Taking A Chance On Love
Have you heard of Hazel Scott? Even many die-hard jazz fans have never heard her name. Hazel Scott (June 11, 1920 – October 2, 1981) was a Trinidadian-born jazz and classical pianist, singer, and actor. She moved to New York City with her mother at the age of four. Scott was a child musical prodigy, receiving scholarships to study at the Juilliard School when she was eight. In her teens, she performed in a jazz band. By 1945. at the age of 25 she was the toast of New York Cafe Society, and was earning $75,000 a year ($1,065,111 today). That year she married US Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, and they were THE Black "Power Couple" of New York City.
In the '40s she began appearing in Hollywood films, always playing herself. She was willing to take on other acting roles, but she refused to play a maid or a nanny or any other Black character role, so she never got cast. She was the first person of African descent to have their own television show in America, The Hazel Scott Show, which premiered on the DuMont Television Network on July 3, 1950.
She was a strong civil rights activist, and she became known for being "difficult" as she insisted on being treated as an equal on and off the screen. Scott voluntarily appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee on September 22, 1950, speaking to Joe McCarthy's committee. She stated she had never been a communist, but she expressed her frustrations with the mass amount of false accusations of entertainers and offered the suggestion to utilize “democratic methods to immediately eliminate a good many irresponsible charges.” Scott concludes her statement to the HUAC with a request that entertainers are not already "covered with the mud of slander and the filth of scandal when proving their loyalty to the United States". Her television variety program, The Hazel Scott Show, was cancelled a week after Scott appeared before HUAC, on September 29, 1950.
Hazel moved to Paris in 1957, and her marriage ended in divorce in 1960. She returned to the US in 1967 after the Civil Rights Movement had made some advances. She continued to perform, but her career was pretty much over.
Imagine how different this story might have been, if she had not been born a woman of color?
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