Canada Lee, renowned as an actor of the stage, screen and radio, was born in 1907 in New York City as Leonard Lionel Cornelius Canegata. His father, James Cornelius Lionel Canegata, born in St. Croix to a prominent family, immigrated to New York as a youth and married Lydia Whaley Gasden. Lee attended Harlem's P. S. 5 for eight years, and at age twelve gave a violin recital at Aeolian Hall, having studied the violin from the age of seven with William H. Butler and J. Rosamond Johnson, and piano with the latter and Thomas "Fats" Waller.
Two years later at age fourteen, Lee ran away from home to Saratoga, New York and within one month became a jockey, finishing second, then first in his first two races. After becoming too heavy to ride, he became a prizefighter. Starting as a lightweight, he won the Amateur Metropolitan championship, the Junior Nationals, and the Inter-City finals. He turned professional as a welterweight and was a New York State title holder engaging in more than 175 fights; he was never knocked out and was floored only three times. He adopted the name Canada Lee after some people nicknamed him Lee and Joe Humphries in announcing Lee's first fight, mispronounced Canegata, and inverted these names. In 1930 his eye was severely damaged in a championship fight against Willie Garafolo for the welterweight title. He continued barn storming for another year until a detached retina in his damaged eye forced him to retire from boxing, however he spent a brief period as a sparring partner for Joe Louis.
Following his retirement from boxing, Lee turned to the music profession. Utilizing his talents as a violinist and pianist, he headed a fourteen piece band called the Cotton Pickers in the 1930s; he also owned a nightclub called the Jitterbug at this time. In the 1940s he was the proprietor of the Harlem restaurant, the Chicken Coop.
Lee's entrée into the acting world was, as with his other careers somewhat accidental - without a job in 1933; he went to the unemployment bureau of the YMCA. Discouraged by the long wait, he sat in the corner of the Y's little theater during auditioning and was asked to try out for a role and got it. Thus Lee's stage career began with a part in the Federal Theatre Project's production of Brother Mose (1934).
His second role was as Blacksnake in the Theatre Union's Stevedore (1935) and, the following year he played in the comedy Sailor Beware at the Lafayette Theater. He then appeared as Banquo in Orson Welles' and John Housman's all black production of Macbeth (1936), and in 1938 he starred as Christophe in Haiti, both Federal Theatre productions. Lee worked steadily in increasingly prominent roles throughout the late 1930s. He appeared in revivals of Eugene O'Neill's Moon of the Caribbees and Bound East, and George Abbott's production of Brown Sugar with Juan Hernandez and Butterfly McQueen. In 1939 he made his first Broadway appearance in Mamba's Daughters with Ethel Waters, Fredi Washington and Vincent Price. When the Negro Playwright Company attempted to establish a theater of significance in Harlem, Lee was given his first starring role in its initial offering, Theodore Ward's Big White Fog (1940). He quickly rose to stardom, achieving tremendous success on Broadway as Bigger Thomas in Orson Welles' production of Native Son and winning Broadway's highest acting honor at the time, the Critic's Award for the best performance of 1941. It was reported that Lee's performance in the role created by Richard Wright epitomized the frustrated and troubled black man driven to kill in an attempt to escape Jim Crow "justice." Other Broadway roles included a short run in William Saroyan's Across the Board, Jim in South Pacific, Danny in the Broadway production of Anna Lucasta, and Caliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest, directed by Margaret Webster. Lee's next play, On Whitman Avenue (1946), which he and Mark Marvin co-produced, made Lee the first black producer in the history of Broadway. The play concerns a black family fighting to live in a white neighborhood, with Lee playing the lead character who would not accept less than his full citizenship rights.
That same year Lee played the role of a white man in The Duchess of Malfi, a 17th century melodrama, after it became necessary to replace the white actor originally chosen for the role of Daniel de Bosola. This was the first time in theatrical history that a producer had selected the man he considered the best actor for a role regardless of color. Lee donned white makeup, a wig and a satin doublet in order to play a swarthy villain. This was followed by Shakespeare's Othello which received rave notices for Lee's performance in trial runs in Boston and Saratoga Springs; however plans for a tour in 1949 were postponed.
The last play in which Lee performed, Set My People Free (1948) by Dorothy Heyward, retells the story of the abortive slave revolt in 1822 in South Carolina led by Denmark Vesey; Lee played the role of the slave who betrayed the revolt. He also prepared a script for a tour entitled One Man Show which he previewed at the Village Vanguard in Manhattan's Greenwich Village in April 1952.
