Word: lena
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...RELEASE and read: "One of the biggest show-business weddings of this era will take place when Shirl Conway, the musical comedy and TV star, and Composer Bernie [Vanessa] Wayne, will be married over the NBC network from 2:30 to 3 p.m., in the Studio Chapel. Guest list: Lena Home, Faye Emerson, Julie Wilson...many other celebrities." On the afternoon of New Year's Eve, as announced. Shirl and Bernie were married-under a sky of klieg lights in Manhattan's RCA building, before a TV audience of about 3,000,000. "We have so many friends...
Jamaica (music and lyrics by Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg; book by Harburg and Fred Saidy) boasts Lena Horne and much that is stylish and charming. Its achievement, to be sure, is more one of atmosphere than of action, of grace than of speed. The humor in Jamaica is covert and glancing; the very hurricanes blow up too fast to be spectacular; even the calypso recalls an island charmer of long...
...tropical House of Flowers, with its far more promising book. But though the book of Jamaica, in short, has an idiot simplicity and an almost insolent lack of purpose, it sort of timidly shuffles about between tunes, seldom even daring to let go with gags. Moreover, the book has Lena Horne on every page, and Harold Arlen to turn the page while she is singing one or another of his songs. She is beautiful, and with what elegant sexuality she twists about in tight-curving, fishtail skirts. She is accomplished in a way all her own, seldom raising her voice...
...airy sets. Miles White's gorgeous costumes give it style. If it has almost no Broadway snap, it has even less Broadway brassiness. If this is a Jamaica with little ginger and no rum, those, after all, are largely its exports. From at least a musicomedy standpoint, Lena Horne, gay colors, winning tunes-and even shiftless lie-in-the-sun librettos-are its tourist attractions...
...Lena Horne, excellent in and by herself, does not act well enough to carry interest into the plot. She sings as well as ever, particularly in "Push The Button," a satirical comment on Manhattan (there's a little island on the Hudson. . .), "Ain't It The Truth," and "I Don't Think I'll End It All Today." She can ride one word onto several notes as perfectly as she can move her body provocatively. Unfortunately, she has trouble weaving in and out of a Jamaica accent, often waiting to lean into Caribbean pronunciation and rhythm until just before...