By Alicia Cruz
The Black Urban Times
Legendary chanteuse, author and actress, Lena Horne died Sunday at New York–Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. No other details surrounding her death have been released at this time.
Born Lena Mary Calhoun Horne on June 30, 1917 in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn to Edwin Horne, a numbers kingpin in the gambling world and Edna Scottron, the daughter of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, who was an actress.
Raised in the upper-middle-class, black neighborhood, the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Horne dropped out of Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn to care for her ailing mother. It was a move that launched her career when she joined the chorus line of the Cotton Club in New York City in 1933 at the tender age of 16.
Over the next seven years, Horne went from the Cotton Club's Chorus Line to a featured role in the Cotton Club Parade to touring with Noble Sissle's Orchestra and bandleader Charlie Barnet in 1940.
She moved on to the Café Society in New York where she replaced Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBC's jazz series The Chamber Music Society.
In 1945, during World War II, Horne was scheduled to perform at an Army base in Fort Reilly, Kansas. Horne, unyielding in her stance against racism, refused to perform for the segregated military audience in which German POWs were seated in front of African American servicemen at a USO sponsored show. Horne immediately left the stage headed to the local NAACP office to file a complaint. MGM yanked Horne from the tour, forcing her to use her own money to travel and entertain the troops.
Horne, an outspoken advocate during the Civil Rights Movement and an active member of the NAACP once worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws and at the March on Washington and spoke and performed on behalf of the NAACP. She marched alongside Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi at an NAACP rally the weekend before he was assassinated, joined 250,000 Americans in 1963 on the March on Washington when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech and met President John F. Kennedy at the White House two days before his assassination.
By the 1960s, Horne was one of the most visible celebrities affiliated with the civil rights movement. It was reported that the feisty diva once throwing a lamp at a customer in a Beverly Hills restaurant after the customer spouted a racial epithet.
Horne's dedication to the Civil Rights Movement and tenacious fight against racism came as no surprise to many who knew Horne, the granddaughter of a freed slave and a descendant of the John C. Calhoun family. Calhoun, the seventh Vice President of the United States, was a writer, orator and nationalist who began his political career as a politician from South Carolina during the first half of 19th century who made his name with his redefinition of republicanism to include the approval of slavery and minority rights.
Calhoun’s concept of concurrent majority, that a minority had the right to object to and even veto hostile legislation directed against it, secured his name within American history when it was later incorporated into the American value system.
One evening in 1943, Horne caught the eye of a talent scout in Hollywood who envisioned her name in lights. It was then that Horne graduated to the silver screen when she signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the most prestigious studio in the world, and became the first black performer to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio.
MGM introduced her to the acting world with "Panama Hattie" and went on to act and sing in a number of hits including Cabin in the Sky which drew criticism for a scene producers deemed too risqué (Horne was signing her notable "Aint it The Truth while taking a bubble bath).
During that time, theatres in many states could not bill shows that featured African American actors. This led to many of Horne's films being re-edited. The racial bigotry left Horne dissatisfied with the direction her acting career was headed in and she opted to leave Hollywood to return to headlining at nightclubs. Horne's political affiliations with organizations dedicated to the civil rights movement left her ostracized in the entertainment industry during the 1950s so her return to acting during the late 1960s and 1970s was short lived but featured notable performances in movies such as "Death of a Gunfighter where she played the role of singer Claire Quintana in the 1969, then as Glinda the good witch in the 1978 hit "The Wiz," which co-starred Michael Jackson and Diana Ross.
In 1981, Horne's one-woman Broadway show titled, "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music" won a special Tony Award and was billed as the one-woman Broadway show of shows for years. The soundtrack for the show also won two Grammy awards. During that show, Horne, then 64, performed two renditions of "Stormy Weather." Her cantillated performance was followed by an impassioned one to give audiences "a glimpse of the spiritual odyssey" her five-decade career had taken. It was her greatest triumph yet. In 1990, Horne told Ebony magazine it was "the most rewarding event in my entire career."
Critic, John Simon, wrote that Horne was "ageless... tempered like steel, baked like clay, annealed like glass; life has chiseled, burnished, refined her."
