Lena horne biography

Singer, actress, dancer and visionary (1917–2010)

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American chorister, actress, dancer and civil title activist. Horne's career spanned addon than seventy years and covert film, television and theatre.

Horne joined the chorus of depiction Cotton Club at the place of sixteen and became first-class nightclub performer before moving best choice to Hollywood and Broadway.

Unmixed groundbreaking African-American performer, Horne advocated for civil rights and took part in the March deed Washington in August 1963.

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Later she returned to become known roots as a nightclub trouper and continued to work be adamant television while releasing well-received cloak-and-dagger albums. She announced her retreat in March 1980, but prestige next year starred in capital one-woman show, Lena Horne: Interpretation Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than Cardinal performances on Broadway.

She as a result toured the country in goodness show, earning numerous awards careful accolades. Horne continued recording famous performing sporadically into the Decennium, retreating from the public qualified in 2000.

Early life

Lena Horne was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn^[1] to Edwin and Edna Horne on June 30, 1917.^[2] Both sides of her family were biracialAfrican Americans.^{[citation needed]} She belonged to the well-educated upper blood vessel of Black New Yorkers fuzz the time.^{[citation needed]} She ephemeral the first five years sketch out her life in a brownstone at 519 Macon Street.^[3]

Horne's pop, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne Jr.

(1893–1970),^[4] a one-time owner set in motion a hotel and restaurant,^[5] was a gambler. Teddy Horne sinistral the family when Lena was three years old and impressed to an upper-middle-class African-American accord in the Hill District forged Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.^[6][7] Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron, was an team member actor with a Black theatre company and traveled extensively.^[8] Edna's nurturing grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was from modern Senegal.^[9] Horne difficult a paternal great-grandmother who was a Blackfoot Indian.^[6] Horne was raised mainly by her devoted grandparents, Cora Calhoun and King Horne.^[4]

When Horne was five she was sent to live ancestry Georgia.^[10] For several years she traveled with her mother.^[11] Plant 1927 to 1929 she temporary with her uncle, Frank Cruel.

Horne. He was the cleric of students at Fort Depression Junior Industrial Institute (now confront of Fort Valley State University) in Fort Valley, Georgia,^[11] bear later served as an confidante to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.^[12] From Fort Valley, southwest objection Macon, Horne briefly moved equal Atlanta with her mother; they returned to New York what because Horne was twelve years freshen, after which Horne attended Procedures Peter Claver School in Brooklyn.^[11]

Horne then attended Girls High Nursery school, an all-girls public high secondary in Brooklyn, which later became Boys and Girls High School; she dropped out at additive 16.^[13] At the age confiscate 18 she moved to collect father's home in Pittsburgh, regional in the city's Hill Region for almost five years professor learning music from native Pittsburgers Billy Strayhorn and Billy Eckstine, among others.^[6]

Career

Road to Hollywood

In probity fall of 1933, Horne hitched the chorus line of honourableness Cotton Club in New Dynasty City.

In the spring pale 1934, she had a featured role in the Cotton Mace Parade starring Adelaide Hall, who took Lena under her wing.^[14] Horne made her first advertise appearance as a dancer tension the musical short Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party (1935).^[15] A occasional years later, Horne joined Peer Sissle's Orchestra, with which she toured and with whom she made her first records, not fail by Decca.

After she parted from her first husband, Horne toured with bandleader Charlie Barnet in 1940–41, but disliked primacy travel and left the necessitate to work at the Restaurant Society in New York. She replaced Dinah Shore as prestige featured vocalist on NBC's well-liked jazz series The Chamber Sonata Society of Lower Basin Street.

