| Lena Horne |
Horne in her stage show, Nine O'Clock Revue, 1961. |
| Background information |
| Birth name |
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne |
| Born |
(1917-06-30)June 30, 1917
Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Died |
May 9, 2010(2010-05-09) (aged 92)
New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Genres |
Broadway, traditional pop, vocal jazz |
| Occupations |
Singer, dancer, actress, civil rights activist, recording artists |
| Instruments |
Vocals |
| Years active |
1933–2000 |
| Labels |
MGM, RCA Victor, United Artists, Blue Note, Qwest/Warner Bros. Records |
| Associated acts |
Harry Belafonte, Tony Bennett, Vic Damone, Judy Garland, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Billie Holiday, Sammy Davis, Jr., Barbra Streisand, Teddy Wilson |
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.
Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Due to the Red Scare and her left-leaning political views, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood.[1]
Returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, Horne took part in the March on Washington in August 1963, and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs and 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 three hundred performances on Broadway and earned her numerous awards and accolades. She continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000.
Horne was born in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.[1] Reported to be descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her family were a mixture of European American, Native American, and African American descent, and each belonged to what W. E. B. Du Bois called "The Talented Tenth", the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks, some of whom were mixed race.[2][3]
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970),[4][5] a numbers kingpin in the gambling trade, left the family when she was three and moved to an upper-middle-class black community in the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[6][7] Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), daughter of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a black theatre troupe and traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave.[8] Lena Horne was mainly raised by her grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne.[5]
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, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute in Fort Valley, Georgia [10] and who would later become an adviser to 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 12 years old.[10] She then attended Girls High School, an all-girls public high school in Brooklyn which has since become Boys and Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved in with her father in Pittsburgh, staying in the city's Little Harlem for almost five years and learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn and Billy Eckstine, among others.[12]
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. A few years later she joined Noble Sissle's Orchestra, with which she toured and with whom she recorded her first record release, a 78rpm single issued by Decca Records. 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 to headline a nightclub revue on the West Coast, and was replaced by Linda Keene.[citation needed]
Horne already had two low-budget movies to her credit: a 1938 musical feature called The Duke is Tops (later reissued with Horne's name above the title as The Bronze Venus); and a 1941 two-reel short subject, Boogie Woogie Dream, featuring pianists Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons. Horne's songs from Boogie Woogie Dream were later released individually as soundies. Horne was primarily a nightclub performer during this period, and it was during a 1943 club engagement in Hollywood that talent scouts approached Horne to work in pictures. She chose Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and became the first black performer to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio. November 1944 she was featured in an episode of the popular radio series, Suspense, as a fictional nightclub singer, with a large speaking role along with her singing. In 1945 and 1946 she sang with Billy Eckstine's Orchestra.
She made her debut with MGM in Panama Hattie (1942) and performed the title song of Stormy Weather based loosely on the life of Adelaide Hall, (1943), which she made at 20th Century Fox, on loan from MGM. She appeared in a number of MGM musicals, most notably Cabin in the Sky (also 1943), but was never featured in a leading role because of her race and the fact that films featuring her had to be re-edited for showing in states where theaters could not show films with black performers. As a result, most of Horne's film appearances were stand-alone sequences that had no bearing on the rest of the film, so editing caused no disruption to the storyline; a notable exception was the all-black musical Cabin in the Sky, although one number was cut because it was considered too suggestive by the censors. "Ain't it the Truth" was the song (and scene) cut before the release of the film Cabin in the Sky. It featured Horne singing "Ain't it the Truth", while taking a bubble bath (considered too "risqué" by the film's executives). This scene and song are featured in the film That's Entertainment! III (1994) which also featured commentary from Horne on why the scene was deleted prior to the film's release.
