Singer, actress, dancer and fanatic (1917–2010)
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American chanteuse, actress, dancer and civil be entitled to activist. Horne's career spanned betterquality than seventy years and icy film, television and theatre.
Horne joined the chorus of blue blood the gentry Cotton Club at the queue of sixteen and became excellent nightclub performer before moving deal to Hollywood and Broadway. Tidy groundbreaking African-American performer, Horne advocated for civil rights and took part in the March emergency supply Washington in August 1963. Ulterior she returned to her stock as a nightclub performer be proof against continued to work on the fourth estate while releasing well-received record albums.
She announced her retirement calculate March 1980, but the adjacent year starred in a one-man show, Lena Horne: The Woman and Her Music, which ran for more than 300 act on Broadway. She then toured the country in the intimate, earning numerous awards and accolades. Horne continued recording and fulfilment sporadically into the 1990s, receding from the public eye utilize 2000.
Lena Horne was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn[1] abrupt Edwin and Edna Horne series June 30, 1917.[2] Both sides of her family were biracialAfrican Americans.[citation needed] She belonged look after the well-educated upper stratum delightful Black New Yorkers at representation time.[citation needed] She lived birth first five years of refuse life in a brownstone refer to 519 Macon Street.[3]
Horne's father, King Fletcher "Teddy" Horne Jr.
(1893–1970),[4] a one-time owner of fastidious hotel and restaurant,[5] was ingenious gambler. Teddy Horne left picture family when Lena was link years old and moved subsidy an upper-middle-class African-American community beget the Hill District of City, Pennsylvania.[6][7] Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron, was an actress get the gist a Black theatre troupe added traveled extensively.[8] Edna's maternal gran, Amelie Louise Ashton, was differ modern Senegal.[9] Horne had graceful paternal great-grandmother who was trim Blackfoot Indian.[6] Horne was raise mainly by her paternal grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne.[4]
When Horne was five she was sent to live in Georgia.[10] For several years she travelled with her mother.[11] From 1927 to 1929 she lived come to mind her uncle, Frank S.
Horne. He was the dean pale students at Fort Valley Worse Industrial Institute (now part lecture Fort Valley State University) diminution Fort Valley, Georgia,[11] and ulterior served as an adviser call on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.[12] Stay away from Fort Valley, southwest of Wine, Horne briefly moved to Besieging with her mother; they exchanged to New York when Horne was twelve years old, afterward which Horne attended St Pecker Claver School in Brooklyn.[11]
Horne spread attended Girls High School, image all-girls public high school boardwalk Brooklyn, which later became Boys and Girls High School; she dropped out at age 16.[13] At the age of 18 she moved to her father's home in Pittsburgh, staying hem in the city's Hill District pick almost five years and area of interest music from native Pittsburgers Nightclub Strayhorn and Billy Eckstine, mid others.[6]
In the make your home in of 1933, Horne joined say publicly chorus line of the Bush Club in New York Capability.
In the spring of 1934, she had a featured function in the Cotton Club Crow about starring Adelaide Hall, who took Lena under her wing.[14] Horne made her first screen manufactured goods as a dancer in significance musical short Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party (1935).[15] A few maturity later, Horne joined Noble Sissle's Orchestra, with which she toured and with whom she uncomplicated her first records, issued overtake Decca.
After she separated evade her first husband, Horne toured with bandleader Charlie Barnet bind 1940–41, but disliked the move on and left the band form work at the Cafe Identity in New York. She replaced Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBC's popular ornamentation series The Chamber Music Theatre group of Lower Basin Street.
Authority show's resident maestros, Henry Levine and Paul Laval, recorded pick up again Horne in June 1941 aim for RCA Victor. Horne left significance show after only six months when she was hired from end to end of former Cafe Trocadero (Los Angeles) manager Felix Young to pay off in a Cotton Club-style variety show on the Sunset Strip subtract Hollywood.[16]
Horne already had two low-budget movies to her credit: a-ok musical feature called The Earl is Tops (1938, later reissued with Horne's name above rank title as The Bronze Venus); and a two-reel short angle, Boogie Woogie Dream (1941), featuring pianists Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons.
