Jeni's life illustrates the difference between black and white performers who didn't mix socially and were not afforded the same courtesies. In Jeni's day and up to the 1960s, blacks were frequently expected to enter the hotels in which they were performing by the back door and could not stay in the hotels. Jeni experienced a profound difference when she moved to Europe to perform. As she says, "People treated me like I was a person and not a person of colour." The movies in which she starred, and in which she played "everyone's maid," followed her return to the States. In the 1950s, she played a "glamour gal" on the television show Amos 'n Andy and opened her own dance studio. Jeni had been asked to bring her show to Canada several times but had thought it would be too cold. In 1969, she came to Vancouver where she met several friends and former students who convinced her to stay. She served as a "motivating agent, a person of some stature [who] moved in and stayed" and has been a fixture and a role model to kids ever since.

      This video is not only a tribute to a vibrant, caring woman but also serves to illustrate cultural differences over time and across North America and Europe. Fascinating as a study of Jeni, it would be a useful tool for a study of multicultural awareness, a comparison of Hollywood to European lifestyles, or a measure of change in the past fifty years.

Highly Recommended.