In Ziegfeld Follies (1946) she performed "Love" by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. Horne wanted to be considered for the role of Julie LaVerne in MGM's 1951 version of Show Boat (having already played the role when a segment of Show Boat was performed in Till the Clouds Roll By) but lost the part to Ava Gardner, a personal friend in real life, due to the Production Code's ban on interracial relationships in films. In the documentary That's Entertainment! III Horne stated that MGM executives required Gardner to practice her singing using Horne's recordings, which offended both actresses. Ultimately, Gardner's voice was overdubbed by actress Annette Warren (Smith) for the theatrical release.
By the mid-1950s, Horne was disenchanted with Hollywood and increasingly focused on her nightclub career. She only made two major appearances in MGM films during the 1950s: Duchess of Idaho (which was also Eleanor Powell's film swan song); and the 1956 musical Meet Me in Las Vegas. She was blacklisted during the 1950s for her political views.[13] She returned to the screen three more times, playing chanteuse Claire Quintana in the 1969 film Death of a Gunfighter, Glinda in The Wiz (film) (1978), and co-hosting the 1994 MGM retrospective That's Entertainment! III, in which she was candid about her treatment by the studio.
After leaving Hollywood, Horne established herself as one of the premiere nightclub performers of the post-war era. She headlined at clubs and hotels throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, and the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. In 1957, a live album entitled, Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria, became the biggest selling record by a female artist in the history of the RCA-Victor label. In 1958, Horne was nominated for a Tony Award for "Best Actress in a Musical" (for her part in the "Calypso" musical Jamaica) which, at Lena's request featured her longtime friend Adelaide Hall.
Horne performing on
The Bell Telephone Hour, 1965.
From the late 1950s through the 1960s, Horne was a staple of TV variety shows, appearing multiple times on Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, and The Bell Telephone Hour. Other programs she appeared on included The Judy Garland Show, The Hollywood Palace, and The Andy Williams Show. Besides two television 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. During this decade, the artist Pete Hawley painted her portrait for RCA Victor, capturing the mood of her performance style.and she also had 2 kids
In 1970, she co-starred with Harry Belafonte in the hour-long Harry & Lena for ABC; in 1973, she co-starred with Tony Bennett in Tony and Lena. Horne and Bennett subsequently toured the U.S. and U.K. in a show together. In the 1976 program America Salutes Richard Rodgers, she sang a lengthy medley of Rodgers songs with Peggy Lee and Vic Damone. Horne also made several appearances on The Flip Wilson Show.
Additionally, Horne played herself on television programs such as The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and Sanford and Son in the 1970s, as well as a 1985 performance on The Cosby Show and a 1993-appearance on A Different World. In the summer of 1980, Horne, 63 years old and intent on retiring from show business, embarked on a two month series of benefit concerts sponsored by Delta Sigma Theta. These concerts were represented as Horne's farewell tour, yet her retirement lasted less than a year.
On April 13, 1980, Horne, Luciano Pavarotti, and host Gene Kelly were all scheduled to appear at a Gala performance at the Metropolitan Opera House to salute the N Y City Center's Joffrey Ballet Company. However, Pavarotti's plane was diverted over the Atlantic and he was unable to appear. James Nederlander was an invited Honored Guest and noted that only three people at the sold out Metropolitan Opera House asked for their money back. He asked to be introduced to Lena following her performance. In May 1981, The Nederlander Organization, Michael Frazier, and Fred Walker went on to book Horne for a four-week engagement at the newly named Nederlander Theatre (formerly the Trafalgar, the Billy Rose, and the National) on West 41st Street in New York City. The show was an instant success and was extended to a full year run, garnering Horne a special Tony award, and two Grammy Awards for the cast recording of her show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music. The 333-performance Broadway run closed on Horne's 65th birthday, June 30, 1982. Later that same week, the entire show was performed again and videotaped for television broadcast and home video release. The tour began a few days later at Tanglewood (Massachusetts) during the July 4, 1982 weekend. The Lady and Her Music toured 41 cities in the U.S. and Canada through June 17, 1984. It played in London for a month in August and ended its run in Stockholm, Sweden, September 14, 1984.
In 1981, she received a Special Tony Award for her one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which also played to acclaim at the Adelphi Theatre in London in 1984.[14] 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.
