Inktober Redux 2022 - Day 04 - Lena Horne, Julie La Verne - Show Boat
04/10/22 16:11 Filed in: Personal | inktober redux 2022
Day 4 - “Show Boat,” 1951: Ava Gardner played a mixed-race character who was passing as white, making her marriage to a white man both dangerous and illegal in 1887. What if Lena Horne, originally considered, but ultimately rejected due to studio execs discomfort over interracial love scenes, had starred? “Show Boat” which was the first musical to deal with issues of racial discrimination and mixed marriages may have had a bigger social impact if the part had been handled by Horne. Funnily enough, Horne, played the same character in a brief segment of the play featured in the 1946 Jerome Kern biopic “Till the Clouds Roll By.”
