The Day Lena Horne Told Me New York Would Stretch Me Out

In 1977 or 1978, I was living in Nashville, Tennessee, singing and dancing at Opryland USA.

I didn’t have a car.

So getting to work sometimes meant taking the bus from North Nashville to Opryland, changing buses downtown along the way.

Nashville had recently built its first big skyscraper, the Hyatt Regency. And one morning, as I walked between bus transfers, I passed the hotel and saw a beautiful Black woman standing outside in a long fur coat.

I looked closer.

Lena Horne.

Nobody seemed to notice her.

Nobody but me.

Lena Horne had recently been on the cover of Ebony magazine. I had stared at that cover, never imagining that one day soon I would be standing on a Nashville sidewalk looking at the woman herself.

Years later, I would realize she was probably waiting for a limousine.

But I was young.

I was ambitious.

And apparently, I had not yet learned to leave celebrities alone.

So I walked up to her.

“Hi, Miss Horne. My name is Lee Summers. I’m performing at Opryland USA, and I plan to move to New York one day. I just wondered if you had any advice for me.”

She turned.

Looked at me.

Looked me up and down.

And said:

“Go on up there, child. They’ll give you a good stretching out.”

Well.

I had no idea what the hell that meant.

But I was about to find out.

Approximately two years later, I moved to New York.

By then, Lena Horne was starring on Broadway in Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music.

I went to see the show, and apparently I looked so much like the young man who sang and danced with her that people congratulated me as I made my way backstage.

His name was Lance.

I remember thinking:

I could do that.

Then Lance left the show.

An opening became available.

I auditioned.

And forgot about it.

By the time the call came, I was away working somewhere. They wanted me back in New York to be seen as Lance’s replacement in the Broadway production of Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music.

I came back.

We spent the day singing.

Dancing.

Auditioning.

My friend Claire was the dance captain.

And then Lena Horne herself walked into the room.

There are moments in a young performer’s life that remain frozen in time.

This is one of mine.

Each of us had the opportunity to sing and dance “Copper Colored Gal of Mine” with the great Lena Horne.

The woman I had approached on a Nashville sidewalk.

The woman in the long fur coat.

The woman who had told me New York would stretch me out.

And now, here I was.

In New York.

Auditioning to perform with her on Broadway.

As the day went on, people were eliminated.

Eventually, there were two of us left.

Me and another actor.

He knows who he is.

And if he’s reading this, he’s probably already cringing because I’ve been telling this story for more than forty years.

Don’t worry, friend.

Your identity remains safe.

There we stood.

The two actors.

My friend Claire.

Lena’s manager.

Lena had left the room.

Her manager looked at us and said:

“Lena likes you both. We’re not sure which one of you we’re going to go with.”

My heart must have been pounding.

This could be it.

My Broadway debut.

Then they looked at my friend.

And said:

“But could you stay?”

Oh.

I walked out of that building and onto the streets of New York City with tears streaming down my face.

I was young.

I was broke.

And I was so hungry to make my Broadway debut that the disappointment felt unbearable.

I remember looking up at New York City and cursing her.

Calling New York a bitch.

Which, quiet as kept, she can be.

And suddenly, standing there devastated on a New York sidewalk, I understood what the beautiful Black woman in the long fur coat had been trying to tell me years earlier.

New York had stretched me out.

Good and proper.

But here’s the thing about being stretched.

Sometimes you don’t know what you’re being stretched for.

Soon after that day, Broadway called.

And I made my Broadway debut.

I had gone from a bus stop in Nashville, to a sidewalk outside the Hyatt Regency, to an audition room with Lena Horne, to the streets of New York with tears running down my face.

And then, finally, to Broadway.

Every generation that discovers Lena Horne gets to discover the legend.

But somewhere inside that legend lives my own little memory.

A young man on his way to work.

A woman waiting for a limousine.

And one sentence I didn’t understand until years later.

“Go on up there, child. They’ll give you a good stretching out.”

She was right.

She was absolutely right.