When Halle Berry became the first black woman to win the best actress Oscar in 2002, she dedicated her win to actresses Diahann Carroll, the late Dorothy Dandridge and even Horne.
"It's (the award) for every nameless, faceless woman of color who now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened," sobbed Berry.
Horne's first marriage in 1937 to husband, Louis Jones, a politician with whom she had daughter, Gail and son, Teddy ended in 1944. Three years later she married second husband, MGM music director Lennie Hayton, who doubled as her pianist, arranger, conductor, and manager. Their union was kept quiet due to racial tensions at the time (Hayton was Caucasian).
Horne, who beguiled audiences worldwide with her sultry voice, elegance, and classic beauty, had this to say about the affect her ethnicity had on her fans, "I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept. I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked."
Life for the vivacious, bluesy singer hit an all-time low beginning with the death of her father and son, followed by husband, Lennie's death in 1971. The Sanka coffee spokeswoman slipped into a state of depression, withdrawing from the public eye all together until the promoting of friend and comedian, Alan King lured her back to the stage more resolute than ever.
"I looked out and saw a family of brothers and sisters," Horne said. "It was a long time, but when it came, I truly began to live."
Like a phoenix risen from the ashes of despair, Horne returned to the stage with a renewed sense of moxie as she toured England and the United States throughout 1973 and 1974; in 1979, billed alongside composer Marvin Hamlisch at the Westbury Music Fair in New York, Horne undisputed approbation of critic John S. Wilson who observed a change in the singer he described as, "an intensity, sometimes warm and intimate, sometimes ominously commanding in every syllable that she projects." For the first time in her career, the usually reserved chanteuse pattered between songs as she embraced her audience. The unusual move drew her audience closer to her.
Some of Horne's other memorable performances include Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Judy Garland Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Flip Wilson show, The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Sanford and Son as well as cameos on The Cosby Show and A Different World.
Horne, 92, leaves to mourn her daughter Gail and five grandchildren Thomas, William, Lena, Amy and Jenny.
The Black Urban Times
Legendary chanteuse, author and actress, Lena Horne died Sunday at New York–Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. No other details surrounding her death have been released at this time.
Born Lena Mary Calhoun Horne on June 30, 1917 in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn to Edwin Horne, a numbers kingpin in the gambling world and Edna Scottron, the daughter of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, who was an actress.
Raised in the upper-middle-class, black neighborhood, the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Horne dropped out of Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn to care for her ailing mother. It was a move that launched her career when she joined the chorus line of the Cotton Club in New York City in 1933 at the tender age of 16.
Over the next seven years, Horne went from the Cotton Club's Chorus Line to a featured role in the Cotton Club Parade to touring with Noble Sissle's Orchestra and bandleader Charlie Barnet in 1940.
She moved on to the Café Society in New York where she replaced Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBC's jazz series The Chamber Music Society.
In 1945, during World War II, Horne was scheduled to perform at an Army base in Fort Reilly, Kansas. Horne, unyielding in her stance against racism, refused to perform for the segregated military audience in which German POWs were seated in front of African American servicemen at a USO sponsored show. Horne immediately left the stage headed to the local NAACP office to file a complaint. MGM yanked Horne from the tour, forcing her to use her own money to travel and entertain the troops.
Horne, an outspoken advocate during the Civil Rights Movement and an active member of the NAACP once worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws and at the March on Washington and spoke and performed on behalf of the NAACP. She marched alongside Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi at an NAACP rally the weekend before he was assassinated, joined 250,000 Americans in 1963 on the March on Washington when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech and met President John F. Kennedy at the White House two days before his assassination.
By the 1960s, Horne was one of the most visible celebrities affiliated with the civil rights movement. It was reported that the feisty diva once throwing a lamp at a customer in a Beverly Hills restaurant after the customer spouted a racial epithet.
Horne's dedication to the Civil Rights Movement and tenacious fight against racism came as no surprise to many who knew Horne, the granddaughter of a freed slave and a descendant of the John C. Calhoun family. Calhoun, the seventh Vice President of the United States, was a writer, orator and nationalist who began his political career as a politician from South Carolina during the first half of 19th century who made his name with his redefinition of republicanism to include the approval of slavery and minority rights.