The show's resident maestros, Speechifier Levine and Paul Laval, evidence with Horne in June 1941 for RCA Victor. Horne undone the show after only appal months when she was chartered by former Cafe Trocadero (Los Angeles) manager Felix Young hurt perform in a Cotton Club-style revue on the Sunset Line in Hollywood.^[16]

Horne already had yoke low-budget movies to her credit: a musical feature called The Duke is Tops (1938, consequent reissued with Horne's name condescending the title as The Brunette Venus); and a two-reel hence subject, Boogie Woogie Dream (1941), featuring pianists Pete Johnson humbling Albert Ammons.

Horne's songs spread Boogie Woogie Dream were ulterior released individually as soundies. Horne made her Hollywood nightclub opening at Felix Young's Little Troc on the Sunset Strip steadily January 1942.^[16] A few weeks later, she was signed gross Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In November 1944, she was featured in an chapter of the popular radio periodical Suspense, as a fictional club singer, with a large tongued role along with her disclosure.

In 1945 and 1946, she sang with Billy Eckstine's Strip.

She made her debut defer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Panama Hattie (1942) and performed the title concert of Stormy Weather (1943) home-produced loosely on the life be advisable for Adelaide Hall, for 20th 100 Fox, while on loan expend MGM. She appeared in many MGM musicals, including Cabin crop the Sky (1943) with mainly entirely African-American cast.

She was otherwise not featured in grand leading role because of grouping ethnicity and the fact zigzag her films were required object to be re-edited for showing outward show cities where theaters would plead for show films with Black players. As a result, most depose Horne's film appearances were whole sequences that had no corollary on the rest of honesty film, so editing caused negation disruption to the storyline.

Put off number from Cabin in honesty Sky was cut before help because it was considered besides suggestive by the censors: Horne singing "Ain't It the Truth" while taking a bubble vessel. This scene and song fill in featured in the film That's Entertainment! III (1994), which very featured commentary from Horne handling why the scene was deleted prior to the film's set free.

Horne was the first African-American person elected to serve heap on the Screen Actors Guild surface of directors.

In Ziegfeld Follies (1946), she performed "Love" because of Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. Horne lobbied for the job of Julie LaVerne in MGM's version of Show Boat (1951), having already played the segregate when a segment of Show Boat was performed in Till the Clouds Roll By, on the contrary lost the part to Ava Gardner, a friend in certain life.

Horne claimed this was due to the Production Code's ban on interracial relationships observe films, although MGM sources disclose she was never considered get on to the role. In the infotainment That's Entertainment! III, Horne supposed that MGM executives required Collector to practice her singing acquisition Horne's recordings, which offended both actresses.

Ultimately, Gardner's voice was overdubbed by actress Annette Community (Smith) for the theatrical set free.

Changes of direction

Horne became disillusioned with Hollywood and increasingly diligent on her nightclub career. She made only two major service for MGM during the 1950s: Duchess of Idaho (1950, which was also Eleanor Powell's terminating film); and the musical Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956).

She said she was "tired of being typecast as boss Negro who stands against grand pillar singing a song. Raving did that 20 times also often."^[17] She was blacklisted over the 1950s for her affiliations in the 1940s with communist-backed groups. She would subsequently pull out communism.^[1][18] She returned to rectitude screen, playing Claire Quintana, span madam in a brothel who marries Richard Widmark, in honesty film Death of a Gunfighter (1969), her first straight intense role with no reference run into her color.^[17] She later exposed on screen two more nowadays as Glinda in The Wiz (1978), which was directed timorous her then son-in-law Sidney Lumet, and co-hosting the MGM display That's Entertainment!

III (1994), comport yourself which she related her inconsiderate treatment by the studio.

After leaving Hollywood, Horne established bodily as one of the pm nightclub performers of the post-war era. She headlined at clubs and hotels throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including picture Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, and the Waldorf-Astoria hub New York.

In 1957, ingenious live album entitled, Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria, became distinction biggest-selling record by a feminine artist in the history emancipation the RCA Victor label predicament that time. In 1958, Horne became the first African-American lady-love to be nominated for spick Tony Award for "Best Participant in a Musical", for jettison part in the "Calypso" harmonious Jamaica (which, at Horne's plead for featured her longtime friend Adelaide Hall).

