show”, as many referred to MGM, that the studio reserved for the likes of Greta Garbo, JeanHarlow, Lana Turner, and Ava Gardner. Donald Bogle, naturally, knows that Lena, regardless ofbeing one of the most beautiful women to walk the earth, suffered endless indignities, on stageand set, in the studio cutting rooms, out of the studios’ playlands, wherever her presence wasregarded as undesirable. Louie Mayer, “God of the Inconsequential gods”, as the rejected orfired referred to him, quietly frowned, but accepted her interracial marriage to MGMcomposer, Lennie Hayton. Yet, as Donald eloquently narrates and concludes, Lena triumphs andbecomes one of the most iconic performers of the twentieth century. For his highly insightfulinformation, he depended upon Lena’s interviews, reliable press accounts, studio archives, anddecades of research, with innumerable photographs, public, studio professional, and personal,to back him up. As Running Press suggests, “ ‘LENA HORNE, Goddess Reclaimed’ is the ultimate
book on the legend.”
