Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, actress, dancer, and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned more than seventy years, appearing in film, television, and theatre. Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving on to Hollywood and Broadway.
Horne
May 9, 2010 (aged 92)
- Singer
- dancer
- actress
- activist
1933–2003
2
Jenny Lumet (granddaughter)
Jake Cannavale (great-grandson)
Harlem, New York City
Vocals
A groundbreaking African-American performer, Horne advocated for civil rights and took part in the March on Washington in August 1963. Later she returned to her roots as a nightclub performer and continued to work on television while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than 300 performances on Broadway. She then toured the country in the show, earning numerous awards and accolades. Horne continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, retreating from the public eye in 2000.
Early life[edit]
Lena Horne was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.[1] Both sides of her family were biracial African Americans. She belonged to the well-educated upper stratum of Black New Yorkers at the time. She lived the first five years of her life in a brownstone at 519 Macon Street.[2]
Horne's father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne Jr. (1893–1970),[3] a one-time owner of a hotel and restaurant,[4] was a gambler. Teddy Horne left the family when Lena was three years old and moved to an upper-middle-class African-American community in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[5][6] Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron, was an actress with a Black theatre troupe and traveled extensively.[7] Edna's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was from modern Senegal.[8] Horne had a paternal great-grandmother who was a Blackfoot Indian.[5] Horne was raised mainly by her grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne.[3]
When Horne was five, she was sent to live in Georgia.[9] For several years, she traveled with her mother.[10] From 1927 to 1929, she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne. He was the dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now part of Fort Valley State University) in Fort Valley, Georgia,[10] who later served as an adviser to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.[11] From Fort Valley, southwest of Macon, Horne briefly moved to Atlanta with her mother; they returned to New York when Horne was twelve years old, after which Horne attended St Peter Claver School in Brooklyn.[10]
Horne then attended Girls High School, an all-girls public high school in Brooklyn that later became Boys and Girls High School; she dropped out at age 16.[12] At the age of 18, she moved to her father's home in Pittsburgh, staying in the city's Little Harlem for almost five years and learning music from native Pittsburgers Billy Strayhorn and Billy Eckstine, among others.[5]
Career[edit]
Road to Hollywood[edit]
In the fall of 1933, Horne joined the chorus line of the Cotton Club in New York City. In the spring of 1934, she had a featured role in the Cotton Club Parade starring Adelaide Hall, who took Lena under her wing.[13] Horne made her first screen appearance as a dancer in the musical short Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party (1935).[14] A few years later, Horne joined Noble Sissle's Orchestra, with which she toured and with whom she made her first records, issued by Decca. After she separated from her first husband, Horne toured with bandleader Charlie Barnet in 1940–41, but disliked the travel and left the band to work at the Cafe Society in New York. She replaced Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBC's popular jazz series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. The show's resident maestros, Henry Levine and Paul Laval, recorded with Horne in June 1941 for RCA Victor. Horne left the show after only six months when she was hired by former Cafe Trocadero (Los Angeles) manager Felix Young to perform in a Cotton Club-style revue on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood.[15]
Death[edit]
Lena Horne died of congestive heart failure at age 92 on May 9, 2010.[39] Her funeral took place at St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue in New York, where she had been a member.[40] Thousands gathered and attendees included: Leontyne Price, Dionne Warwick, Liza Minnelli, Jessye Norman, Chita Rivera, Cicely Tyson, Diahann Carroll, Leslie Uggams, Lauren Bacall, Robert Osborne, Audra McDonald, and Vanessa Williams. Her remains were cremated.[41]
Legacy[edit]
In 2003, ABC announced that Janet Jackson would star as Horne in a television biographical film. In the weeks following Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" debacle during the 2004 Super Bowl, however, Variety reported that Horne had demanded Jackson be dropped from the project. "ABC executives resisted Horne's demand", according to the Associated Press report, "but Jackson representatives told the trade newspaper that she left willingly after Horne and her daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, asked that she not take part." Oprah Winfrey stated to Alicia Keys during a 2005 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show that she might possibly consider producing the biopic herself, casting Keys as Horne.[42]
In January 2005, Blue Note Records, her label for more than a decade, announced that "the finishing touches have been put on a collection of rare and unreleased recordings by the legendary Horne made during her time on Blue Note." Remixed by her long-time producer Rodney Jones, the recordings featured Horne with a remarkably secure voice for a woman of her years, and include versions of such signature songs as "Something to Live For", "Chelsea Bridge", and "Stormy Weather". The album, originally titled Soul but renamed Seasons of a Life, was released on January 24, 2006. In 2007, Horne was portrayed by Leslie Uggams as the older Lena and Nikki Crawford as the younger Lena in the stage musical Stormy Weather staged at the Pasadena Playhouse in California (January to March 2009). In 2011, Horne was also portrayed by actress Ryan Jillian in a one-woman show titled Notes from A Horne staged at the Susan Batson studio in New York City, from November 2011 to February 2012. The 83rd Academy Awards presented a tribute to Horne by actress Halle Berry at the ceremony held February 27, 2011.[43]
In 2018, a forever stamp depicting Horne began to be issued; this made Horne the 41st honoree in the Black Heritage stamp series.[44]
In June 2021, the Prospect Park bandshell in Brooklyn was renamed the Lena Horne Bandshell to honor Horne, a Bed-Stuy Brooklyn native, and to show solidarity with the Black community.[45]
The Nederlander Organization announced in June 2022 that Broadway's Brooks Atkinson Theatre would be renamed after her later that year.[46] The theater's marquee was unveiled on November 1, 2022. The theatre is now called the Lena Horne Theatre, which means Horne is the first Black woman to have a Broadway theater named after her.[47][48][49]