Lionel
Canegata was
born in New York on 3rd March,
1907. He attended school in Harlem but at the age of fourteen he ran
away to be a jockey at Saratoga. After growing too heavy he became
a boxer and eventually won the national amateur lightweight title.
In 1926 he turned professional and adopted the name Canada
Lee. He was a leading contender for the welterweight championship,
but a detached retina forced to retire from the ring in 1933.
After a spell leading his own band, Lee became an actor with the Harlem
YMCA, an organization subsidized by the Works Progress Administration.
In 1936 he won critical acclaim as Banquo in the Federal Theater's
Negro production of Macbeth.
On Broadway he played
Othello,
Kid Chocolate in Body
and Soul,
and Bigger Thomas in Native
Son,
a play based on the novel by Richard Wright.
The New
York Times
described his performance as "the most vital piece of acting
on the current stage."
Lee moved to Hollywood and appeared in Keep
Pinching
(1939), Farmer
Henry Browne
(1942), Lifeboat
(1944),
Body
and Soul
(1947), Lost
Boundaries
(1949) and Cry,
the Beloved Country
(1951).
After the war the House of Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC) began an investigation into the Hollywood Motion
Picture Industry. The HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working
in Hollywood. These people attended voluntarily and became known as
"friendly witnesses". During their interviews they named
several people who they accused of holding left-wing views.
One of those named, Bertolt Brecht, an
emigrant playwright, gave evidence and then left for East Germany.
Ten others: Herbert Biberman, Lester
Cole, Albert Maltz, Adrian
Scott, Samuel Ornitz, Dalton
Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, Ring
Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson
and Alvah Bessie refused to answer any
questions.
Known as the Hollywood
Ten, they claimed that the 5th Amendment of the United
States Constitution gave them the right to do this. The House
of Un-American Activities Committee and the courts during appeals
disagreed and all were found guilty of contempt of congress and each
was sentenced to between six and twelve months in prison.
Those named were also called before the House
of Un-American Activities Committee. Some refused to answer questions
but others, such as Richard Collins,
Budd Schulberg, Elia
Kazan and Lee J. Cobb, named others
who were fellow members of left-wing groups. If these people refused
to testify and name names, they were added to a blacklist that had
been drawn up by the Hollywood film studios.
Lee, who had been a member of left-wing groups was one of those actors
named as a communist.
Lee refused to testify and was blacklisted. Lee's name also appeared
in the pamphlet Red Channels.
This listed 150 people working in Hollywood who were known to have
been involved in anti-HUAC activities. The American Tobacco Company
threatened to remove its sponsorship of television shows unless Lee
and other people mentioned in Red Channels
lost their contracts. Unable to find work he called a press conference
denying that he had ever been a member of the Communist
Party. However, unwilling to testify before the HUAC, he remained
blacklisted.
Canada Lee died
of a heart attack on 9th May, 1952. Only
forty-five years old, his family and friends claimed that the stress
brought on by McCarthyism was a major
factor in his early death.
(1)
Canada Lee, letter to Walter
White of the National
Association for the Advancement of Coloured People
(April, 1952)
I can't take it anymore. I am
going to get a shoeshine box and sit outside the Astor Theatre. My
picture (Cry, the Beloved Country) is playing to capacity audiences
and, my God, I can't get one day's work.
(2)
Daily
Worker,
on the death of Canada Lee (13th May, 1952)
Those
who joined with the torturers three and a half years ago now vulture-like
seek to embrace their victim. Like one, the red-baiting obituary writers
of the commercial press seize upon two sentences from the Negro actor
while he was on the economic rack: "I am not a Communist or a
joiner of any kind."
They could not make Canada Lee into a cold war stool pigeon. He fought
for his dignity, even when he did not understand the nature of that
flight.
Last
updated: 16th August, 2002
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