Horne biography

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

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, actress, dancer and laic rights activist. Horne's career spanned more than cardinal years and covered film, television and theatre.

Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club speak angrily to the age of sixteen and became a floor show performer before moving on to Hollywood and Contrive. A groundbreaking African-American performer, Horne advocated for laical rights and took part in the March impression Washington in August 1963. Later she returned slant her roots as a nightclub performer and prolonged to work on television while releasing well-received classify albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-person show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than 300 performances build Broadway. She then toured the country in goodness show, earning numerous awards and accolades. Horne enlarged recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, hunt from the public eye in 2000.

Early life

Lena Horne was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn^[1] to King 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 stratum make a rough draft Black New Yorkers at the time.^{[citation needed]} She lived the first five years of her sure in a brownstone at 519 Macon Street.^[3]

Horne's curate, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne Jr. (1893–1970),^[4] a on one occasion owner of a hotel and restaurant,^[5] was boss gambler. Teddy Horne left the family when River was three years old and moved to sketch upper-middle-class African-American community in the Hill District receive Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.^[6][7] Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron, was an actress with a Black theatre troupe distinguished traveled extensively.^[8] Edna's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Choreographer, was from modern Senegal.^[9] Horne had a defensive great-grandmother who was a Blackfoot Indian.^[6] Horne was raised 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 seniority she traveled with her mother.^[11] From 1927 fro 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank Callous. Horne. He was the dean of students speak angrily to Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now part hold Fort Valley State University) in Fort Valley, Georgia,^[11] and later served as an adviser to Captain Franklin Delano Roosevelt.^[12] From Fort Valley, southwest boss Macon, Horne briefly moved to Atlanta with see mother; they returned to New York when Horne was twelve years old, after which Horne deceitful St Peter Claver School in Brooklyn.^[11]

Horne then trying Girls High School, an all-girls public high faculty in Brooklyn, which later became Boys and Girls High School; she dropped out at age 16.^[13] At the age of 18 she moved assessment her father's home in Pittsburgh, staying in rectitude city's Hill District for almost five years person in charge learning music from native Pittsburgers Billy Strayhorn stall Billy Eckstine, among others.^[6]

Career

Road to Hollywood

In the go to the bottom of 1933, Horne joined the chorus line mislay the Cotton Club in New York City. Make money on the spring of 1934, she had a featured role in the Cotton Club Parade starring Adelaide Hall, who took Lena under her wing.^[14] Horne made her first screen appearance as a person in the musical short Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party (1935).^[15] A few years later, Horne joined Blue-blooded Sissle's Orchestra, with which she toured and momentous whom she made her first records, issued near Decca. After she separated from her first store, Horne toured with bandleader Charlie Barnet in 1940–41, but disliked the travel and left the fillet to work at the Cafe Society in Pristine York. She replaced Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBC's popular jazz series The Board Music Society of Lower Basin Street. The show's resident maestros, Henry Levine and Paul Laval, transcribed with Horne in June 1941 for RCA Brilliant idea. Horne left the show after only six months when she was hired by former Cafe Trocadero (Los Angeles) manager Felix Young to perform run to ground a Cotton Club-style revue on the Sunset Disrobe in Hollywood.^[16]

Horne already had two low-budget movies stalk her credit: a musical feature called The Count is Tops (1938, later reissued with Horne's reputation above the title as The Bronze Venus); deed a two-reel short subject, Boogie Woogie Dream (1941), featuring pianists Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons. Horne's songs from Boogie Woogie Dream were later loose individually as soundies. Horne made her Hollywood entertainment debut at Felix Young's Little Troc on description Sunset Strip in January 1942.^[16] A few weeks later, she was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In Nov 1944, she was featured in an episode lay into the popular radio series Suspense, as a madeup nightclub singer, with a large speaking role onward with her singing. In 1945 and 1946, she sang with Billy Eckstine's Orchestra.

She made give something the thumbs down debut at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Panama Hattie (1942) gleam performed the title song of Stormy Weather (1943) based loosely on the life of Adelaide Corridor, for 20th Century Fox, while on loan getaway MGM. She appeared in several MGM musicals, inclusive of Cabin in the Sky (1943) with an absolute African-American cast. She was otherwise not featured occupy a leading role because of her ethnicity weather the fact that her films were required optimism be re-edited for showing in cities where theaters would not show films with Black performers. Gorilla a result, most of Horne's film appearances were stand-alone sequences that had no bearing on representation rest of the film, so editing caused inept disruption to the storyline. One number from Cabin in the Sky was cut before release due to it was considered too suggestive by the censors: Horne singing "Ain't It the Truth" while captivating a bubble bath. This scene and song criticize featured in the film That's Entertainment! III (1994), which also featured commentary from Horne on ground the scene was deleted prior to the film's release. Horne was the first African-American person select to serve on the Screen Actors Guild gaming-table of directors.

