Description
All That Glitters is Not Gold is a series of brass multiples created to go with Casting Couch. In Casting Couch, fourteen Old Hollywood actresses are cited. In their heyday, their own thoughts and opinions were often silenced. These multiples were created to represent their voice and to encourage conversation.
The multiples are small works of art that can be displayed, but can also be worn as jewelry. Because of the two magnets, the sky is the limit.
Lena Horne
Lena Calhoun Horne was born in 1917, in Brooklyn, New York. Her family belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated Black people. When Lena was three, her father left the family and Lena was mainly raised by her grandparents.
Lena dropped out of high school, starting her nightclub career in 1933. If Lena had never made a movie, her music career would have been enough to have ensured her legendary status in the entertainment industry. However, after she made an appearance on Broadway, Hollywood came calling.
In 1942, she signed a contract with MGM and appeared in her first film Panama Hattie. Unfairly, because of her skin colour she was almost always given small roles, which could easily be cut out of the film for screening in the segregated South. Naturally, this displeased her.
From the 1950s onward, she placed more emphasis on her singing career. Rapidly, she established herself as one of the premier nightclub performers of the post-war era. In 1958, Horne became the first African American woman to be nominated for a Tony Award for “Best Actress in a Musical” for her part in the musical Jamaica.
Horne became a staple of TV variety shows from the late 1950s through to the 1960s. Besides being a guest, she made two television specials for the BBC and starred in her own U.S. television special in 1969. Her final adieu to the movie screen came in 1978, when she played Glinda the Good Witch in the all black musical The Wiz.
For most of her life, Lena was an activist for equal civil rights. She retired in 2003, and died of congestive heart failure on May 9, 2010 at the age of 92.