Hazel Scott

Hazel Dorothy Scott (June 11, 1920 – October 2, 1981) was a Trinidad-born American jazz and classical pianist and singer whose Broadway appearances, film work, and television career made her one of the most prominent Black entertainers of the mid-twentieth century. Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, to R. Thomas Scott, a West African scholar from Liverpool, England, and Alma Long Scott, a classically trained pianist and music teacher, Scott relocated with her family to Harlem, New York City in 1924, following her parents' separation.

Scott demonstrated exceptional musical ability from an early age. Her mother guided her development at the piano, and by the age of eight she had begun formal study with Professor Oscar Wagner of the Juilliard School of Music. In 1933, her mother formed Alma Long Scott's All-Girl Jazz Band, in which Scott played both piano and trumpet. By her mid-teens she was performing on radio programs for the Mutual Broadcasting System, earning the nickname "hot classicist," and she also performed at the Roseland Dance Hall alongside the Count Basie Orchestra.

Her stage career in New York encompassed appearances at the Cotton Club Revue of 1938, and her Broadway credits include Sing Out the News, in which she appeared alongside Will Geer, June Allyson, and Maude Simmons, and New Priorities of 1943. Scott's Broadway activity spanned 1938 to 1942. Beginning in 1939 and continuing through 1943, she served as a leading attraction at both the downtown and uptown locations of Café Society, the club operated by Barney Josephson. Her performances there built a national reputation for her practice of blending classical compositions with jazz and boogie-woogie, a style described as "swinging the classics." She also appeared at Carnegie Hall as part of Café Society's From Bach to Boogie-Woogie concerts in 1941 and 1943. By 1945, her annual earnings had reached $75,000.

Scott's film career unfolded across five Hollywood productions, in all of which she appeared as herself. She performed in I Dood It (MGM, 1943), The Heat's On (Columbia, 1943), Something to Shout About (Columbia, 1943), Broadway Rhythm (MGM, 1944) alongside Lena Horne, and Rhapsody in Blue (Warner Bros., 1945). She declined the first four roles she was offered in Hollywood because they required her to play a "singing maid," and she negotiated final cut privileges over her own appearance in each film, insisting on the screen credit "Miss Hazel Scott as Herself" and wearing her own clothing and jewelry. Her professional relationship with Columbia Pictures ended over a costuming dispute she felt perpetuated racial stereotypes.

On July 3, 1950, Scott became the first Black American to host her own television series when The Hazel Scott Show premiered on the DuMont Television Network. The program featured jazz musicians including Charles Mingus and Max Roach among its supporting performers and grew popular enough to air three times weekly. The show was cancelled on September 29, 1950, one week after Scott voluntarily appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee to contest her listing in Red Channels: A Report on Communist Influence in Radio and Television. In her prepared statement to the committee, she denied any knowing affiliation with the Communist Party or its front organizations and called for democratic processes to address what she characterized as irresponsible accusations against entertainers. Scott suffered a nervous breakdown in 1951 but subsequently resumed performing in the United States and Europe, including guest appearances on television programs such as Cavalcade of Stars and Faye Emerson's Wonderful Town.

Throughout her career Scott was an outspoken opponent of racial segregation. She refused to perform at venues where audiences were segregated by race, and on one occasion Texas Rangers escorted her out of Austin, Texas after she declined to perform before a segregated crowd. In 1949, she filed suit against a restaurant in Pasco, Washington after she and her traveling companion were refused service because they were Black. Her legal victory contributed to civil rights organizing in Spokane and was credited with helping prompt the Washington state legislature to pass the Public Accommodations Act in 1953.

Scott moved to Paris in 1957 to distance herself from the political consequences of McCarthyism in the United States. While living in France she appeared in the French crime film Le désordre et la nuit (1958), directed by Gilles Grangier. In 1963 she joined James Baldwin and other African-American expatriates in a march to the United States Embassy in Paris in support of the March on Washington. Scott did not return to the United States until 1967, after a decade abroad. She continued to perform in nightclubs and on daytime television in her later years before her death on October 2, 1981.