The name Hazel Scott should probably be as well known as Billie Holiday or Lena Horne. A jazz virtuoso and classical pianist, the one-time child prodigy became one of the most well-known entertainment figures of the 1930s and ‘40s, playing in some of New York City’s most iconic venues, including Café Society, the Cotton Club and Carnegie Hall.
She also appeared in numerous films and was the first Black performer to have their own television show, “The Hazel Scott Show,” which ran the summer of 1950. (Ethel Waters hosted a self-titled one-night special on NBC in 1939, but Scott was the first to have a series.)
Scott’s name and her legacy was seemingly forgotten in musical and civil rights circles for generations until Alicia Keys praised her at the 2019 Grammy Awards.
“American Masters — The Disappearance of Miss Scott,” a documentary premiering Friday on PBS, aims to rectify that by examining her life and career and uncover why this singular talent and important historical figure is not very well known. The film features excerpts of Scott’s unpublished autobiography, voiced by Sheryl Lee Ralph, and interviews with country star Mickey Guyton, actors Amanda Seales and Tracie Thoms, jazz musicians Camille Thurman and Jason Moran, and journalist and former media executive Adam Clayton Powell III, Scott’s only son.
Nicole London, who directed and produced the documentary, has previously helped shape projects about Miles Davis, Sammy Davis Jr. and Marvin Gaye. London recognized Scott’s importance but really only knew a few details 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” in the 1943 film “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.”
In addition to her performing talent, Scott was also a civil rights advocate in the decades prior to the wave of protests in 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 people. These people are going to get you.’ She said, ‘No, they’re harming a lot of people, not just me. I’ve got to go or tell them they are the un-Americans.’ My father was shaking his head. He said, ‘You can’t win.’”
After testifying, Scott’s television show was canceled and her employment opportunities in the U.S. suddenly dried up. It was a fall that seemed to happen extremely fast. She ended up moving to Paris, where she continued to enjoy a successful career. While there, she was surrounded by friends and visiting contemporaries — Powell recalls playing chess with a young Quincy Jones. Though she was off the continent, she kept in contact.
“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 changed and charged atmosphere, with the big band and jazz era passing, and a much more vocal opposition to racist attitudes and laws.
“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 active on the civil rights circuit, but “thought that things were on the right track, that there was a bit of progress made,” Powell says. Scott wanted to be home, fawning over grandchildren. She got her “dream engagement” when she was offered a stint at Kippy’s Pier 44 in New York for as many weeks as she wanted to perform. Shortly after, she began complaining of stomach pain and was later diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
In telling her tale, 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.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