Canada Lee appeared in several major motion pictures. In 1944 he played Joe in Lifeboat, a story set during World War II, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He portrayed a boxer in Body and Soul, which starred John Garfield (1947), and took a minor role, which was written especially for him, as a police lieutenant in Lost Boundaries (1949). Lee accepted the role because he believed the plot had something important to say about relationships between blacks and whites. His last production was the major motion picture, Cry, the Beloved Country (1952) set in South Africa. In this movie he portrayed Kumalo, a role which summed up in a character many of the things Lee felt particularly deeply: kinship and understanding between peoples. Three months following his death, Cry, the Beloved Country was awarded the 1952 David O. Selznick Silver Laurel prize for English motion pictures.
A principled man, Canada Lee never took roles that would denegrate blacks, and is best known for his portrayals of non-stereotypical roles, which was unusual for black actors in the 1940s and early 1950s. He also preferred productions that contained a social commentary on American society. In the mid-1940s he stated, "I want to do things in pictures that will give Negroes a new status", and associated himself with dramas that presented plans for racial tolerance and a better understanding of the thoughts and feelings of blacks. He also fought to win better roles for blacks in the theatrical arts, and through his own example, served as a model for the generation of actors that followed him including Sidney Poitier, Ossie Davis and William Greaves.
In addition to his stage and screen roles, Lee appeared in numerous radio and several television programs, such as George Washington Carver on NBC. In 1944 he narrated a weekly radio series New World A-Coming written by Roi Ottley and produced by WMCA in cooperation with the Citywide Citizen's Committee on Harlem. The series dramatized the inner meaning of black life. He also had a radio talk show, The Canada Lee Show on WNEW in 1948.
Lee formed his own production company, Canada Lee Productions, in 1947 through which he planned to produce the musical play The Reluctant Virgin. He invested substantial amounts of time and money in the production, contacted directors and actors, and even made test record albums for the musical score. Unable to secure sufficient interest or backing for the play, he abandoned the project two years later. He incorporated another production company in 1950, Lionel Enterprises, Ltd. primarily as a tax shelter for his earnings from Cry, the Beloved Country and to handle the potential tour of a theatrical production of Othello in the United States following the completion of the film Othello, scheduled in Italy.
During the 1940s and early 1950s, after achieving prominence as an actor, Lee used his name and popularity to garner support for the many causes and issues he believed in, particularly the struggle for equal rights for black people. Widely sought after as a public speaker, he gave his time and talent to a variety of benefits to raise money for political, educational and medical causes. Like many public figures, he expressed his patriotism and support for the war effort through participation in war bond rallies and armed forces recruiting, for which the Armed Forces Recruiting Station gave him an award. He was particularly active with anti-fascist and civil rights organizations during the war and post-war periods, and took a strong stance against segregation and racist policies including segregation of the United States Armed Forces. Among the numerous causes and organizations he supported were the Committee of Russian War Relief, assistance to refugees from concentration camps in Nazi-controlled Germany, the Negro Labor Victory Committee, and the Council on African Affairs. Two of his last public appearances were his presentation of the main speech for the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and a fund raising benefit for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on March 6, 1952. Medical causes he supported included polio, multiple sclerosis, and the prevention of blindness.
In 1949 the State Department labeled Lee a communist and subsequently did not renew his passport in 1951. The accusation was a result, in part, of his membership in and support for many organizations that the State Department had declared subversive. In his defense Lee publicly proclaimed that he was not a communist and issued statements supporting American democracy. He wrote to columnists Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan, hoping that they would print his letters in which he explained that he was not a communist. Like other blacklisted actors, Lee found his ability to work in radio, television and films seriously handicapped. The denial of his passport prevented him from travelling to Europe to work on a film version of Othello as well as other projects he wanted to pursue abroad. It was during this period that he hoped to tour his One Man Show in order to earn income. Unfortunately, his health was already failing and he was unable to realize the production.
While filming Cry, the Beloved Country on location in South Africa in 1950, extreme hypertension and related medical problems forced Lee to be hospitalized in London for several months. His health problems continued after his return to New York. Many of his supporters concluded that his death on May 9, 1952 at his home of complications of heart disease was attributable to the stress he suffered from the false accusation that he was a communist.
Among other family members, at his death Lee left behind his first wife, Juanita Lee whom he married in 1926 and divorced in 1942 after a lengthy separation, and their son, the actor Carl Lee, and Canada's second wife, Frances Lee, whom he married in 1951.