| Larry |
Posted - 12/10/2008 : 19:25:57
Lionel Canegata was born in New York on 3rd March, 1907. He attended school in Harlem but at the age of fourteen he ran away to be a jockey at Saratoga. After growing too heavy he became a boxer and eventually won the national amateur lightweight title. In 1926 he turned professional and adopted the name Canada Lee . He was a leading contender for the welterweight championship, but a detached retina forced him to retire from the ring in 1933.
After a spell leading his own band, Lee became an actor with the Harlem YMCA, an organization subsidized by the Works Progress Administration. Lee moved to Hollywood and appeared in Keep Pinching (1939), Farmer Henry Browne (1942), Lifeboat (1944), Body and Soul (1947), Lost Boundaries (1949) and Cry, the Beloved Country (1951).
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