It’s the middle of a depression, and you’re young, six feet five, and good looking. You can act, sing, dance, and play a mean piano; what’s more, you’re born to parents who have responsible jobs inside the Hollywood Establishment. Yes, that Hollywood, but you nevertheless have to struggle for bit parts and gigs. You’re a black man trying to make it in a lily-white world in a city that is, after all, deep in the southern part of the U.S.

Lennie Bluett persevered and became and still is one of the last trailblazing artists of Hollywood. He began acting before he graduated from Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles in 1937, and he even took high school classes at the studios with young teenagers Judy Garland and Liz Taylor. He was just out of high school and all of nineteen when he was offered a speaking part in Gone with the Wind.

It was on that set that he and two other young black actors, outraged when they encountered separate restrooms for white and colored, went to none other than Clark Gable with their grievance. Gable then marched with them to the Director, and after lacing the air with some choice profanity, Gable said, “Those signs immediately come down or you’ll loose every black actor on the set, and you’ll loose Rhett Butler.” The signs disappeared quickly, but that was only the first hurdle that he kicked aside in pursuing dignified work.

Lennie did have the good fortune to be born in Hollywood to a mother who was the cook for Humphrey Bogart and a father who was the limo driver of Buster Keaton, and thanks to his gumption, he won a role in Going to Town with Eddie Cantor, June Lang, and Tony Martin. He also got an audition for Sam in Casablanca, but at 22, he was too young for the part. He did play at all of Bogie’s private parties, however. That led to gigs playing at parties for Tyrone Power and Robert Mitchum, both of whom became good friends.

All too often he was offered demeaning parts that were pure stereotypes. He got an education about that from Lena Horne with whom he worked in Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather; her father had taught her to never accept a demeaning role. “You’re a very talented singer who is beautiful; you’re a star. Never forget that.”

For Lennie it wasn’t so easy, but thanks to his versatility in song, dance, acting, or at the piano, he appeared in The Big Store and A Day at the Races with the Marx Brothers, Tracy and Hepburn in State of the Union, and over fifty feature films going back to Brown Bomber with Joe Lewis and Horne. His favorite role was in the all-black production, The Adventure of the Black Pearl. Often, he would have an acting gig during the day and play piano at parties or at a bar in the evening.

Even though the good acting jobs were rarely available because he was a tall, good-looking black man, he “kept his dream alive” with pure drive. His agent got him gigs in Europe, and he kept Lennie busy enough to hang around and learn to sing in Italian and French and improve the Spanish he learned in high school. His rendition of “Autumn Leaves” in French is very sensual, even seducing in his soft caress of each word. He gives that song a new dimension, that of intimacy.

In the 1980s Lennie began a fifteen-year stint of traveling the seven seas as a piano bar entertainer with Royal Viking Lines. He touched down and performed on every continent except Antarctica, and those were some of his best years and memories. He said there were none of the problems we hear about today on any of the cruise ships on which he played and sang. It was great duty with friendly people. His most requested song was “Georgia on My Mind,” but “As Time Goes By” was also a favorite because of his association with Bogart.

One of the people he got to know in Bogart’s later years was Lauren Becall, who had “balls the size of basketballs.” If so, Lennie’s aren’t much smaller. Once years ago, he went into a café on Hollywood Boulevard and found they couldn’t “accommodate” him. A week later he sent in a very light-skinned black actress, pretending to be his wife, to order lunch for them. She went in, took a table, and ordered two lunches, one for her shopping husband who would soon join her. When Lennie arrived, the host insisted that his wife wasn’t there—until she waved to him and called his name.

Race helped him get a good role dancing and singing with Lena Horne in the Joe Lewis film, Brown Bomber, and in The Adventure of the Black Pearl. More often, there was still an invisible barrier ready to crush any free expression that challenged taboos. In No Business Like Show Business with Marilyn Moore, he and eleven black men danced and sang “Tropical Heat Wave” on stage with her. Ken Darby, the producer, immediately stepped in and had it re-shot with twelve white actors. In the released film, the voices of Lennie’s dozen were dubbed in as white men danced and lip-synched.

Some might suggest that he was born too soon to cash in big on his multiple talents, but that misses the point. What has enabled him to make a good living for his family in show business has been his determination to kick hurdles out of his way, not go around or over, and thereby to keep his dream alive.
He recently lost his wife of forty-eight years, but he is still going strong, living in an elegant pad in the Hollywood hills, and still playing at parties and occasional gigs. This past August he placed second in an annual competition for senior citizens; last year he won first prize. You can catch his act at Rick’s Café in Casablanca, Morocco next July when they celebrate its fifth anniversary, or you can catch him some Sunday afternoon at El Cid’s on Sunset Boulevard. The beat is still with Lennie, and he is very much live at 90 and counting. Party anyone?