Canada Lee was born Leonard Lionel Cornelius Canegata on Mach 3 1907 in New York City. He grew up in Harlem. He was very young when he proved to have an aptitude for music. He started studying violin and piano with J. Rosamond Johnson at the Music School Settlement for Colored People when he was only seven years old. He was only eleven when he made his concert debut. He left home when he was 14 in 1921, going to Saratoga Springs, New York. It was there that he became a jockey.
He returned to Harlem in 1923 (according to Mr. Lee it was because he gained too much weight to be a jockey). He considered taking up music again, but a friend suggested that he try boxing. It was through boxing that he received his stage name. He was billed as Canatega Lee at an amateur boxing match, but announcer Joe Humphries announced him as "Canada Lee." Canada Lee liked the name and decided to keep it. He proved to be a formidable amateur boxer, winning 90 out of 100 bouts. He also won the amateur lightweight title. He went professional in 1926. Records for boxing were not very well kept in the Twenties and Thirties, but Mr. Lee's obituary in The New York Times reported he won 200 bouts and lost 25. He ended his boxing career after a blow from Andy Divodi at Madison Square Garden on December 12 1929 detached the retina of his right eye. While Canada Lee won the 10-round match, he lost his sight in his right eye. He then chose to stop boxing.
Canada Lee was still boxing when he formed a dance band. Initially playing at smaller clubs, Canada Lee's fortunes would change because of his old friend Ed Sullivan. Ed Sullivan had been a sports writer, but had launched an entertainment column in 1932. Mr. Sullivan plugged Canada Lee's band in his new column and the band began playing bigger venues. Eventually Canada Lee opened his own club, The Jitterbug. Sadly, it remained open only for six months in 1934.
Canada Lee's career more or less came about by accident. In need of a job, he went to visit an old friend who was a counsellor for the employment bureau at the Harlem YMCA. He wandered about the YMCA for a while before entering a small auditorium where auditions were taking place. He took a seat and watched the auditions. It was after a while that the director, Frank Wilson, beckoned Canada Lee to the stage, thinking he was there to audition. It was actor and playwright Augustus Smith who recognized him as the boxer Canada Lee. Frank Wilson then persuaded Mr. Lee to read for a part. Canada Lee got the part,that of Nathan in Brother Mose. His acting career had officially begun.
Canada Lee would prove to have a successful career on stage. In 1934 he replaced Rex Ingram in a revival of Stevedore that played on Broadway and later went on tour to such cities as Chicago and Detroit. He played Banquo in Orson Welles's production of Macbeth. Mr. Lee would go onto appear in such productions as Haiti, Mamba's Daughters, Native Son, The Tempest, and Anna Lucasta.
While Canada Lee was enormously successful on stage, he would make only a few movies. He made his film debut in 1939 in Keep Punching, playing the trainer for boxer Henry Jackson (Henry Armstrong). It was in 1944 that he appeared in one of his most significant film roles, playing Joe Spencer in Lifeboat. Canada Lee played boxing trainer Ben Chaplin in the film noir Body and Soul (1947), Naval officer Lt. Thompson in Lost Boundaries (1949), and Black minister Stephen Kumalo (Canada Lee) in Cry, the Beloved Country (1951).
Sadly, Cry, the Beloved Country would be Canada Lee's final role. He died on May 9 1952 at the age of 45. At the time it was reported that the cause was a heart attack, but his widow later revealed that he had uraemia and he had actually died of kidney disease.
In addition to being a talented actor, Canada Lee was also a remarkable man. In 1940 he met a young Jewish runaway named H. Jack Geiger backstage at Native Son. With the consent of young Geiger's parents, Mr. Lee too him in and young H. Jack Geiger stayed with him for a year. It was with a loan from Canada Lee that he was able to enroll at the University of Wisconsin in 1941. H. Jack Geiger not only became a well-known, respected physician, but an activist for civil rights. Among other things, he would become one of the founders of Physicians for Social Responsibility and Physicians for Human Rights.
When Canada Lee was touring the New York City boroughs with Native Son in 1941, he bought tickets to the show for fifty underprivileged boys from the Harlem YMCA. During World War II he promoted the buying of war bonds, and also spoke out against segregation in the United States military. He would late speak out against apartheid in South Africa.
Sadly, Canada Lee would fall victim to the Hollywood blacklist, which is why he did not appear in more movies. According to Canada Lee's widow, Frances Lee, like other Black celebrities Mr. Lee was approached to denounce fellow actor and activist Paul Robeson as a Communist. According to Mrs. Lee, Canada Lee refused to do so. While some accounts claim that Canada Lee did denounce Paul Robeson, this seems highly unlikely. If he had, it would seem that he would no longer have been blacklisted. For that matter, Paul Robeson and Canada Lee remained friends until Mr. Lee's death. It would seem then that, despite the fact that he would not longer be blacklisted, Canada Lee refused to betray one of his friends.
In some ways Canada Lee seems like a superhero. He was a musician. He was a jockey. He was a boxer. He was an actor. And while his careers as a musician, jockey, and boxer may have been cut short, he proved to be very successful as an actor. While he would only have a few movies to his credit, he is impressive in all of them. Once one has seen Canada Lee in a film, one can never forget him. It makes it all the sadder that he was blacklisted and died so young.
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