel and Lena Horne could scarcely have been more different in terms of physical type and the roles they played. But both women were pioneers: McDaniel as the first African-American to win an Academy Award, for her indelible portrait of Mammy in Gone With the Wind; Horne for her stunning singing and acting talents, her status as Hollywood’s first black glamour girl, and her important work as a civil rights activist.

Both lives are ripe for theatrical treatment — and, as it happens, shows about McDaniel and Horne are currently on the boards. Off Broadway, the Emerging Artists Theatre is presenting Capathia Jenkins in (mis)Understanding Mammy: The Hattie McDaniel Story, a one-woman show written by Joan Ross Sorkin. Meanwhile, at the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia, Tony Award winner Leslie Uggams is playing Horne in Stormy Weather, a biomusical with a script by Sharleen Cooper Cohen.

“Hattie McDaniel lived an extraordinary life, and I’m learning so much about her,” says Jenkins, who recently set Broadway on its ear with her show-stopping 11 o’clock number in Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me. “Like a lot of my friends, the only thing I really knew about Hattie was that she was the first black person to get an Oscar nomination and then win the award. I had seen Gone With the Wind in bits and pieces, but when we started rehearsals for this show, I went to Netflix and ordered it. I sat and watched it from beginning to end, and it’s just unbelievable — so beautifully done. Hattie’s work in it is extraordinary.”

(mis)Understanding Mammy focuses primarily on one aspect of the McDaniel story. “Walter White was the head of the NAACP,” says Jenkins, “and he had a campaign against ‘mammyism.’ He went after the film studios to incorporate black characters in films, but not maids or other stereotypical characters. Hattie’s attitude was, ‘I’d rather play a maid than be one,’ but she felt that she brought dignity and humanity to those roles. In White’s quest to get in with the studios and try to have script approval, he ended up squashing her career. Later, she ended up being blacklisted during the McCarthy era, aside from being sort of ostracized by her own people.

“The play is set in this hospice where Hattie lived just before she died of breast cancer. She’s in and out of reality; she thinks Walter White is there, but he’s not. By the end of it, she’s in a rage and she’s talking about how White didn’t like dark-skinned blacks. She confronts him and says, ‘You favored the Lena Hornes of this world.’ Hattie was the antithesis of Lena, literally and figuratively; Hattie was a big, dark-skinned woman, and Lena was the beautiful, light-skinned lady.”

McDaniel died in 1952, at the age of 57. “What I love most about this piece is that we’re saying, ‘This is what Hattie was,’ ” says Jenkins. “Historically, she rarely spoke out in the press. She kept it all in. So we’re trying to give her a voice.”

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Leslie Uggams is not new to the role of Lena Horne in Stormy Weather, having previously played the part in workshops of the piece. But a full-scale production is another matter. “I’m tired, but it’s good to have the show up on its feet with costumes and lights,” says Uggams. “The script has been thinned out from the workshops. We had a lotta, lotta, lotta stuff in there! Michael Bush, our director, has kept the things that were really meaningful.”

The estimable cast of the Prince production includes Dee Hoty as Kay Thompson, one of Horne’s mentors at M-G-M and a lifelong friend; Davis Gaines as her second husband, composer-conductor-arranger Lennie Hayton; Kevyn Morrow as one of her most beloved colleagues, musical genius Billy Strayhorn; and Kearran Giovanni as Young Lena. Uggams appears as the much older star in scenes that serve as a framing device for the bulk of the action.

“Lena is in her apartment, thinking things out,” Uggams explains. “She’s depressed because, within 18 months, she has lost her husband, her son, and her father. She’s decided that she is retired; she’s had these devastating losses and, as far as she’s concerned, that’s it. But Gail [Lumet Buckley, her daughter] gets Kay Thompson to come to the apartment and try to talk Lena into performing again. As they talk, Lena starts to relive some of the things that went on in her career and her personal life.” The show’s climax is Uggams’ rendition of “Stormy Weather,” delivered with all of the soul-searing passion and pain that Horne exuded when she performed the Harold Arlen-Ted Koehler standard on Broadway in Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music (1981).

Stormy Weather places a heavy load of responsibility on the star’s shoulders in that the legendary Horne is still very much alive. Moreover, Uggams has had several direct encounters with her through the years: “She pinned me as a Delta [a member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority]. Dionne Warwick, Lola Falana, and I presented Lena at the Pantages in a benefit to raise money for sickle cell anemia, and I sang in a tribute to her at Avery Fisher Hall. But I haven’t seen her or spoken with her recently. The woman is almost 90.”

Given that Horne has been out of the spotlight for quite some time now, her unique position in the entertainment world and the black community may not be understood or appreciated by members of younger generations. “She was a pioneer in all the things that she’s done,” says Uggams, “so it’s good to let people know about Lena Horne — those who remember her, and those who have no idea who she is.”