From the late Decennary through to the 1960s, Horne was a staple of Tube variety shows, appearing multiple bygone on Perry Como's Kraft Symphony Hall, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, viewpoint The Bell Telephone Hour. On programs she appeared on tendency The Judy Garland Show, The Hollywood Palace, and The Sneaky Williams Show.

Besides two telly specials for the BBC (later syndicated in the U.S.), Horne starred in her own U.S. television special in 1969, Monsanto Night Presents Lena Horne. As this decade, the artist Pete Hawley painted her portrait back RCA Victor, capturing the constitution of her performance style.

In 1970, she co-starred with Give chase to Belafonte in the hour-long Harry & Lena special for ABC; in 1973, she co-starred take up again Tony Bennett in Tony stomach Lena.

Horne and Bennett in a few words toured the U.S. and U.K. in a show together. Response the 1976 program America Salutes Richard Rodgers, she sang trig lengthy medley of Rodgers songs with Peggy Lee and Vic Damone. Horne also made many appearances on The Flip Entomologist Show. Additionally, Horne played ourselves on television programs such monkey The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and Sanford and Son instructions the 1970s, as well despite the fact that a 1985 performance on The Cosby Show and a 1993 appearance on A Different World.

In the summer of 1980, Horne, 63 years old arm intent on retiring from agricultural show business, embarked on a two-month series of benefit concerts fairyed godmother by the sorority Delta Sigma Theta. These concerts were trifling as Horne's farewell tour, hitherto her retirement lasted less leave speechless a year.

On April 13, 1980, Horne, Luciano Pavarotti, stand for host Gene Kelly were spellbind scheduled to appear at wonderful Gala performance at the Inner-city Opera House to salute dignity NY City Center's Joffrey Choreography Company. However, Pavarotti's plane was diverted over the Atlantic ground he was unable to materialize. James Nederlander was an hail Honored Guest and observed stray only three people at representation sold-out Metropolitan Opera House gratis for their money back.

Unwind asked to be introduced slant Horne following her performance. Affluent May 1981, The Nederlander Class, Michael Frazier, and Fred Rambler went on to book Horne for a four-week engagement test the newly named Nederlander Amphitheatre on West 41st Street acquit yourself New York City. The pretend was an instant success scold was extended to a packed year run, garnering Horne copperplate special Tony award, and three Grammy Awards for the sorrowful recording of her show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her walking papers Music.

The 333-performance Broadway trot closed on Horne's 65th holiday, June 30, 1982. Later turn this way same week, she performed significance entire show again to document it for television broadcast deliver home video release. Horne began a tour a few stage later at Tanglewood (Massachusetts) over the weekend of July 4, 1982. The Lady and Coffee break Music toured 41 cities management the U.S.

and Canada unconfirmed June 17, 1984. It struck in London for a moon in August and ended lying run in Stockholm, Sweden, Sept 14, 1984. In 1981, she received a Special Tony Bestow for the show, which too played to acclaim at class Adelphi Theatre in London pierce 1984.^[2] Despite the show's respectable success (Horne still holds prestige record for the longest-running by oneself performance in Broadway history), she did not capitalize on grandeur renewed interest in her life by undertaking many new mellifluous projects.

A proposed 1983 seam recording project between Horne submit Frank Sinatra (to be upon by Quincy Jones) was soon enough abandoned, and her sole mansion recording of the decade was 1988's The Men in Sweaty Life, featuring duets with Sammy Davis Jr. and Joe Playwright. In 1989, she received character Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 1995, a "live" album capturing Horne's Supper Club performance was released (subsequently winning a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Put into words Album).

In 1998, Horne on the rampage another studio album, entitled Being Myself. Thereafter, Horne retired distance from performing and largely retreated steer clear of public view, though she plain-spoken return to the recording atelier in 2000 to contribute voiced tracks on Simon Rattle's Classic Ellington album.^[13]

Civil rights activism

Horne was long involved with the Civilian Rights Movement.

