The identify Hazel Scott ought to most likely be as properly generally known as Billie Vacation or Lena Horne. A jazz virtuoso and classical pianist, the one-time baby prodigy turned one of the well-known leisure figures of the Nineteen Thirties and ‘40s, playing in some of New York City’s most iconic venues, together with Café Society, the Cotton Membership and Carnegie Corridor.
She additionally appeared in quite a few movies and was the primary Black performer to have their very own tv present, “The Hazel Scott Show,” which ran the summer season of 1950. (Ethel Waters hosted a self-titled one-night particular on NBC in 1939, however Scott was the primary to have a collection.)
Scott’s identify and her legacy was seemingly forgotten in musical and civil rights circles for generations till Alicia Keys praised her on the 2019 Grammy Awards.
“American Masters — The Disappearance of Miss Scott,” a documentary premiering Friday on PBS, goals to rectify that by inspecting her life and profession and uncover why this singular expertise and necessary historic determine shouldn’t be very well-known. The movie options excerpts of Scott’s unpublished autobiography, voiced by Sheryl Lee Ralph, and interviews with nation star Mickey Guyton, actors Amanda Seales and Tracie Thoms, jazz musicians Camille Thurman and Jason Moran, and journalist and former media govt Adam Clayton Powell III, Scott’s solely son.
Nicole London, who directed and produced the documentary, has beforehand helped form initiatives about Miles Davis, Sammy Davis Jr. and Marvin Gaye. London acknowledged Scott’s significance however actually solely knew a couple of particulars about her life: she had been married to Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a New York politician and pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and that she had famously “played the two pianos” within the 1943 movie “The Heat’s On.”
“I didn’t know so much about her. But in diving into this film, she’s just as towering a figure as any of those,” London says. “That’s what I want people to come away with. This is a talent. This is a woman who had a depth and breadth of a career that’s just as memorable and worthy of canonizing as a Marvin Gaye, as a Sammy Davis Jr. or Miles Davis.”
Along with her performing expertise, Scott was additionally a civil rights advocate within the a long time previous to the wave of protests within the ‘60s. She would not play before crowds that were not integrated, a stipulation in her contract when performing at music venues. She advocated for herself and other Black artists as her onscreen career began to heat up, but a studio clash was said to have derailed her movie career.
Scott nonetheless flourished while she continued to demand equity and dignity. She was eventually approached to host a network television show, becoming the first Black American to do so with “The Hazel Scott Show,” which launched on DuMont. Within weeks, the television network expanded the show to a national program airing three times a week.
It was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to her sense of justice and how people should be treated equally. Everything seemed to be going well — then the government came into play.
The documentary explains how Scott was caught up in the Red Scare, with her name appearing in “Red Channels: A Report on Communist Influence in Radio and Television,” an anti-Communist document published in June 1950, that accused her of being a communist. Powell recalled how his mother was intent on testifying before Congress to clear her name and shine a light on the bullying tactics that the government was employing.
“I remember when my mother decided to go to testify at the House Un-American Activities Committee. The three of us were having dinner — my mother, my father and me,” Powell recalls. “My father said, ‘Why are you doing this? You can’t win with these individuals. These persons are going to get you.’ She mentioned, ‘No, they’re harming lots of people, not simply me. I’ve obtained to go or inform them they’re the un-People.’ My father was shaking his head. He mentioned, ‘You can’t win.’”
After testifying, Scott’s tv present was canceled and her employment alternatives within the U.S. abruptly dried up. It was a fall that appeared to occur extraordinarily quick. She ended up transferring to Paris, the place she continued to get pleasure from a profitable profession. Whereas there, she was surrounded by associates and visiting contemporaries — Powell recollects enjoying chess with a younger Quincy Jones. Although she was off the continent, she stored in touch.
“That’s one thing that we regretted that we didn’t have the time to really fit into the film. Nina Simone had written her a beautiful letter to encourage her to come back. ‘Things are happening now, especially in the ‘60s. Things are happening now. We really see that there’s hope for change. How can they not know your name in this fight?’” London says. “Martin Luther King had also encouraged her to come back and join the fight because there had been a momentum shift.”
Scott returned to the U.S. to a modified and charged ambiance, with the massive band and jazz period passing, and a way more vocal opposition to racist attitudes and legal guidelines.
“My mother, years later in Paris, she said, ‘Remember your father said I couldn’t win? Well, that’s true. It ended the TV show. But what happened to Joseph McCarthy after that? He left in disgrace,’” Powell says.
Scott continued to be energetic on the civil rights circuit, however “thought that things were on the right track, that there was a bit of progress made,” Powell says. Scott wished to be house, fawning over grandchildren. She obtained her “dream engagement” when she was provided a stint at Kippy’s Pier 44 in New York for as many weeks as she wished to carry out. Shortly after, she started complaining of abdomen ache and was later identified with pancreatic most cancers.
In telling her story, London hopes for “people to be able to come to her story, learn about Hazel, learn about what she did, learn about her virtuosity. Learn about her strength and her courage. Here was someone that set a model for her time, but you could take some lessons from her story. The way to advocate for yourself, advocate for your own talent, a way to advocate for your own freedom.”
“There’s a reason that the title is ‘The Disappearance of Miss Scott.’ I really see this documentary as the re-appearance of Ms. Scott,” Powell says.