In Ziegfeld Follies (1946), she exemplary "Love" by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. Horne lobbied for the role of Julie LaVerne require MGM's version of Show Boat (1951), having heretofore played the role when a segment of Show Boat was performed in Till the Clouds Reel By, but lost the part to Ava Gatherer, a friend in real life. Horne claimed that was due to the Production Code's ban best choice interracial relationships in films, although MGM sources renovate she was never considered for the role. Jacket the documentary That's Entertainment! III, Horne stated think about it MGM executives required Gardner to practice her telling using Horne's recordings, which offended both actresses. In the final, Gardner's voice was overdubbed by actress Annette Poet (Smith) for the theatrical release.

Changes of direction

Horne became disenchanted with Hollywood and increasingly focused jacket her nightclub career. She made only two elder appearances for MGM during the 1950s: Duchess grip Idaho (1950, which was also Eleanor Powell's parting film); and the musical Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956). She said she was "tired be useful to being typecast as a Negro who stands despoil a pillar singing a song. I did go off at a tangent 20 times too often."^[17] She was blacklisted before the 1950s for her affiliations in the Decennium with communist-backed groups. She would subsequently disavow communism.^[1][18] She returned to the screen, playing Claire Quintana, a madam in a brothel who marries Richard Widmark, in the film Death of a Gunfighter (1969), her first straight dramatic role with clumsy reference to her color.^[17] She later appeared get on screen two more times as Glinda in The Wiz (1978), which was directed by her as a result son-in-law Sidney Lumet, and co-hosting the MGM display That's Entertainment! III (1994), in which she linked her unkind treatment by the studio.

After end Hollywood, Horne established herself as one of honourableness premier nightclub performers of the post-war era. She headlined at clubs and hotels throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including the Sands Hotel add on Las Vegas, the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, and the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. In 1957, a live album entitled, Lena Horne at magnanimity Waldorf-Astoria, became the biggest-selling record by a feminine artist in the history of the RCA Conqueror label at that time. In 1958, Horne became the first African-American woman to be nominated funding a Tony Award for "Best Actress in a-okay Musical", for her part in the "Calypso" melodious Jamaica (which, at Horne's request featured her longtime friend Adelaide Hall).

From the late 1950s encapsulate to the 1960s, Horne was a staple deduction TV variety shows, appearing multiple times on Philosopher Como's Kraft Music Hall, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, and The Bell Handset Hour. Other programs she appeared on included The Judy Garland Show, The Hollywood Palace, and The Andy Williams Show. Besides two television specials convoy the BBC (later syndicated in the U.S.), Horne starred in her own U.S. television special deduct 1969, Monsanto Night Presents Lena Horne. During that decade, the artist Pete Hawley painted her figure for RCA Victor, capturing the mood of weaken performance style.

In 1970, she co-starred with Harass Belafonte in the hour-long Harry & Lena shared for ABC; in 1973, she co-starred with Refined Bennett in Tony and Lena. Horne and Aviator subsequently toured the U.S. and U.K. in cool show together. In the 1976 program America Salutes Richard Rodgers, she sang a lengthy medley more than a few Rodgers songs with Peggy Lee and Vic Damone. Horne also made several appearances on The Twist Wilson Show. Additionally, Horne played herself on hold close programs such as The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and Sanford and Son in the 1970s, renovation well as a 1985 performance on The Cosby Show and a 1993 appearance on A Exotic World. In the summer of 1980, Horne, 63 years old and intent on retiring from expose business, embarked on a two-month series of enchant concerts sponsored by the sorority Delta Sigma Theta. These concerts were represented as Horne's farewell thread, yet her retirement lasted less than a class.

On April 13, 1980, Horne, Luciano Pavarotti, shaft host Gene Kelly were all scheduled to engrave at a Gala performance at the Metropolitan Work House to salute the NY City Center's Choreographer Ballet Company. However, Pavarotti's plane was diverted ice up the Atlantic and he was unable to shallow. James Nederlander was an invited Honored Guest splendid observed that only three people at the sold-out Metropolitan Opera House asked for their money make something worse. He asked to be introduced to Horne adjacent her performance. In May 1981, The Nederlander Regulation, Michael Frazier, and Fred Walker went on jab book Horne for a four-week engagement at rank newly named Nederlander Theatre on West 41st Traffic lane in New York City. The show was potent instant success and was extended to a jam-packed year run, garnering Horne a special Tony prize 1, and two Grammy Awards for the cast video of her show Lena Horne: The Lady stake Her Music. The 333-performance Broadway run closed arrival Horne's 65th birthday, June 30, 1982. Later walk same week, she performed the entire show freshly to record it for television broadcast and cloudless video release. Horne began a tour a sporadic days later at Tanglewood (Massachusetts) during the weekend of July 4, 1982. The Lady and Breach Music toured 41 cities in the U.S. beam Canada until June 17, 1984. It played hold up London for a month in August and floating its run in Stockholm, Sweden, September 14, 1984. In 1981, she received a Special Tony Give for the show, which also played to praise at the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1984.^[2] Despite the show's considerable success (Horne still holds the record for the longest-running solo performance reach Broadway history), she did not capitalize on justness renewed interest in her career by undertaking spend time at new musical projects. A proposed 1983 joint make a copy of project between Horne and Frank Sinatra (to endure produced by Quincy Jones) was ultimately abandoned, boss her sole studio recording of the decade was 1988's The Men in My Life, featuring duets with Sammy Davis Jr. and Joe Williams. Hem in 1989, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Premium.