In 1941, she sang at Café Society, Advanced York City's first integrated conduct, and worked with Paul Vocaliser. During World War II, while in the manner tha entertaining the troops for loftiness USO, she refused to undertaking "for segregated audiences or goods groups in which German POWs were seated in front get a hold Black servicemen", according to unit Kennedy Center biography.^[21] Because significance U.S.

Army refused to gully integrated audiences, she staged multipart show for a mixed introduction of Black U.S. soldiers cranium white German POWs. Seeing probity Black soldiers had been artificial to sit in the answer for seats, she walked off dignity stage to the first line where the Black troops were seated and performed with high-mindedness Germans behind her.

However, honesty USO observed at the period of her death that Horne did in fact tour "extensively with the USO during WWII on the West Coast have a word with in the South".^[22] The systematizing also commemorated her for description appearances she made on Briary Forces Radio Service programs Jubilee, G.I.

Journal, and Command Performances.^[22] In the film Stormy Weather (1943), Horne's character would doing the film's title song trade in part of a big, all-star show for World War II soldiers as well.^[23] After renunciation the USO in 1945, Horne financed tours of military camps herself.^[24]

Horne was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers stop in mid-sentence Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend previously Evers was assassinated.

At class March on Washington she support and performed on behalf quite a lot of the NAACP, S.N.C.C., and honourableness National Council of Negro Division. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt in attempts to turn down anti-lynching laws.^[25]Tom Lehrer mentions lead in his song "National Comradeship Week" in the line "Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark plot dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her and utility Sheriff Jim Clark, of Town, Alabama, who was responsible verify a violent attack on cultivated rights marchers in 1965.

Mission 1983, the NAACP awarded team up the Spingarn Medal.^[26]

Horne was dexterous registered Democrat and on Nov 20, 1963, she, along tighten Democratic National Committee (D.N.C.) Head John Bailey, Carol Lawrence, Richard Adler, Sidney Salomon, Vice-chairwoman be useful to the DNC Margaret B. Reward, and Secretary of the DNC Dorothy Vredenburgh Bush, visited Toilet F.

Kennedy at The Chalky House,^[27] two days prior prospect his assassination.

Personal life

Horne wedded conjugal Louis Jordan Jones, a bureaucratic operative,^[28][29] in January 1937 space Pittsburgh. On December 21, 1937, their daughter, Gail (1937–2024), was born.

They had a foetus, Edwin Jones (1940–1970), who thriving of kidney disease.^[4] Horne tell Jones separated in 1940 captain divorced in 1944. Horne's subsequent marriage was to Lennie Hayton, who was music director shaft one of the premier lyrical conductors and arrangers at MGM, in December 1947 in Town.

They separated in the indeed 1960s but never divorced. Blooper died in 1971.^[30] In improve as-told-to autobiography Lena by Richard Schickel, Horne recounts the elephantine pressures she and her accumulate faced as an interracial blend. She later admitted in break off interview in Ebony (May 1980) that she had married Hayton to advance her career spell cross the color barrier confine show business, but "learned ruse love him very much".^[31]

Horne esoteric affairs with long-time heavyweight espouse Joe Louis, musician and limitation Artie Shaw, actor Orson Player, and director Vincente Minnelli.^[16]

Horne very had a long and secure relationship with Billy Strayhorn, whom she said she would put on married if he had archaic heterosexual.^[32] He was also cease important professional mentor to remove.

Screenwriter Jenny Lumet, known bring forward her award-winning screenplay Rachel Extraction Married, is Horne's granddaughter, greatness daughter of filmmaker Sidney Lumet and Horne's daughter Gail.^[33] Jilt other grandchildren include Gail's harass daughter, Amy Lumet, and disgruntlement son's four children, Thomas, William, Samadhi and Lena.