Horne's songs from Boogie Woogie Dream were later unconfined individually as soundies. Horne appreciative her Hollywood nightclub debut bogus Felix Young's Little Troc allege the Sunset Strip in Jan 1942.[16] A few weeks succeeding, she was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In November 1944, she was featured in an episode doomed the popular radio series Suspense, as a fictional nightclub songstress, with a large speaking carve up along with her singing.
Organize 1945 and 1946, she chant with Billy Eckstine's Orchestra.
She made her debut at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Panama Hattie (1942) contemporary performed the title song notice Stormy Weather (1943) based fasting on the life of Adelaide Hall, for 20th Century Sod, while on loan from MGM. She appeared in several MGM musicals, including Cabin in integrity Sky (1943) with an comprehensively African-American cast.
She was or else not featured in a important role because of her ethnicity and the fact that unqualified films were required to just re-edited for showing in cities where theaters would not agricultural show films with Black performers. Despite the fact that a result, most of Horne's film appearances were stand-alone sequences that had no bearing go to work the rest of the fell, so editing caused no take a break to the storyline.
One figure from Cabin in the Sky was cut before release for it was considered too indicative by the censors: Horne melodic "Ain't It the Truth" in the long run b for a long time taking a bubble bath. That scene and song are featured in the film That's Entertainment! III (1994), which also featured commentary from Horne on reason the scene was deleted onetime to the film's release.
Horne was the first African-American private elected to serve on character Screen Actors Guild board learn directors.
In Ziegfeld Follies (1946), she performed "Love" by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. Horne lobbied for the role make public Julie LaVerne in MGM's difference of Show Boat (1951), accepting already played the role conj at the time that a segment of Show Boat was performed in Till righteousness Clouds Roll By, but left behind the part to Ava Collector, a friend in real living.
Horne claimed this was fitting to the Production Code's forbid on interracial relationships in pictures, although MGM sources state she was never considered for honesty role. In the documentary That's Entertainment! III, Horne stated give it some thought MGM executives required Gardner tip off practice her singing using Horne's recordings, which offended both form.
Ultimately, Gardner's voice was overdubbed by actress Annette Warren (Smith) for the theatrical release.
Horne became disenchanted check on Hollywood and increasingly focused insincere her nightclub career. She straightforward only two major appearances carry MGM during the 1950s: Duchess of Idaho (1950, which was also Eleanor Powell's final film); and the musical Meet Domain in Las Vegas (1956).
She said she was "tired advance being typecast as a Stygian who stands against a skyscraper singing a song. I blunt that 20 times too often."[17] She was blacklisted during position 1950s for her affiliations soupзon the 1940s with communist-backed accumulations. She would subsequently disavow communism.[1][18] She returned to the wall, playing Claire Quintana, a ma'am in a brothel who marries Richard Widmark, in the pick up Death of a Gunfighter (1969), her first straight dramatic impersonation with no reference to multipart color.[17] She later appeared revere screen two more times renovation Glinda in The Wiz (1978), which was directed by shun then son-in-law Sidney Lumet, lecturer co-hosting the MGM retrospective That's Entertainment!
III (1994), in which she related her unkind violence by the studio.
After going Hollywood, Horne established herself reorganization one of the premier club performers of the post-war collection. She headlined at clubs survive hotels throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including the Lakeside Hotel in Las Vegas, blue blood the gentry Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, and the Waldorf-Astoria in Original York.
In 1957, a secure album entitled, Lena Horne bulk the Waldorf-Astoria, became the biggest-selling record by a female genius in the history of honourableness RCA Victor label at lose concentration time. In 1958, Horne became the first African-American woman ploy be nominated for a Phony Award for "Best Actress give it some thought a Musical", for her corrode in the "Calypso" musical Jamaica (which, at Horne's request featured her longtime friend Adelaide Hall).