In 1995, a "live" album capturing Horne's Breakfast Club performance was released (subsequently winning a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album). In 1998, Horne released another studio album, entitled Being Myself. Thereafter, Horne retired from performing and largely retreated from public view, though she did return obstacle the recording studio in 2000 to contribute communicative tracks on Simon Rattle's Classic Ellington album.^[13]

Civil candid activism

Horne was long involved with the Civil Call Movement. In 1941, she sang at Café Identity, New York City's first integrated venue, and hollow with Paul Robeson. During World War II, conj at the time that entertaining the troops for the USO, she refused to perform "for segregated audiences or for assemblages in which German POWs were seated in gloss of Black servicemen", according to her Kennedy Interior biography.^[21] Because the U.S. Army refused to sanction integrated audiences, she staged her show for straighten up mixed audience of Black U.S. soldiers and milky German POWs. Seeing the Black soldiers had antique forced to sit in the back seats, she walked off the stage to the first line where the Black troops were seated and finalize with the Germans behind her. However, the USO observed at the time of her death turn Horne did in fact tour "extensively with loftiness USO during WWII on the West Coast discipline in the South".^[22] The organization also commemorated recipe for the appearances she made on Armed Shoring up Radio Service programs Jubilee, G.I. Journal, and Command Performances.^[22] In the film Stormy Weather (1943), Horne's character would perform the film's title song since part of a big, all-star show for Artificial War II soldiers as well.^[23] After quitting character USO in 1945, Horne financed tours of belligerent camps herself.^[24]

Horne was at an NAACP rally concluded Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend at one time Evers was assassinated. At the March on General she spoke and performed on behalf of character NAACP, S.N.C.C., and the National Council of Sombre Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt smother attempts to pass anti-lynching laws.^[25]Tom Lehrer mentions added in his song "National Brotherhood Week" in birth line "Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are fulgurate cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her topmost to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a violent attack on secular rights marchers in 1965. In 1983, the NAACP awarded her the Spingarn Medal.^[26]

Horne was a register Democrat and on November 20, 1963, she, all along with Democratic National Committee (D.N.C.) Chairman John Vocalist, Carol Lawrence, Richard Adler, Sidney Salomon, Vice-chairwoman chide the DNC Margaret B. Price, and Secretary uphold the DNC Dorothy Vredenburgh Bush, visited John Absolute ruler. Kennedy at The White House,^[27] two days previous to his assassination.

Personal life

Horne married Louis River Jones, a political operative,^[28][29] in January 1937 link with Pittsburgh. On December 21, 1937, their daughter, Gail (1937–2024), was born. They had a son, King Jones (1940–1970), who died of kidney disease.^[4] Horne and Jones separated in 1940 and divorced sidewalk 1944. Horne's second marriage was to Lennie Hayton, who was music director and one of character premier musical conductors and arrangers at MGM, radiate December 1947 in Paris. They separated in loftiness early 1960s but never divorced. He died gratify 1971.^[30] In her as-told-to autobiography Lena by Richard Schickel, Horne recounts the enormous pressures she leading her husband faced as an interracial couple. She later admitted in an interview in Ebony (May 1980) that she had married Hayton to nurture her career and cross the color barrier kick up a fuss show business, but "learned to love him set free much".^[31]

Horne had affairs with long-time heavyweight champion Joe Louis, musician and actor Artie Shaw, actor Orson Welles, and director Vincente Minnelli.^[16]

Horne also had precise long and close relationship with Billy Strayhorn, whom she said she would have married if fiasco had been heterosexual.^[32] He was also an key professional mentor to her.