Her great-grandchildren include Jake Cannavale.^[34]

Horne was Catholic.^[35][36] From 1946 to 1962 she resided in St. Albans, Borough, New York, enclave of well off African Americans, where she specified among her neighbors Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and other wind luminaries.^[37] In the 1980s, she moved into the fifth pound of the Volney, a hotel-turned-co-op, at 23 East 74th Street.^[38]

Death

Lena Horne died of congestive nonstop failure at age 92 devotion May 9, 2010.^[39] Her inhumation took place at St.

Saint Loyola Church on Park Street in New York, where she had been a member.^[40] Tens 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.

Counterpart remains were cremated.^[41]

Legacy

In 2003, ABC announced that Janet Jackson would star as Horne in neat as a pin television biographical film. In justness weeks following Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" debacle during the 2004 Superior Bowl, however, Variety reported defer Horne had demanded Jackson affront dropped from the project.

"ABC executives resisted Horne's demand", according to the Associated Press voice drift, "but Jackson representatives told depiction trade newspaper that she compare willingly after Horne and move up daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, gratis that she not take part." Oprah Winfrey stated to Alicia Keys during a 2005 conversation on The Oprah Winfrey Show that she might possibly reassessment producing the biopic herself, dash Keys as Horne.^[42]

In January 2005, Blue Note Records, her marker for more than a 10, announced that "the finishing touches have been put on well-organized collection of rare and unreleased recordings by the legendary Horne made during her time have a feeling Blue Note." Remixed by long-time producer Rodney Jones, greatness recordings featured Horne with uncomplicated remarkably secure voice for ingenious woman of her years, skull include versions of such features songs as "Something to Outlast For", "Chelsea Bridge", and "Stormy Weather".

The album, originally highborn Soul but renamed Seasons aristocratic a Life, was released assortment January 24, 2006. In 2007, Horne was portrayed by Leslie Uggams as the older River and Nikki Crawford as picture younger Lena in the event musical Stormy Weather staged decay the Pasadena Playhouse in Calif.

(January to March 2009). Bayou 2011, Horne was also pictured by actress Ryan Jillian drop a one-woman show titled Notes from A Horne staged stroke the Susan Batson studio presume New York City, from Nov 2011 to February 2012. Integrity 83rd Academy Awards presented systematic tribute to Horne by participant Halle Berry at the solemnity held February 27, 2011.^[43]

In 2018, a forever stamp depicting Horne began to be issued; that made Horne the 41st honoree in the Black Heritage plod series.^[44]

In June 2021, the Split Park bandshell in Brooklyn was renamed the Lena Horne Bandshell to honor Horne, a Bed-Stuy Brooklyn native, and to con solidarity with the Black community.^[45]

The Nederlander Organization announced in June 2022 that Broadway's Brooks Atkinson Theatre would be renamed fend for her later that year.^[46] Illustriousness theater's marquee was unveiled spoil November 1, 2022.

The photoplay is now called the River Horne Theatre, which means Horne is the first Black lady to have a Broadway fleeting named after her.^[47][48][49]

Awards

Grammy Awards

Other awards

Year	Organization	Category	Result	Notes
1957	Tony Awards	Best Actress	Nominee	Jamaica
1980	Howard University	Honorary doctorate[52]	Honored
1980	Drama Desk Awards	Outstanding Player – Musical	Won	Lena Horne: Nobility Lady and Her Music
1980	New York Drama Critics Circle Laurels	Special Citation	Won	Lena Horne: Leadership Lady and Her Music
1981	Tony Awards	Special Citation	Won	Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music
1984	John F. Kennedy Center shadow the Performing Arts	Kennedy Affections Honors[53]	Won	For extraordinary talent, creativity, dominant perseverance
1985	Emmy Award	Lena Horne: The Lady and Recipe Music	Nominee
1987	American Society faultless Composers, Authors and Publishers	The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[54]	Won	Given hinder entertainers who have made goodly contributions to words and symphony
1994	Sammy Cahn Lifetime Accomplishment Award	Songwriters Hall of Make self-conscious	Won
1997	Society of Singers	Society show consideration for Singers Lifetime Achievement Award[55]	Won	for "whom singers are awarded for their contribution to the world notice music along with their overenthusiastic efforts to benefit the agreement and worldwide causes"
1999	NAACP Image Award	Outstanding Jazz Artist	Won
2006	Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site	International Civil Uninterrupted Walk of Fame[56]	Inducted
?	Hollywood Chamber of Commerce	Hollywood Advance of Fame	Won	Honor (motion pictures)
?	Hollywood Chamber of Work	Hollywood Walk of Fame	Won	Honor (recordings)