From the late 1950s drizzling to the 1960s, Horne was a staple of TV multiplicity shows, appearing multiple times come together Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, and The Bell Telephone Hour. Other programs she appeared on included The Judy Garland Show, The Tone Palace, and The Andy Colonist Show.
Besides two television specials for the BBC (later syndicated in the U.S.), Horne marked in her own U.S. request special in 1969, Monsanto Blackness Presents Lena Horne. During that decade, the artist Pete Hawley painted her portrait for RCA Victor, capturing the mood admit her performance style.
In 1970, she co-starred with Harry Belafonte in the hour-long Harry & Lena special for ABC; razor-sharp 1973, she co-starred with Overdone Bennett in Tony and Lena.
Horne and Bennett subsequently toured the U.S. and U.K. entertain a show together. In loftiness 1976 program America Salutes Richard Rodgers, she sang a extended medley of Rodgers songs sound out Peggy Lee and Vic Damone. Horne also made several lip-service on The Flip Wilson Show. Additionally, Horne played herself prolong television programs such as The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, brook Sanford and Son in rectitude 1970s, as well as dexterous 1985 performance on The Cosby Show and a 1993 publication on A Different World.
Control the summer of 1980, Horne, 63 years old and chasing on retiring from show divide up, embarked on a two-month program of benefit concerts sponsored fail to see the sorority Delta Sigma Theta. These concerts were represented in the same way Horne's farewell tour, yet in trade retirement lasted less than deft year.
On April 13, 1980, Horne, Luciano Pavarotti, and horde Gene Kelly were all forced to appear at a Momentous performance at the Metropolitan Composition House to salute the Inconsequential City Center's Joffrey Ballet Group of students.
However, Pavarotti's plane was pleased over the Atlantic and recognized was unable to appear. Book Nederlander was an invited Reputable Guest and observed that three people at the sold-out Metropolitan Opera House asked long their money back. He willingly to be introduced to Horne following her performance. In Possibly will 1981, The Nederlander Organization, Archangel Frazier, and Fred Walker went on to book Horne plump for a four-week engagement at primacy newly named Nederlander Theatre come up West 41st Street in Fresh York City.
The show was an instant success and was extended to a full twelvemonth run, garnering Horne a tricks Tony award, and two Grammy Awards for the cast stick of her show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music. The 333-performance Broadway run by on Horne's 65th birthday, June 30, 1982. Later that precise week, she performed the full show again to record give for television broadcast and residence video release.
Horne began regular tour a few days after at Tanglewood (Massachusetts) during authority weekend of July 4, 1982. The Lady and Her Music toured 41 cities in say publicly U.S. and Canada until June 17, 1984. It played on the run London for a month check August and ended its accelerate in Stockholm, Sweden, September 14, 1984. In 1981, she reactionary a Special Tony Award support the show, which also affected to acclaim at the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1984.[2] Despite the show's considerable profit (Horne still holds the make a copy of for the longest-running solo efficient in Broadway history), she frank not capitalize on the advanced interest in her career overtake undertaking many new musical projects.
A proposed 1983 joint gramophone record project between Horne and Conduct Sinatra (to be produced saturate Quincy Jones) was ultimately abominable, and her sole studio status of the decade was 1988's The Men in My Life, featuring duets with Sammy Statesman Jr. and Joe Williams. Ton 1989, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1995, a "live" album capturing Horne's Supper Club performance was free (subsequently winning a Grammy Accord for Best Jazz Vocal Album). In 1998, Horne released substitute studio album, entitled Being Myself. Thereafter, Horne retired from acting and largely retreated from catholic view, though she did reinstate to the recording studio identical 2000 to contribute vocal depart on Simon Rattle's Classic Ellington album.[13]
Horne was well along involved with the Civil Uninterrupted Movement.
In 1941, she croon at Café Society, New Dynasty City's first integrated venue, refuse worked with Paul Robeson. Before World War II, when playful the troops for the USO, she refused to perform "for segregated audiences or for assemblages in which German POWs were seated in front of Murky servicemen", according to her Aerodrome Center biography.[21] Because the U.S.
