It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged. Blame it on new social networking sites coupled with my continued job hunt. I have never, ever been out of work this long in my entire adult life. It’s frustrating and humiliating. Another thing — it’s forced me to face a certain change in New York City. I love this town. I wanted to come here and work ever since I was a kid back in Southern California. There’s long been sort of a East Coast/West Coast friendly rivalry between L.A. and NYC. New York considers itself sharper and smarter. In many ways, it has been. However, this year, in a bleak economy that continues to drag us around like we’re the chains attached to the ghost of Jacob Marley, I have been called back for second, third or fourth meetings with possible employers only to discover that the executives still had not read my resumé. To me, that was a red flag. I was up for a publicist job with a local non-profit arts organization. Our first meeting was in early February. In late March, they wanted to schedule a fifth meeting for early April. The boss wanted to know if I had any local TV/Radio connections. “Local? I’ve got local AND national. You’ve read my resumé, haven’t you?” The answer was, “Uh, no, I didn’t get around to it yet.” I decided to move on and apply for work elsewhere. But that wasn’t the first nor last time that sort of thing has happened to me while I’ve been seeking work. It’s happened to others I know here in town too. I never thought that sort of occupational laziness would occur in New York.
My heart broke to hear the news that singer/actress/civil rights advocate Lena Horne had died. What a life. What a talent. Larry Moss is a noted, highly-respected acting coach who has guided several actors to Oscar nominations such as Hilary Swank, Helen Hunt and Michael Clarke Duncan. His services was so in demand that he put his lessons in a book to free himself up to pursue other interests. His immensely helpful book is The Intent to Live: Achieving Your True Potential as an Actor. Larry Moss considered Lena Horne an outstanding actress and explains why in his book. I saw him speak at a crowded book singing once here in Manhattan. He told the many young actors in the audience to buy the CD of Lena Horne’s “The Lady and Her Music” one-woman, Tony Award-winning 1980s Broadway triumph. He told them that the life she gave to every song, treating each one as a monologue, is a performance that is as much a required learning experience as watching Brando in “On The Waterfront.” How sad that, when Lena Horne was a musical movie star as MGM in the 1940s, she could not act opposite the white fellow MGM musical stars because of racism of the time. I don’t know if, even in this age of a Black American president, folks totally grasp that. My longtime buddy, James Gavin, is out promoting the newly released paperback edition of his terrific Lena Horne biography from last year, Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne. Your jaw will drop reading the new information he found out — like the movies mentioned for her but were abandoned because of pre-Civil Rights attitudes. How she threw things at her TV whenever President Bush appeared on it. Her complicated marriage to Lennie Hayton, a white Oscar winner and one of the A-list players in MGM’s music department. Horne’s fractured relationship with her mother against the backdrop of a racially changing America could serve as the basis for a new Broadway musical drama of Black Americans that could be as powerful as “Gypsy.” Even if Jim and I weren’t friends, I’d say that his fine book deserves way more attention than it has received. Jim and I were on a national radio show last summer discussing the book. We brought up how Horne, during a WWII USO tour, could not get served at a diner down South. The host said, “Didn’t they know she was Lena Horne?” We had to tell him on the air that it didn’t matter that she was a Hollywood movie star. She was a Black person and the diner did not serve Black people. I added that we still have racial issues today. Just because Barack Obama got elected President doesn’t mean they’ve been solved. Remember the day Michael Jackson died? Farrah Fawcett of “Charlie’s Angels” TV fame died earlier that same day. On Facebook, all the messages from people of all colors were pretty much the same for Farrah: “We’ll miss you. Heaven got a new Angel today.” That afternoon, when Black pop music international superstar Michael Jackson died, all the Black and Latino folks wrote “We’ll miss you, Michael.” Many Caucasians wrote “He was black?!?!?” That caused online friction. Yes, Jackson, lightened his skin. But why did Black folks lighten their skin? Basically, so they’d be served at the diner the way Lena Horne wasn’t. The people who wrote the wisecracks are the people who have always had access because of their color. Lena Horne will be missed. I got to meet her once during a press conference when she toured with her Broadway success. Her manager contacted me afterwards. Lena Horne later met with my mother and offered her a job. (A job offer my mother should have taken but that’s another story.) I thank Horne for kicking down thick doors so that less-talented guys like yours truly could have better chances than she had.
Tonight, millions will be watching the finale of Lost of ABC. I didn’t follow the series as religiously as many of my friends did. I will watch the finale because I hope it answers one thing — how could Hurley be lost on that deserted tropical island for as long as he’s been and not drop a couple of pounds like Tom Hanks did in Cast Away? I just don’t get it. Have a great week.