Canada Lee

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Canada Lee

Canada Lee in the 1944 film Lifeboat
Born Lionel Cornelius Canegata
March 3, 1907(1907-03-03)
New York, New York, U.S.
Died May 9, 1952 (aged 45)
New York, New York, U.S.
Other name(s) Lional Canegata
Years active 1936 – 1952

Canada Lee, born Lionel Cornelius Canegata, (March 3, 1907– May 9, 1952) was an American actor who pioneered roles for African Americans. A champion of civil rights in the 1930s and '40s, he died shortly before he was scheduled to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Coming to acting after careers as a jockey, boxer, and musician, Lee furthered the African-American tradition in theater pioneered by such older actors as Paul Robeson.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Lee's life evidences his roving ambition, varied skills, and ability to master vastly different disciplines.

[edit] Early life

Growing up to West Indian parents in New York City, Lee tried his hand at many things. He was a concert violinist at the age of twelve. In his early teens, he ran away from home to become a professional jockey, and after growing too large to ride, he decided to try boxing. Before one match an announcer, stumbling over Lionel’s surname, accidentally christened him ‘Canada Lee.’ Lee adopted the mistake as his own, and he quickly rose through the ranks for a chance and file, positioning himself for a shot at the Welterweight title.

A glancing blow to his right eye detached his retina and ended his career as a boxer. Canada left the ring and began to conduct a fifteen-piece orchestra at a nightclub in Harlem, The Jitterbug, which he also managed. Neither the band nor the nightclub could survive the Great Depression; by the mid-30s, Lee was impoverished.

[edit] Theater career

Lee's acting career began by accident. While at a YMCA to apply for a job as a laborer, Lee stumbled upon an audition in progress and was invited to audition. He earned a supporting role in Frank Wilson’s 1934 production of Brother Moses, which played to a crowd of ten thousand in Central Park. Lee, who received favorable reviews, settled on acting as a new career.

This career brought him into contact with many of the most famous actors and directors of the late 1930s. Working with the Federal Theater Project, he appeared in Stevedore in 1934, with various small roles following. His first major role in a seminal production came in Orson Welles's so-called "voodoo" Macbeth (1936) at the American Negro Theater. Lee played Banquo in this controversial production, which featured a Haitian motif in the set, African-themed drumming and a black cast of over two hundred actors. The play's treatment of African-Americans proved controversial, and Lee is reported to have rescued Welles from angry protestors on two occasions.

After two more years of work in black theater and Theater Project productions, including the lead role in The Big White Fog, Lee reunited with Welles for the stage production of Richard Wright's Native Son. The 1941 production was a spectacular hit, both for Welles and for Lee, whom the The New York Times called "the greatest Negro actor of his era and one of the finest actors in the country." Wright also applauded the performance, noting the contrast between Lee's affable personality and his intensity as Bigger Thomas.

During World War II, Lee continued to act in plays and in films. In 1942, he played in two comedies by William Saroyan; Lee earned approving reviews despite the generally negative response to these plays. In 1943, he took a lead role in a production of the race-themed drama South Pacific, which was directed by Lee Strasberg. The following year, he became the first African-American to play Caliban in Margaret Webster’s 1945 Broadway rendition of The Tempest. Lee had admired Shakespeare since his turn in Macbeth; indeed, at the time of his death he was preparing to play Othello on film. The following year he participated in another milestone; George Rylands cast him as Bosola in a Broadway staging of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi: this was one of the first occasions on which a black actor portrayed a white character (Lee wore whiteface).

After the war, Lee continued to act. In 1946, he played a principal role in On Whitman Avenue, a drama about racial prejudice directed by Margo Jones. Lee produced the play, making him the first African-American producer on Broadway; the play spoke directly to the need for interracial housing following WWII and won the praise of former First-Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote weekly columns encouraging readers to see it. Two years later, he played the part of an obedient slave in Let My People Go, a dramatization of the life of Denmark Vesey.

[edit] Film career

Lee made his screen debut in Keep Punching (1939), a film about boxing. Perhaps his most famous film role was in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944), in which he played a sailor. Lee insisted on changing his dialogue, which had been a semi-comical dialect typical of racist films. In 1947, he played a supporting role in Robert Rossen's Body and Soul, another boxing picture. In 1949, he took another supporting role in Lost Boundaries, a drama about passing. Lee's last film role was in Cry, the Beloved Country (1951).

Along with his varied and successful stage and screen careers, Lee became the first African-American DJ on a major radio station hosting The Canada Lee Show, and would continue a successful and lengthy radio career as both actor and narrator. His dedication to the groundbreaking series New World A-Comin’ (a radio show dedicated to presenting Negro history and culture to mainstream American audiences) remains an emblematic testament to Canada’s desire for social change.

[edit] Civil rights activism

As an actor, Lee came into contact with many of the leading progressive figures in the country. Langston Hughes, for instance, wrote two brief plays for Lee; these were submitted to the Theater Project, but their criticism of racism in America was deemed too controversial, and neither was staged. Lee spoke to schools, sponsored various humanitarian events, and began speaking directly against the existing segregation in America’s Armed Forces, while simultaneously acknowledging the need to win the Second World War. To this latter end, he appeared at numerous USO events; he won an award from the United States Recruiting Office and another from the Treasury Department for his help in selling war bonds. These sentiments would carry on throughout his life, culminating in his early firsthand account of apartheid in South Africa.

By the late 1940s, the rising tide of anti-Communism had made many of his earlier contacts politically dangerous. In 1949, the trade journal Variety stated that under no circumstance was he to be used in American Tobacco’s televised production of a radio play he had recently starred in because he was “too controversial.”

In the same year, the FBI offered to clear Lee’s name if he would publicly call Paul Robeson a Communist. Lee refused and responded by saying, “All you’re trying to do is split my race.” According to newspaper columnist Walter Winchell, Lee stated that he intended to come out and “publicly blast Paul Robeson.” However, the fact that the friendship between the two actors remained until Lee's death suggests that Robeson put no faith in Winchell's claim.

At the height of the Hollywood blacklist, Lee managed to find work in 1950 as the star of a British film Cry, The Beloved Country, for which both he and Sidney Poitier were smuggled into South Africa as indentured servants in order to play their roles as African ministers. The film’s message of universal brotherhood stands as Lee's final work towards this aim; after it, the blacklist prevented him from getting work. Scheduled to appear in Italy to begin production on a filmed version of Othello, he was repeatedly notified that his passport “remained under review.”

[edit] Death

Lee’s chronic high blood pressure led to kidney failure, and he died of an excruciating blood poisoning known as uremia. Following his death, rumors persisted that he did come out and call Robeson a Communist. As he was unable to defend himself, Lee’s name remained sullied and overlooked as history marched forward into the era of Civil Rights.[citation needed]

There is a reference to Canada Lee by the Canadian rock group The Tragically Hip in their song "The Dire Wolf," which appears on their album In Violet Light (2002).

[edit] Selected Filmography

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  • Hill, Erroll. Shakespeare in Sable: A History of Black Shakespearean Actors. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.
  • Leiter, Samuel. Encyclopedic Dictionary of the New York Stage, 1940-1950. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992.
  • Smith, Mona Z., Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee, London: Faber and Faber 2004. ISBN 0-571-21142-9
  • Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes. 2 Volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
  • Woll, Allen. Dictionary of the Black Theatre: Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Selected Harlem Theatre. New York: Greenwood Press, 1983.
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