Army refused to allow interracial audiences, she staged her exemplify for a mixed audience clean and tidy Black U.S. soldiers and creamy German POWs. Seeing the Hazy soldiers had been forced want sit in the back seating, she walked off the folio to the first row spin the Black troops were desk and performed with the Germans behind her. However, the USO observed at the time female her death that Horne blunt in fact tour "extensively ring true the USO during WWII travelling fair the West Coast and fit into place the South".[22] The organization along with commemorated her for the etiquette she made on Armed Men Radio Service programs Jubilee, G.I.
Journal, and Command Performances.[22] Live in the film Stormy Weather (1943), Horne's character would perform authority film's title song as summit of a big, all-star extravaganza for World War II private soldiers as well.[23] After quitting magnanimity USO in 1945, Horne financed tours of military camps herself.[24]
Horne was at an NAACP sitin with Medgar Evers in Politico, Mississippi, the weekend before Evers was assassinated.
At the Go on Washington she spoke splendid performed on behalf of significance NAACP, S.N.C.C., and the State Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Diplomatist in attempts to pass anti-lynching laws.[25]Tom Lehrer mentions her tag on his song "National Brotherhood Week" in the line "Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are dance cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her and to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, River, who was responsible for graceful violent attack on civil call for marchers in 1965.
In 1983, the NAACP awarded her honourableness Spingarn Medal.[26]
Horne was a recorded Democrat and on November 20, 1963, she, along with Populist National Committee (D.N.C.) Chairman Convenience Bailey, Carol Lawrence, Richard Adler, Sidney Salomon, Vice-chairwoman of high-mindedness DNC Margaret B. Price, famous Secretary of the DNC Dorothy Vredenburgh Bush, visited John Dictator.
Kennedy at The White House,[27] two days prior to circlet assassination.
Horne married Prizefighter Jordan Jones, a political operative,[28][29] in January 1937 in Metropolis. On December 21, 1937, their daughter, Gail (1937–2024), was tribal.
They had a son, King Jones (1940–1970), who died be totally convinced by kidney disease.[4] Horne and Golfer separated in 1940 and divorced in 1944. Horne's second extra was to Lennie Hayton, who was music director and unified of the premier musical conductors and arrangers at MGM, have as a feature December 1947 in Paris.
They separated in the early Decennium but never divorced. He deadly in 1971.[30] In her as-told-to autobiography Lena by Richard Schickel, Horne recounts the enormous pressures she and her husband well-known as an interracial couple. She later admitted in an question period in Ebony (May 1980) desert she had married Hayton become advance her career and crabbed the color barrier in be next to business, but "learned to fondness him very much".[31]
Horne had assignment with long-time heavyweight champion Joe Louis, musician and actor Artie Shaw, actor Orson Welles, delighted director Vincente Minnelli.[16]
Horne also confidential a long and close satisfaction with Billy Strayhorn, whom she said she would have ringed if he had been heterosexual.[32] He was also an critical professional mentor to her.
Screenwriter Jenny Lumet, known for inclusion award-winning screenplay Rachel Getting Married, is Horne's granddaughter, the damsel of filmmaker Sidney Lumet added Horne's daughter Gail.[33] Her in relation to grandchildren include Gail's other damsel, Amy Lumet, and her son's four children, Thomas, William, Samadhi and Lena.
Her great-grandchildren protract Jake Cannavale.[34]
Horne was Catholic.[35][36] Breakout 1946 to 1962 she resided in St. Albans, Queens, Unusual York, enclave of prosperous Continent Americans, where she counted middle her neighbors Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and other jazz luminaries.[37] In the 1980s, she unnatural into the fifth floor rot the Volney, a hotel-turned-co-op, reassure 23 East 74th Street.[38]
Lena Horne died of congestive heart boom at age 92 on May well 9, 2010.[39] Her funeral took place at St.
Ignatius Theologist Church on Park Avenue sentence New York, where she esoteric been a member.[40] Thousands concentrated and attendees included: Leontyne Cost, Dionne Warwick, Liza Minnelli, Jessye Norman, Chita Rivera, Cicely Prizefighter, Diahann Carroll, Leslie Uggams, Lauren Bacall, Robert Osborne, Audra McDonald, and Vanessa Williams.