Calhoun’s concept of concurrent majority, that a minority had the right to object to and even veto hostile legislation directed against it, secured his name within American history when it was later incorporated into the American value system.
One evening in 1943, Horne caught the eye of a talent scout in Hollywood who envisioned her name in lights. It was then that Horne graduated to the silver screen when she signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the most prestigious studio in the world, and became the first black performer to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio.
MGM introduced her to the acting world with "Panama Hattie" and went on to act and sing in a number of hits including Cabin in the Sky which drew criticism for a scene producers deemed too risqué (Horne was signing her notable "Aint it The Truth while taking a bubble bath).
During that time, theatres in many states could not bill shows that featured African American actors. This led to many of Horne's films being re-edited. The racial bigotry left Horne dissatisfied with the direction her acting career was headed in and she opted to leave Hollywood to return to headlining at nightclubs. Horne's political affiliations with organizations dedicated to the civil rights movement left her ostracized in the entertainment industry during the 1950s so her return to acting during the late 1960s and 1970s was short lived but featured notable performances in movies such as "Death of a Gunfighter where she played the role of singer Claire Quintana in the 1969, then as Glinda the good witch in the 1978 hit "The Wiz," which co-starred Michael Jackson and Diana Ross.
In 1981, Horne's one-woman Broadway show titled, "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music" won a special Tony Award and was billed as the one-woman Broadway show of shows for years. The soundtrack for the show also won two Grammy awards. During that show, Horne, then 64, performed two renditions of "Stormy Weather." Her cantillated performance was followed by an impassioned one to give audiences "a glimpse of the spiritual odyssey" her five-decade career had taken. It was her greatest triumph yet. In 1990, Horne told Ebony magazine it was "the most rewarding event in my entire career."
Critic, John Simon, wrote that Horne was "ageless... tempered like steel, baked like clay, annealed like glass; life has chiseled, burnished, refined her."
When Halle Berry became the first black woman to win the best actress Oscar in 2002, she dedicated her win to actresses Diahann Carroll, the late Dorothy Dandridge and even Horne.
"It's (the award) for every nameless, faceless woman of color who now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened," sobbed Berry.
Horne's first marriage in 1937 to husband, Louis Jones, a politician with whom she had daughter, Gail and son, Teddy ended in 1944. Three years later she married second husband, MGM music director Lennie Hayton, who doubled as her pianist, arranger, conductor, and manager. Their union was kept quiet due to racial tensions at the time (Hayton was Caucasian).
Horne, who beguiled audiences worldwide with her sultry voice, elegance, and classic beauty, had this to say about the affect her ethnicity had on her fans, "I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept. I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked."
Life for the vivacious, bluesy singer hit an all-time low beginning with the death of her father and son, followed by husband, Lennie's death in 1971. The Sanka coffee spokeswoman slipped into a state of depression, withdrawing from the public eye all together until the promoting of friend and comedian, Alan King lured her back to the stage more resolute than ever.
"I looked out and saw a family of brothers and sisters," Horne said. "It was a long time, but when it came, I truly began to live."
Like a phoenix risen from the ashes of despair, Horne returned to the stage with a renewed sense of moxie as she toured England and the United States throughout 1973 and 1974; in 1979, billed alongside composer Marvin Hamlisch at the Westbury Music Fair in New York, Horne undisputed approbation of critic John S. Wilson who observed a change in the singer he described as, "an intensity, sometimes warm and intimate, sometimes ominously commanding in every syllable that she projects." For the first time in her career, the usually reserved chanteuse pattered between songs as she embraced her audience. The unusual move drew her audience closer to her.
Some of Horne's other memorable performances include Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Judy Garland Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Flip Wilson show, The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Sanford and Son as well as cameos on The Cosby Show and A Different World.
Horne, 92, leaves to mourn her daughter Gail and five grandchildren Thomas, William, Lena, Amy and Jenny.
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