On Meeting Lena Horne

My first real job took me to LA. I worked the Las Vegas Fun Train in Winter sometimes and once met Mantan Moreland, a comic actor best known for his wide-eyed presence in the Charlie Chan movies. I told him that I was going to see Lena Horne at Caesar’s Palace, he gave me his card and said to use it, he’d meet me there. Mantan didn’t come with me to the show, he decided to hang out with his pals. Caesar's employed celebs like comedian Nipsey Russell and the former heavy-weight champion Joe Louis to mingle out and about the casino lobby area.

Mantan’s card put me in Lena Horne’s dressing room, she was expecting Mantan---of course. I told her he was out front somewhere with Nipsey and would see her later. Lena Horne was beautiful and gracious to me, a regal iconic figure of civil rights change and great strength. She sat at her dressing table still wearing a tight fitting royal blue sequined gown, her coal black hair stylishly short. A framed photo of her son stood on the table. She had lost her husband not too long before the Caesars Palace engagement and in fact, had been out of the limelight for a few years. We spoke a few minutes about little that I can remember now some 38 years later. She signed a photo to me, I thanked her and left.

Today, I can still see Lena Horne standing on the stage at Caesar's Palace, her dark eyes piercing straight ahead as she sang. Ms. Horne recorded "Being Green" in 1972, it's the best I've heard---even better than Kermit. It seemed such a poignant statement about the treatment Lena Horne and other black entertainers had received over the years.

One afternoon on my day off, I drove up to Mantan's place just off Highland, I hadn't run into him again while in Las Vegas. He showed me his scrapbook, drank hard liquor with milk in it and spoke adoringly about Leslie Uggams as though he had discovered her. About a year later after I'd moved to Washington, D.C., I read in the news where Mantan had died. Whenever I see, hear,write or read about Lena Horne, I always think of Mantan.