Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, honoring composer, musician, and singer Carole King, is currently playing on Broadway. This month’s e-newsletter not only features Carole King but another musical sensation as well, Hazel Harrison. Enjoy reading about these two amazing musical women.
Ella Brennan, a well-known, well respected New Orleans restaurant owner, nurtured celebrity
chefs, but didn’t believe it appropriate to worship them, “A restaurant is not a church, where you
have to be quiet and kneel,” she said. Brennan, whose family owned more than a dozen different
restaurants, died earlier this year. Thinking of her reminded us to share the story of two other
remarkable women in the food business: Romana Bañuelos and Ruth Fertel.
Young Jean Lee is the first Asian-American woman to have her play performed on Broadway.
This occurred in July when Straight White Men opened. Lorraine Hansberry was the first AfricanAmerican
woman author with a play on Broadway when A Raisin in the Sun opened in 1959. We
featured Lorraine Hansberry and another playwright, Clare Boothe Luce, in enewsletters during
2017, after the announcement that they would both be inducted into the National Women’s Hall of
Fame. In honor of Young Jean Lee, this month we feature playwrights Anita Loos and Wendy
Wasserstein. Let’s learn more about these remarkable women.
Author, playwright and screenwriter Anita Loos is probably best known for her novel, then
Broadway play, then movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She started as a scriptwriter in the silent
film industry in the early 1910s. Her script for The New York Hat earned her $25; it was a short
film starring Mary Pickford and featuring Lionel Barrymore in his film debut. Called by film director
D.W. Griffith “the most brilliant woman in the world,” Loos’s intertitles grace his 1916 epic movie
Intolerance.
During 2018, the United States Postal Service has selected two women to be featured on U.S.
postage stamps. These stamps have already been released; they feature Lena Horne and Sally
Ride. Let’s learn more about these amazing women!
For over seventy years, actress, singer and dancer Lena Horne excelled in her entertainment
career. In 1933, at age 16, she appeared in the chorus line of the Cotton Club in New York City.
She made her first records in the late 1930s and also appeared in a few low-budget movies. Her
movie debut was in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s 1942 movie Panama Hattie. In 1943 she performed
the title song to the movie Stormy Weather. Her career was thwarted as she was not cast in
leading roles because she was African American.
May 2018 was a month in which women achieved firsts in politics and government. Gina Haspel became the first female director of the Central Intelligence Agency, after her confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Stacey Abrams became the first African-American woman to win a major party nomination for Governor, when the Democrats in Georgia put her on their slate. Their accomplishments are significant; we cannot forget that the groundwork was laid by many other earlier women, including two profiled in this month’s enewsletter: Jeannette Rankin and Sandra Day O’Connor. Both Rankin and O’Connor have been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
