Info For You Lot Lena Horne: The Legendary African American Creative Soul Together With Civil Rights Activist
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an African American singer, actress, civil rights activist as well as dancer. Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the historic menstruum of 16 as well as became a nightclub performer earlier moving to Hollywood, where she had small-scale parts inwards numerous movies, as well as to a greater extent than substantial parts inwards the films Cabin inwards the Sky as well as Stormy Weather. Due to the Red Scare as well as her left-leaning political views, Horne works life herself blacklisted as well as unable to acquire piece of employment inwards Hollywood.
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Sexy as well as classy Lena Horne
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
SOURCE:https://haftshappenings.blogspot.com/search?q=lena-horne1950s.jpg" width="640" />
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Sexy as well as classy Lena Horne
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Sexy as well as classy Lena Horne
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Sexy as well as classy Lena Horne
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Sexy as well as classy Lena Horne
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
SOURCE:Lena Horne
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Sexy as well as classy Lena Horne
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Sexy as well as classy Lena Horne
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Sexy as well as classy Lena Horne
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Sexy as well as classy Lena Horne
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Sexy as well as classy Lena Horne
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Sexy as well as classy Lena Horne
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Sexy as well as classy Lena Horne
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Sexy as well as classy Lena Horne
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Sexy as well as classy Lena Horne
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
Lena Horne, described equally 1 of the NAACP's "youngest members," equally pictured inwards a 1919 edition of the Branch Bulletin. From "The Hornes: An American Family."
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Lena Horne
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Lena Horne and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a political party Ms. Horne gave inwards Dr. King’s abide by inwards New York inwards 1963. Photo past times Steve Schapiro.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
Lena Horne
Grammy Awards [edit]
| Year | Category | Title | Genre | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | An Evening with Lena Horne | Jazz | Blue Note | Winner |
| 1989 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Winner | |||
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Female | The Men inwards My Life | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Duo or Group | "I Won't Leave You Again" | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1981 | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1981 | Best Cast Show Album | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1962 | Best Female Vocal Performance | Porgy as well as Bess | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
| 1961 | Female Solo Vocal Performance | Lena at the Sands | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
Lena Horne
Other awards [edit]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site | International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[25] | 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 as well as Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[26] | Winner | Given to entertainers who have got made meaning contributions to words as well as music |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1984 | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | Kennedy Center Honors[27] | Winner | For extraordinary talent, creativity, as well as perseverance |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[28] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1980 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | "Jamaica" |
Lena Horne
SOURCE:https://haftshappenings.blogspot.com/search?q=lena-horne1950s.jpg" width="640" />
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
Lena Horne, described equally 1 of the NAACP's "youngest members," equally pictured inwards a 1919 edition of the Branch Bulletin. From "The Hornes: An American Family."
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Lena Horne
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Lena Horne and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a political party Ms. Horne gave inwards Dr. King’s abide by inwards New York inwards 1963. Photo past times Steve Schapiro.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
Lena Horne
Grammy Awards [edit]
| Year | Category | Title | Genre | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | An Evening with Lena Horne | Jazz | Blue Note | Winner |
| 1989 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Winner | |||
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Female | The Men inwards My Life | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Duo or Group | "I Won't Leave You Again" | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1981 | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1981 | Best Cast Show Album | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1962 | Best Female Vocal Performance | Porgy as well as Bess | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
| 1961 | Female Solo Vocal Performance | Lena at the Sands | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
Lena Horne
Other awards [edit]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site | International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[25] | 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 as well as Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[26] | Winner | Given to entertainers who have got made meaning contributions to words as well as music |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1984 | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | Kennedy Center Honors[27] | Winner | For extraordinary talent, creativity, as well as perseverance |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[28] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1980 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | "Jamaica" |
Lena Horne
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
Lena Horne, described equally 1 of the NAACP's "youngest members," equally pictured inwards a 1919 edition of the Branch Bulletin. From "The Hornes: An American Family."
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Lena Horne
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Lena Horne and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a political party Ms. Horne gave inwards Dr. King’s abide by inwards New York inwards 1963. Photo past times Steve Schapiro.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
Lena Horne
Grammy Awards [edit]
| Year | Category | Title | Genre | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | An Evening with Lena Horne | Jazz | Blue Note | Winner |
| 1989 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Winner | |||
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Female | The Men inwards My Life | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Duo or Group | "I Won't Leave You Again" | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1981 | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1981 | Best Cast Show Album | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1962 | Best Female Vocal Performance | Porgy as well as Bess | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
| 1961 | Female Solo Vocal Performance | Lena at the Sands | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
Lena Horne
Other awards [edit]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site | International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[25] | 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 as well as Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[26] | Winner | Given to entertainers who have got made meaning contributions to words as well as music |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1984 | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | Kennedy Center Honors[27] | Winner | For extraordinary talent, creativity, as well as perseverance |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[28] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1980 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | "Jamaica" |
Lena Horne
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
Lena Horne, described equally 1 of the NAACP's "youngest members," equally pictured inwards a 1919 edition of the Branch Bulletin. From "The Hornes: An American Family."