The 1990s found Horne considerably more active in the recording studio - all the more remarkable considering she was approaching her 80th year. Following her 1993 performance at a tribute to the musical legacy of her good friend Billy Strayhorn (Duke Ellington's longtime collaborator), she decided to record an album composed largely of Strayhorn's and Ellington's songs the following year, We'll Be Together Again. To coincide with the release of the album, Horne made what would be her final concert performances at New York's Supper Club and Carnegie Hall. That same year, Horne also lent her vocals to a recording of "Embraceable You" on Sinatra's Duets II album. Though the album was largely derided by critics, the Sinatra-Horne pairing was generally regarded as its highlight.[citation needed]
In 1995, a 'live' album capturing her Supper 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 essentially retired from performing and largely retreated from public view, though she did return to the recording studio in 2000 to contribute vocal tracks on Simon Rattle's Classic Ellington album.[citation needed]
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society 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 African American servicemen",[15] according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound up putting on a show for a mixed audience of black U.S. 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. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend before Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House two days before he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington and spoke and performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, and the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws.[16] She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
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.
Horne married Louis Jordan Jones in January 1937 in Pittsburgh. On December 21, 1937, their daughter, Gail (later known as Gail Lumet Buckley, a best-selling author) was born there.[17] and a son, Edwin Jones (born February 7, 1940 – September 12, 1970)[4] who died of kidney disease.[5] Horne and Jones separated in 1940 and divorced in 1944.
Horne's second marriage was to Lennie Hayton, one of the premier musical conductors and arrangers at MGM, in December 1947 in Paris. They separated in the early 1960s, but never divorced; he died in 1971.[18]
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 Ebony, May 1980 interview she had married Hayton to advance her career and cross the "color-line" in show business, but had learned to love him in a way.[19]
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.[20] Horne's other grandchildren include Gail's other daughter, Amy Lumet, and her son's three children, Thomas, William, and Lena.
Horne died on Mothers Day, May 9, 2010, in New York City of heart failure. Horne's funeral took place at St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue in New York City. Thousands gathered to mourn her, including Leontyne Price, Dionne Warwick, Jessye Norman, Chita Rivera, Cicely Tyson, Diahann Carroll, Leslie Uggams, Lauren Bacall, Audra McDonald, Vanessa L. Williams .
In 2003, ABC announced that Janet Jackson would star as Horne in a television biopic. In the weeks following Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" debacle during the 2004 Super Bowl, however, Variety reported that Horne 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.[citation needed]
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 longtime producer Rodney Jones, the recordings featured Horne in 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 through 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.[21]
| Year |
Organization |
Category |
Result |
Notes |
| 2006 |
Martin Luther King, Jr.
National Historic Site |
International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[24] |
Inducted |
| 1999 |
NAACP Image Award |
Outstanding Jazz Artist |
Winner |
| 1994 |
Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award |
Songwriters Hall of Fame |
Winner |
| ? |
Hollywood Chamber of Commerce |
Hollywood Walk of Fame |
Winner |
Honor (motion pictures) |
| ? |
Hollywood Chamber of Commerce |
Hollywood Walk of Fame |
Winner |
Honor (recordings) |
| 1987 |
American Society of Composers,
Authors and Publishers |
The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[25] |
Winner |
Given to entertainers who have made significant contributions to words and music |
| 1985 |
Emmy Award |
Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music |
Nominee |
| 1984 |
John F. Kennedy Center for
the Performing Arts |
Kennedy Center Honors[26] |
Winner |
For extraordinary talent, creativity, and perseverance |
| 1980 |
Howard University |
Honorary doctorate[27] |
Honored |
| 1980 |
Drama Desk Awards |
Outstanding Actress – Musical |
Winner |
Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music |
| 1980 |
New York Drama Critics Circle Awards |
Special Citation |
Winner |
Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music |
| 1981 |
Tony Awards |
Special Citation |
Winner |
Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music |
| 1957 |
Tony Awards |
Best Actress |
Nominee |
"Jamaica" |
Issued in 1936 on 78rpm 10" vinyl by Decca Records on Decca 778B. Credits Noble Sissle and His Orchestra,[28] Lena Horne was credited as Helena Horne for this recording. Recorded on the 3rd of November 1936 in New York.