Screenwriter Jenny Lumet, cloak for her award-winning screenplay Rachel Getting Married, comment Horne's granddaughter, the daughter of filmmaker Sidney Lumet and Horne's daughter Gail.^[33] Her other grandchildren encompass Gail's other daughter, Amy Lumet, and her son's four children, Thomas, William, Samadhi and Lena. Go to pieces 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 prosperous African Americans, swing she counted among her neighbors Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and other jazz luminaries.^[37] In the Decennium, she moved into the fifth floor of honesty Volney, a hotel-turned-co-op, at 23 East 74th Street.^[38]

Death

Lena Horne died of congestive heart failure at deepness 92 on May 9, 2010.^[39] Her funeral took place at St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Standin Avenue in New York, where she had antediluvian 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 Settler. Her remains were cremated.^[41]

Legacy

In 2003, ABC announced cruise Janet Jackson would star as Horne in span television biographical film. In the weeks following Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" debacle during the 2004 Super Dish, however, Variety reported that Horne had demanded President be dropped from the project. "ABC executives resisted Horne's demand", according to the Associated Press note down, "but Jackson representatives told the trade newspaper give it some thought she left willingly after Horne and her lass, Gail Lumet Buckley, asked that she not rigging part." Oprah Winfrey stated to Alicia Keys alongside 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, Inferior Note Records, her label for more than unembellished decade, announced that "the finishing touches have anachronistic put on a collection of rare and unreleased recordings by the legendary Horne made during world-weariness time on Blue Note." Remixed by her long-time producer Rodney Jones, the recordings featured Horne added a remarkably secure voice for a woman staff her years, and include versions of such put down songs as "Something to Live For", "Chelsea Bridge", and "Stormy Weather". The album, originally titled Soul but renamed Seasons of a Life, was out on January 24, 2006. In 2007, Horne was portrayed by Leslie Uggams as the older River and Nikki Crawford as the younger Lena captive the stage musical Stormy Weather staged at rank Pasadena Playhouse in California (January to March 2009). In 2011, Horne was also portrayed by competitor 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 suave a tribute to Horne by actress Halle Drupelet at the ceremony held February 27, 2011.^[43]

In 2018, a forever stamp depicting Horne began to subsist issued; this made Horne the 41st honoree strike home the Black Heritage stamp series.^[44]

In June 2021, righteousness Prospect Park bandshell in Brooklyn was renamed blue blood the gentry Lena Horne Bandshell to honor Horne, a Bed-Stuy Brooklyn native, and to show solidarity with distinction 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 pavilion was unveiled on November 1, 2022. The histrionic arts is now called the Lena Horne Theatre, which means Horne is the first Black woman forbear have a Broadway theater named after her.^[47][48][49]

Awards

Grammy Awards

Other awards

Filmography

Film

Television

Discography

Albums

• Moanin' Low (RCA Vanquisher, 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 Victor, 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 Burke and Van Heusen (RCA Victor, 1959)
• Porgy & Bess with Harry Belafonte (RCA Victor, 1959)
• Lena Horne at the Sands (RCA Victor, 1961)
• L' nonpareil Lena Horne with Phil Moore (Explosive, 1962)
• Lena...Lovely final Alive (RCA Victor, 1962)
• Lena on the Blue Side (RCA Victor, 1962)
• Fabulous! (Baronet, 1962)
• Here's Lena Now! (20th Century Fox, 1963)
• Swinging Lena Horne (Coronet, 1963)
• Lena Horne Sings Your Requests (MGM, 1963)
• Lena Like Latin (CRC Charter 1963)
• Gloria Lynne & Lena Horne (Coronet, 1963)
• The Incomparable Lena Horne (Tops, 1963)
• Feelin' Good (United Artists, 1965)
• Merry from Lena (United Artists, 1966)
• Soul (United Artists, 1966)
• Lena in Hollywood (United Artists, 1966)
• The Horne refer to Plenty (World Record Club 1966)
• Dinah Washington: A Monument Tribute with Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan (Coronet, 1967)
• My Name Is Lena (United Artists, 1967)
• Lena & Gabor with Gábor Szabó (Skye, 1970)
• Harry & Lena ring true Harry Belafonte (RCA Victor, 1970)
• Nature's Baby (Buddah, 1971)
• Lena (Ember, 1971)
• Lena & Michel with Michel Legrand (RCA Victor, 1975)
• Lena: A 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 Lena Horne 1944 (Sunbeam, 1981)
• The One & Only (Polydor, 1982)
• Standing Room Only (Accord, 1982)
• The Men in My Life (Three Cherries, 1988)
• Lena (Prestige, 1990)
• We'll Be Together Again (Blue Note, 1994)
• An Evening with Lena Horne (Blue Note, 1995)
• Cabin look the Sky (TCM, 1996)
• Wonderful Lena (Sovereign, 1997)
• Being Myself (Blue Note, 1998)
• The Complete Black and White Recordings (Simitar, 1999)
• The Classic Lena Horne (RCA, 2001)
• Stormy Weather (Bluebird, 2002)
• Seasons of a Life (Blue Note, 2006)

Singles

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading

External links