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 and covered film, television and theater.

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. A groundbreaking Black 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, withdrawing from the public eye in 2000.

Early life Lena Horne was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn to Edwin and Edna Horne on June 30, 1917. 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.

Horne's father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne Jr., a one-time owner of a hotel and restaurant, 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. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron, was an actress with a Black theater troupe and traveled extensively. Horne was raised mainly by her paternal grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne. For several years she traveled with her mother. 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, 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. Horne made her first screen appearance as a dancer in the musical short Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party (1935). 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 Café 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.

Horne as Julie LaVerne in a mini-production of Show Boat in Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), singing "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man"

Horne already had two low-budget movies to her credit: a musical feature called The Duke is Tops (1938, later reissued with Horne's name above the title as The Bronze Venus); and 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 released individually as soundies. Horne made her Hollywood nightclub debut at Felix Young's Little Troc on the Sunset Strip in January 1942. She was blacklisted during the 1950s for her affiliations in the 1940s with communist-backed groups. She would subsequently disavow communism. 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 no reference to her color. Despite the show's considerable success (Horne still holds the record for the longest-running solo performance in Broadway history), she did not capitalize on the renewed interest in her career by undertaking many new musical projects. A proposed 1983 joint recording project between Horne and Frank Sinatra (to be produced by Quincy Jones) was ultimately abandoned, and her sole studio recording of the decade was 1988's The Men in My Life, featuring duets with Sammy Davis Jr. and Joe Williams. In 1989, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

In the 1990s, Horne released three solo albums: 1994's Grammy nominated "We'll Be Together Again" studio album, 1995's "An Evening with Lena Horne" live album, which won Horne a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album, and 1998's Being Myself, Horne's final studio album. Thereafter, Horne retired from performing and largely retreated from public view, though in 2000, Horne's vocals were featured on Simon Rattle's Classic Ellington album, and in 2006, a compilation album, entitled "Seasons of a Life" featuring various outtakes from Horne's 1990s recording sessions with Blue Note records was released.

Civil rights activism

Horne was long involved with the civil rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Café Society, New York City's first integrated venue, and worked with Paul Robeson. During World War II, when entertaining the troops for the USO, she refused to perform "for segregated audiences or for groups in which German POWs were seated in front of Black servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the US Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she staged her show for a mixed audience of Black US soldiers and white German POWs. Seeing the Black soldiers had been forced to sit in the back seats, she walked off the stage to the first row where the Black troops were seated and performed with the Germans behind her. However, the USO observed at the time of her death that Horne did in fact tour "extensively with the USO during WWII on the West Coast and in the South". The organization also commemorated her for the appearances she made on Armed Forces Radio Service programs Jubilee, G.I. Journal, and Command Performances. After quitting the USO in 1945, Horne financed tours of military camps herself.

Horne was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend before Evers was assassinated. At the March on Washington she spoke and performed on behalf of the NAACP, S.N.C.C., and the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt in attempts to pass anti-lynching laws. Tom Lehrer mentions her in his song "National Brotherhood Week" in the line "Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her and to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a violent attack on civil rights marchers in 1965. In 1983, the NAACP awarded her the Spingarn Medal.

Horne was a registered Democrat and on November 20, 1963, she, along with Democratic National Committee (D.N.C.) Chairman John Bailey, Carol Lawrence, Richard Adler, Sidney Salomon, Vice-chairwoman of the DNC Margaret B. Price, and Secretary of the DNC Dorothy Vredenburgh Bush, visited John F. Kennedy at The White House, two days prior to his assassination.

Personal life

Horne married Louis Jordan Jones, a political operative, in January 1937 in Pittsburgh. On December 21, 1937, their daughter, Gail, was born. They had a son, Edwin Jones, who died of kidney disease. In her as-told-to autobiography Lena by Richard Schickel, Horne recounts the enormous pressures she and her husband faced as an interracial couple. She later admitted in an interview in Ebony (May 1980) that she had married Hayton to advance her career and cross the color barrier in show business, but "learned to love him very much".

Horne had affairs with long-time heavyweight champion Joe Louis, musician and actor Artie Shaw, actor Orson Welles, and director Vincente Minnelli. He was also an important professional mentor to her.

Among her close friends was author Rex Stout, creator of the mystery series featuring the fictional detective Nero Wolfe. She first met Stout in the early 1950s when their daughters were classmates at a Quaker boarding school in upstate New York. In 1996 Horne wrote the Introduction to a new edition of Stout's novel, Champagne for One.

