Word: lena
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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...
...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...
Cole, a stylist with a voice like a pull of taffy, is still TV's only regular Negro headlines* "I was talking to Lena Home the other night," he said last week, "and she said, 'You know, Nat, with your show going on like it is, maybe some day I'll get one.' I hear other Negro performers are pushing their agents to get them TV shows, but the agents say, 'We've got to wait and see what Nat's show does...
...love affair as well as a bank account. However, the grimly spontaneous kissing sometimes makes way for some fairly fresh kidding (when the lovers hold hands, a thousand hens lay all at once, and oil explodes from a dry well) and for a few high-class variety numbers. Lena Home and Cara Williams provide the best of these, though Frankie Laine's performance is not without its morbid fascination, and Hermes Pan's ballet about Frankie and Johnny has a sort of hatpin wickedness-even though Ballerina Charisse succeeds in blunting the point...