Her remnant were cremated.[41]
In 2003, ABC proclaimed that Janet Jackson would megastar as Horne in a squeeze biographical film. In the weeks following Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" hiding during the 2004 Super Cavity, however, Variety reported that Horne had demanded Jackson be cast aside from the project.
"ABC guidance resisted Horne's demand", according in detail the Associated Press report, "but Jackson representatives told the traffic newspaper that she left cheerfully after Horne and her female child, Gail Lumet Buckley, asked go she not take part." Oprah Winfrey stated to Alicia Keys during a 2005 interview verbal abuse The Oprah Winfrey Show walk she might possibly consider motion the biopic herself, casting Keys as Horne.[42]
In January 2005, Low-spirited Note Records, her label stick up for more than a decade, declared that "the finishing touches possess been put on a mass of rare and unreleased recordings by the legendary Horne appreciative during her time on Dismal Note." Remixed by her long-time producer Rodney Jones, the recordings featured Horne with a unmistakably secure voice for a gal of her years, and encompass versions of such signature songs as "Something to Live For", "Chelsea Bridge", and "Stormy Weather".
The album, originally titled Soul but renamed Seasons of trig Life, was released on Jan 24, 2006. In 2007, Horne was portrayed by Leslie Uggams as the older Lena have a word with Nikki Crawford as the previous Lena in the stage melodious Stormy Weather staged at grandeur Pasadena Playhouse in California (January to March 2009).
In 2011, Horne was also portrayed get ahead of actress Ryan Jillian in neat one-woman show titled Notes use A Horne staged at justness Susan Batson studio in Fresh York City, from November 2011 to February 2012. The 83rd Academy Awards presented a honour to Horne by actress City Berry at the ceremony reserved February 27, 2011.[43]
In 2018, uncluttered forever stamp depicting Horne began to be issued; this effortless Horne the 41st honoree imprison the Black Heritage stamp series.[44]
In June 2021, the Prospect Greensward bandshell in Brooklyn was renamed the Lena Horne Bandshell figure up honor Horne, a Bed-Stuy Borough native, and to show accord with the Black community.[45]
The Nederlander Organization announced in June 2022 that Broadway's Brooks Atkinson Dramatic art would be renamed after respite later that year.[46] The theater's marquee was unveiled on Nov 1, 2022.
The theatre legal action now called the Lena Horne Theatre, which means Horne quite good the first Black woman transmit have a Broadway theater given name after her.[47][48][49]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | Jamaica |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[52] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Won | Lena Horne: The Gal and Her Music |
| 1980 | New Dynasty Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Won | Lena Horne: The Lassie and Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Distinction | Special Citation | Won | Lena Horne: Significance Lady and Her Music |
| 1984 | John F.
Kennedy Center for | Kennedy Center Honors[53] | Won | For extraordinary talent, creativity, and determination |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1987 | American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[54] | Won | Given to entertainers who have made significant charity to words and music |
| 1994 | Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Jackpot | Songwriters Hall of Fame | Won | |
| 1997 | Society of Singers | Society of Chorus Lifetime Achievement Award[55] | Won | for "whom choristers are awarded for their endeavor to the world of meeting along with their dedicated efforts to benefit the community discipline worldwide causes" |
| 1999 | NAACP Advance Award | Outstanding Jazz Artist | Won | |
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr.
| International Civil Rights Perceive of Fame[56] | Inducted | |
| ? | Hollywood Sepulchre of Commerce | Hollywood Walk embodiment Fame | Won | Honor (motion pictures) |
| ? | Hollywood Chamber of Commerce | Hollywood Walk of Fame | Won | Honor (recordings) |
January 12, 1973)
Often she was required to perform stingy white troops first. She could only perform for the smoke-darkened troops the next day set a date for a separate blacks-only mess hall.[19] She performed for the labour black pilots (the Tuskegee Airmen) many times during World Battle II.[20]
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