Below are extracts from and links to a few, excellent scholarly studies of Horne's work and persona. David Hudson's round up of tributes to the actress is now online at The Auteurs Notebook
While the subject of Shane Vogel’s article “Lena Horne’s Impersona” could herself be described as a spectacular mulata musical performer, Vogel makes the case that Horne’s (in)famous “aloof” performing style has been “misunderstood . . . as a reflection of the demanding and narcissistic personality of the prima donna.” Instead, Vogel finds that, far from cultivating a Garboesque diva mask, Horne’s distant and distancing style “is a withholding of any persona at all”; its “negative affect” a “strategic mode of black [female] performance” that allowed Horne — and a number of other women—“to survive the psychic damage and physical danger of segregated cabaret performance.” Alexander Doty, 'Introduction: The Good, the Bad, and the Fabulous; or, The Diva Issue Strikes Back', Camera Obscura 67, Volume 23, Number 1, 2008
[Lena Horne's] restraint on the cabaret stage found its cinematic counterpart in [her] film career. She appeared in more than a dozen Hollywood musicals, but primarily as what was sardonically termed a “pillar singer.” In films like Panama Hattie (dir. Norman Z. McLeod, US, 1942), I Dood It (dir. Vincente Minnelli, US, 1943), Thousands Cheer (dir. George Sidney, US, 1943), and Boogie-Woogie Dream (dir. Hans Burger, US, 1944), Horne was featured, usually propped against a marble column, in a musical number that was supplemental to the narrative of the film. This isolation from the story allowed her number to be easily deleted before distribution to southern theaters. “I looked good and I stood up against a wall and sang and sang. But I had no relationship with anybody else,” Horne recalled in 1957. “Mississippi wanted its movies without me. It was an accepted fact that any scene I did was going to be cut when the movie played the South. So no one bothered to put me in a movie where I talked to anybody, where some thread of the story might be broken if I were cut. I had no communication with anybody.” This filmic isolation contributed to Horne’s reputation for affective distance. Even in the three films in which she had starring roles—The Duke Is Tops(dir. William L. Nolte, US, 1938), Stormy Weather(dir. Andrew Stone, US, 1943), and Cabin in the Sky (dir. Vincente Minnelli, US, 1943) — her reserve and her refusal to inhabit the images available to her seemed to render her detached from the narrative. As James Haskins notes about her performance as the seductive vixen Georgia Brown in Cabin in the Sky, “Undoubtedly she infused the role with as much dignity as she could muster and managed to be the most aloof ‘bad girl’ ever seen in a film to date. She was not believable as a slut, and as such she was an enigmatic character who invited puzzled contemplation as much as sexual desire in the male members of the audience.”
A ghost town also frames the haunting final scenes of Joseph Losey's The Prowler, when an adulterous couple (Evelyn Keyes and Van Heflin) take refuge in an abandoned Mojave desert village so that the woman can secretly give birth to their child. Webb killed Susan Gilvray's husband, successfully making it look like an accident, and he fears that proof of their affair will put him under suspicion.
He's a shady, disaffected cop who first meets Susan when he responds to her report of a prowler. She's a lonely housewife whose husband is an all-night DJ, a disembodied voice on the radio, unable to provide her with the child she craves. Webb takes one look at the wistful blonde and her luxurious Spanish-style suburban palace and decides he wants both. Reluctantly Susan succumbs to his aggressive persistence, as he keeps turning up to investigate an imaginary intruder, finally gunning down her husband, ostensibly by mistake. Fragile and passive, Susan believes Webb's story and marries him; their wedding is mirrored by a funeral at the church across the street.
Isolated in the desert ruin, Susan struggles through a difficult labor. The refuge turns deadly, with dust storms raging, and in desperation Webb finally fetches a doctor to save his wife, and she learns the truth about him when she realizes he plans to kill the man who saved her. The setting is appropriate: though they conceived a child, their relationship built on greed and deception is more barren than Susan's first, childless marriage. Imogen Sara Smith, 'In Lonely Places: Film Noir Outside the City', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 65, August 2009 [my emphasis]
The post begins with Matt Zoller Seitz's latest video essay - a wonderful dissection of Joseph Losey's 1951 film noir thriller The Prowler. This was one of the last films Losey made in Hollywood before fleeing the US, refusing to inform on his friends to the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Zoller Seitz compellingly teases out The Prowler's concerns with social class and property; these would become even more central themes in Losey's film work after his exile to England.