Screenwriter Jenny Lumet, known for her award-winning screenplay Rachel Getting Married, is Horne's granddaughter, the daughter of filmmaker Sidney Lumet and Horne's daughter Gail. Her other grandchildren include Gail's other daughter, Amy Lumet, and her son's four children, Thomas, William, Samadhi and Lena. Her great-grandchildren include Jake Cannavale.

Horne was Catholic. From 1946 to 1962 she resided in St. Albans, Queens, New York, enclave of prosperous African Americans, where she counted among her neighbors Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and other jazz luminaries. In the 1980s, she moved into the fifth floor of the Volney, a hotel turned co-op, at 23 East 74th Street.

Death Lena Horne died of congestive heart failure at age 92 on May 9, 2010. Her funeral took place at St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue in New York, where she had been a member. 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.

Legacy 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.

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.

In 2018, a forever stamp depicting Horne began to be issued; this made Horne the 41st honoree in the Black Heritage stamp series.

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.

The Nederlander Organization announced in June 2022 that Broadway's Brooks Atkinson Theatre would be renamed after her later that year. The theater's marquee was unveiled on November 1, 2022. The theater is now called the Lena Horne Theatre, which means Horne is the first Black woman to have a Broadway theater named after her.

Awards

Grammy Awards Lena Horne Grammy Award History Lena Horne at the Sands Best Vocal Performance Album, Female Porgy and Bess Best Solo Vocal Performance, Female Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music Best Cast Show Album The Men in My Life Best Jazz Vocal Performance "I Won't Leave You Again" Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Duo or Group Lifetime Achievement Award An Evening with Lena Horne Best Jazz Vocal Performance

Other awards Year Organization Category Result Notes 1957 Tony Awards Best Actress Nominee Jamaica 1980 Howard University Honorary doctorate Honored 1980 Drama Desk Awards Outstanding Actress – Musical Won Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music 1980 New York Drama Critics Circle Awards Special Citation Won Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music 1981 Tony Awards Special Citation Won Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music 1984 John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Kennedy Center Honors Won For extraordinary talent, creativity, and perseverance 1985 Emmy Award Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music Nominee 1987 American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers The ASCAP Pied Piper Award Won Given to entertainers who have made significant contributions to words and music 1994 Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award Songwriters Hall of Fame Won 1997 Society of Singers Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award Won for "whom singers are awarded for their contribution to the world of music along with their dedicated efforts to benefit the community and worldwide causes" 1999 NAACP Image Award Outstanding Jazz Artist Won 2006 Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site International Civil Rights Walk of Fame Inducted ? Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Hollywood Walk of Fame Won Honor (motion pictures) ? Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Hollywood Walk of Fame Won Honor (recordings)

Filmography

Film

Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party (1935, short subject) The Duke Is Tops (1938) Panama Hattie (1942) Cabin in the Sky (1943) Stormy Weather (1943) Thousands Cheer (1943) I Dood It (1943) Swing Fever (1943) Boogie-Woogie Dream (1944, short subject filmed in 1941) Broadway Rhythm (1944) Two Girls and a Sailor (1944) Studio Visit (1946) (short subject; featuring outtake from Cabin in the Sky) Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) Ziegfeld Follies (1946) Words and Music (1948) Some of the Best (1949, short subject) Duchess of Idaho (1950) Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956) The Heart of Show Business (1957, short subject) Now! (1965) (short subject, voice only) Death of a Gunfighter (1969) The Wiz (1978) That's Entertainment! III (1994) Strange Frame (archive footage, 2012)

Television

What's My Line? (as Mystery Guest, September 27, 1953) Ed Sullivan Show (January 6, 1957) "What's My Line?" (as Mystery Guest, March 2, 1958) The Judy Garland Show (as herself, October 13, 1963) The Perry Como Show (as herself, March 5, 1965) Sesame Street (as herself, Episode #5.1, November 19, 1973) Sanford & Son ("A Visit from Lena Horne" as herself, #2. January 12, 1973) The Muppet Show (as herself, 1976) Sesame Street (as herself, Episode #7.76, March 15, 1976) The Cosby Show ("Cliff's Birthday" as herself, May 9, 1985) A Different World ("A Rock, a River, a Lena" as herself, July 1993)

Discography