He was an original cast member of Finian's Rainbow and Kiss Me, Kate, and in the radio show Van and the Genie was the first male African-American actor to star opposite a white woman.
His father was a successful newspaper publisher and founder of the Fuller Concert Company, which produced shows throughout the Midwest and into Canada and Mexico.
By the age of eight, the younger Lorenzo Fuller had begun performing as a harpist on local radio shows, and in his family's troupe.
In 1947, he was a member of the original Broadway cast of Finian's Rainbow, and the following year played Paul in the first production of Kiss Me, Kate.
His 1950 radio show, Van and the Genie on station WPIX, was the first in which a black man appeared on equal terms with a white woman, Rosamond Vance Kaufman.