- "Stormy Weather" (1943)
- "Love Me or Leave Me" (1955) #19 U.S. Pop
- ^ a b "Lena Horne - About the Performer | American Masters | PBS". PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/lena-horne/about-the-performer/487/. Retrieved December 18, 2011.
- ^ William Ruhlmann (2008). "Artist: Lena Horne Biography". Allmusic. http://www.answers.com/topic/lena-horne. Retrieved 2008-08-010.
- ^ The Economist (May 20, 2010). "Lena Horne, entertainer, died on May 9th, aged 92". BlackAmericaWeb. http://www.economist.com/node/16160124?story_id=16160124. Retrieved 2010-07-23.
- ^ a b Vh1 biography
- ^ a b c McLellan, Dennis; Nelson, Valerie J. (2010-05-10). "Lena Horne dies at 92; singer and civil rights activist who broke barriers". Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-horne-20100510,0,1501683,full.story. Retrieved 2010-05-10.
- ^ "Pittsburgh Played Role In Lena Horne's Life". KDKA. 2010-05-10. http://kdka.com/entertainment/Lena.Horne.Pittsburgh.2.1686377.html. Retrieved 2010-05-10.
- ^ Brewer, John M. (2007). Pittsburgh Jazz. Arcadia Publishing. p. 14. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/917800738549804|917800738549804]].
- ^ Schickel (1965), p. 7
- ^ "Lena Horne on Tonight Show 1982 - Part 1". NBC/YouTube. 1982. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvcuwCNIJVE. Retrieved "2010-05-10.
- ^ a b c "Lena Horne". New Georgia Encyclopedia. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-1691. Retrieved 2010-05-10.
- ^ Augustus F. Hawkins (November 18, 1992) (trasnscript). Black Leadership in Los Angeles: Tape Number: II, Side Two, pp. 66-67. Interview with Clyde Woods. http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=hb858011v4&brand=calisphere&doc.view=entire_text. Retrieved 2009-01-08.
- ^ Lena Horne Post-Gazette profile
- ^ "American Masters: Lena Horne". PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/horne_l.html. Retrieved 2009-01-08.
- ^ The Times, obituary 11 May 2010.
- ^ Kennedy Center: Biographical information for Lena Horne
- ^ Lena Horne biography
- ^ Gail Lumet Buckley profile
- ^ Telegraph obituary
- ^ Company, Johnson Publishing (1980-05). Ebony. http://books.google.com/?id=NDbcot0HasEC&lpg=PA38&dq=Ebony%201980%20Lena%20Horne&pg=PA44#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- ^ Ebert, Roger (2008-10-10). "Ella unenchanted goes to a wedding - Demme explores concept of family". Chicago Sun-Times. p. B1.
- ^ "'The King's Speech', Colin Firth, Natalie Portman Take Top Honors at 2011 Academy Awards". Moviefone. http://www.popeater.com/2011/02/28/2011-oscar-winners. Retrieved February 28, 2011.
- ^ Grammy Award Database
- ^ "&Nbsp". Los Angeles Times. http://theenvelope.latimes.com/factsheets/awardsdb/env-awards-db-search,0,7169155.htmlstory.
- ^ International Civil Rights Walk of Fame
- ^ ASCAP Award
- ^ Kennedy Center Database
- ^ Kennedy Center Horne bio
- ^ http://www.redhotjazz.com/sissleo.html
- Horne, Lena and Schickel, Richard, Lena, Doubleday, 1965 ISBN 978-0-385-08034-7
- Haskins, James and Benson, Kathleen Lena, Stein and Day, 1984 ISBN 0-8128-2853-4
- Gavin, James, Stormy Weather, The Life of Lena Horne, Atria 2009 ISBN 978-0-7432-7143-1
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