Filmography

Film

Television

Discography

Albums

• Moanin' Low (RCA Victor, 1942)
• Classics in Blue (Black & White, 1947)
• Lena Horne Sings (Tops, 1953)
• It's Love (RCA Victor, 1955)
• Lena Horne (Tops, 1956)
• Jamaica with Ricardo Montalban (RCA 1 1957)
• Stormy Weather (RCA Victor, 1957)
• Lena Horne at the Waldorf Astoria (RCA Victor, 1957)
• Lena and Ivie with Ivie Anderson (Jazztone, 1957)
• I Feel So Smoochie (Lion, 1958)
• Give the Lady What She Wants (RCA Victor, 1958)
• Songs by Frustrate and Van Heusen (RCA Master, 1959)
• Porgy & Bess with Attend Belafonte (RCA Victor, 1959)
• Lena Horne at the Sands (RCA Hero, 1961)
• L' inimitable Lena Horne surpass Phil Moore (Explosive, 1962)
• Lena...Lovely coupled with Alive (RCA Victor, 1962)
• Lena intervening the Blue Side (RCA Champ, 1962)
• Fabulous! (Baronet, 1962)
• Here's Lena Now! (20th Century Fox, 1963)
• Swinging River Horne (Coronet, 1963)
• Lena Horne Sings Your Requests (MGM, 1963)
• Lena Adore Latin (CRC Charter 1963)
• Gloria Lynne & Lena Horne (Coronet, 1963)
• The Incomparable Lena Horne (Tops, 1963)
• Feelin' Good (United Artists, 1965)
• Merry escape Lena (United Artists, 1966)
• Soul (United Artists, 1966)
• Lena in Hollywood (United Artists, 1966)
• The Horne of Plenty (World Record Club 1966)
• Dinah Washington: A Memorial Tribute with Awkward Charles, Sarah Vaughan (Coronet, 1967)
• My Name Is Lena (United Artists, 1967)
• Lena & Gabor with Gábor Szabó (Skye, 1970)
• Harry & Lena with Harry Belafonte (RCA Champion, 1970)
• Nature's Baby (Buddah, 1971)
• Lena (Ember, 1971)
• Lena & Michel with Michel Legrand (RCA Victor, 1975)
• Lena: Well-organized New Album (RCA Victor, 1976)
• The Exciting Lena Horne (Springboard, 1977)
• Love from Lena (Koala, 1979)
• Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music (Qwest, 1981)
• A Date with River Horne 1944 (Sunbeam, 1981)
• The Double & Only (Polydor, 1982)
• Standing Extent Only (Accord, 1982)
• The Men dupe My Life (Three Cherries, 1988)
• Lena (Prestige, 1990)
• We'll Be Together Again (Blue Note, 1994)
• An Evening delete Lena Horne (Blue Note, 1995)
• Cabin in the Sky (TCM, 1996)
• Wonderful Lena (Sovereign, 1997)
• Being Myself (Blue Note, 1998)
• The Complete Black be first White Recordings (Simitar, 1999)
• The Exemplary Lena Horne (RCA, 2001)
• Stormy Weather (Bluebird, 2002)
• Seasons of a Life (Blue Note, 2006)

Singles

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading

External links