Canada Lee

Canada Lee in Native Son (1941)

Canada Lee (actually Lionel Cornelius Canegata ; born March 3, 1907 in New York City , † May 9, 1952 ) was an African-American actor, athlete and activist in the civil rights movement of the 1930s and 1940s. Shortly before an appointment before the Committee on Un-American Activities , he died of kidney failure, which led to fatal urine poisoning ( uremia ).

Youth and sport

Canada Lee grew up in New York City as a child of West Indian parents . In his early years he tried in many ways to escape poverty. At 12, he was a concert violinist before running away from home. He became a professional jockey, but after getting too big for equestrian sports, he tried his hand at boxing. An announcer who struggled with his real name announced him as Canada Lee . Cornelius now took this name as a pseudonym and fought his way up the boxing rankings to get a fight for the title of welterweight champion. An injury ended his sports career. A retinal detachment occurred in his right eye after a blow. He soon led and managed a 15-man orchestra in Harlem, The Jitterbug . But neither the band nor the nightclub they performed in survived the Great Depression of the mid-1930s.

Career in the theater

Canada Lee got into acting by accident. While he was actually about to apply for a job as a worker, he got into an audition. There Frank Wilson hired him in a supporting role for the play Brother Moses , which was played in front of tens of thousands of people in Central Park . His reviews were very good and so the ex-boxer decided to change his career. He came into contact with many highly respected actors and directors in the 1930s. After several small roles, he got the opportunity in 1936 at the American Negro Theater by Orson Welles to take part in his drama Macbeth . Lee's role was that of Banquo in Welles' very controversial adaptation of Shakespeare.

After two years at the Negro Theater, Welles and Lee got back together. Welles directed Richard Wright's play Native Son in 1941 , a great success for both of them. The New York Times described Lee as the greatest Negro actor of his era . The author Wright was also very impressed by Welles' production and Lee's portrayal of Bigger Thomas.

Lee continued his acting career even during the World War. In 1943 he appeared in the play North Pacific , directed by Lee Strasberg . He became the first African-American to play the Caliban in Margaret Webster's production of The Tempest . In John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi he was cast as Bosola by George Ryland. Lee played a white man, so he had to be made up white.

After the war, he played in Margo Jones' On Whitman Avenue in 1946 . a drama against racial prejudice. Lee also appeared here as a producer, making it the first Afro-American Broadway producer.

Career in film

Lee made his film debut in 1939 in Keep Punching , a film about boxing. His most famous role was in 1944 that a sailor in The lifeboat of Alfred Hitchcock . This was followed by a supporting role in Hunt for Millions , another boxing film. In 1951 Lee ended his film career with the British film Because They Should Be Comforted (Cry, the Beloved Country) alongside Sidney Poitier . Directed by Zoltan Korda .

Work as a civil rights activist

As an actor, Canada Lee came into contact with many leaders. Langston Hughes wrote two plays that criticized American racism, but they were too controversial and never performed. Lee spoke in schools, sponsored charity events, and began to criticize the emergence of racial segregation in the American armed forces. After the war ended, Lee was present at many United Service Organizations (USO) events . Lee has received awards from the US Recruiting Office and Treasury Department for promoting and selling war bonds.

In the late 1940s, some of Lee's acquaintances got involved in the McCarthy-era witch hunts . In 1949, a radio play produced by American Tobacco, in which Lee appeared, was canceled for no apparent reason. The FBI offered to rehabilitate Lee in return for denouncing his longtime friend Paul Robeson as a communist. But the friendship between the two actors lasted until Lee's death.

At the height of the blacklisting in Hollywood, when numerous filmmakers were blacklisted on suspicion of communist activities, Lee went to England and made his last film there with Sidney Poitier. In order to be able to embody their roles as African ministers appropriately, Poitier and Lee were smuggled into South Africa as contract workers. Lee's last film was a call for international solidarity for all black people in the world. Lee was put on the "un-American" artist index and got no more work. In Italy, Lee wanted to work on a film version of Othello , but his passport was withheld by the American authorities.

After his death, rumors surfaced that Lee had denounced Robeson as a communist. The dead Lee could of course not defend himself, so his name was soiled with this accusation. The civil rights movement took no notice of Lee's achievements.

Filmography (selection)

• 1939: Keep Punching
• 1944: The lifeboat (Lifeboat)
• 1947: Hunt for Millions (Body and Soul)
• 1949: When Parents Are Silent (Lost Boundaries)
• 1951: Because they should be comforted (Cry, the Beloved Country)

Web links

Commons : Canada Lee  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Canada Lee in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Homepage of Canada Lee
• Biography of African-American History (English)
• Canada Lee's fighting stats as a boxer