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Lena Horne
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Lena Horne and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a political party Ms. Horne gave inwards Dr. King’s abide by inwards New York inwards 1963. Photo past times Steve Schapiro.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
Lena Horne
Grammy Awards [edit]
| Year | Category | Title | Genre | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | An Evening with Lena Horne | Jazz | Blue Note | Winner |
| 1989 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Winner | |||
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Female | The Men inwards My Life | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Duo or Group | "I Won't Leave You Again" | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1981 | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1981 | Best Cast Show Album | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1962 | Best Female Vocal Performance | Porgy as well as Bess | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
| 1961 | Female Solo Vocal Performance | Lena at the Sands | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
Lena Horne
Other awards [edit]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site | International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[25] | 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 as well as Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[26] | Winner | Given to entertainers who have got made meaning contributions to words as well as music |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1984 | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | Kennedy Center Honors[27] | Winner | For extraordinary talent, creativity, as well as perseverance |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[28] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1980 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | "Jamaica" |
Lena Horne
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
Lena Horne, described equally 1 of the NAACP's "youngest members," equally pictured inwards a 1919 edition of the Branch Bulletin. From "The Hornes: An American Family."
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Lena Horne
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Lena Horne and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a political party Ms. Horne gave inwards Dr. King’s abide by inwards New York inwards 1963. Photo past times Steve Schapiro.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
Lena Horne
Grammy Awards [edit]
| Year | Category | Title | Genre | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | An Evening with Lena Horne | Jazz | Blue Note | Winner |
| 1989 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Winner | |||
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Female | The Men inwards My Life | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Duo or Group | "I Won't Leave You Again" | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1981 | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1981 | Best Cast Show Album | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1962 | Best Female Vocal Performance | Porgy as well as Bess | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
| 1961 | Female Solo Vocal Performance | Lena at the Sands | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
Lena Horne
Other awards [edit]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site | International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[25] | 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 as well as Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[26] | Winner | Given to entertainers who have got made meaning contributions to words as well as music |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1984 | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | Kennedy Center Honors[27] | Winner | For extraordinary talent, creativity, as well as perseverance |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[28] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1980 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | "Jamaica" |
Lena Horne
SOURCE:Lena Horne
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
Lena Horne, described equally 1 of the NAACP's "youngest members," equally pictured inwards a 1919 edition of the Branch Bulletin. From "The Hornes: An American Family."
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Lena Horne
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Lena Horne and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a political party Ms. Horne gave inwards Dr. King’s abide by inwards New York inwards 1963. Photo past times Steve Schapiro.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
Lena Horne
Grammy Awards [edit]
| Year | Category | Title | Genre | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | An Evening with Lena Horne | Jazz | Blue Note | Winner |
| 1989 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Winner | |||
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Female | The Men inwards My Life | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Duo or Group | "I Won't Leave You Again" | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1981 | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1981 | Best Cast Show Album | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1962 | Best Female Vocal Performance | Porgy as well as Bess | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
| 1961 | Female Solo Vocal Performance | Lena at the Sands | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
Lena Horne
Other awards [edit]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site | International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[25] | 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 as well as Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[26] | Winner | Given to entertainers who have got made meaning contributions to words as well as music |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1984 | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | Kennedy Center Honors[27] | Winner | For extraordinary talent, creativity, as well as perseverance |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[28] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1980 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | "Jamaica" |
Lena Horne
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
Lena Horne, described equally 1 of the NAACP's "youngest members," equally pictured inwards a 1919 edition of the Branch Bulletin. From "The Hornes: An American Family."
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Lena Horne
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Lena Horne and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a political party Ms. Horne gave inwards Dr. King’s abide by inwards New York inwards 1963. Photo past times Steve Schapiro.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
Lena Horne
Grammy Awards [edit]
| Year | Category | Title | Genre | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | An Evening with Lena Horne | Jazz | Blue Note | Winner |
| 1989 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Winner | |||
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Female | The Men inwards My Life | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Duo or Group | "I Won't Leave You Again" | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1981 | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1981 | Best Cast Show Album | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1962 | Best Female Vocal Performance | Porgy as well as Bess | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
| 1961 | Female Solo Vocal Performance | Lena at the Sands | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
Lena Horne
Other awards [edit]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site | International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[25] | 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 as well as Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[26] | Winner | Given to entertainers who have got made meaning contributions to words as well as music |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1984 | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | Kennedy Center Honors[27] | Winner | For extraordinary talent, creativity, as well as perseverance |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[28] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1980 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | "Jamaica" |
Lena Horne
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
Lena Horne, described equally 1 of the NAACP's "youngest members," equally pictured inwards a 1919 edition of the Branch Bulletin. From "The Hornes: An American Family."
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Lena Horne
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Lena Horne and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a political party Ms. Horne gave inwards Dr. King’s abide by inwards New York inwards 1963. Photo past times Steve Schapiro.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
Lena Horne
Grammy Awards [edit]
| Year | Category | Title | Genre | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | An Evening with Lena Horne | Jazz | Blue Note | Winner |
| 1989 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Winner | |||
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Female | The Men inwards My Life | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Duo or Group | "I Won't Leave You Again" | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1981 | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1981 | Best Cast Show Album | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1962 | Best Female Vocal Performance | Porgy as well as Bess | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
| 1961 | Female Solo Vocal Performance | Lena at the Sands | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
Lena Horne
Other awards [edit]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site | International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[25] | 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 as well as Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[26] | Winner | Given to entertainers who have got made meaning contributions to words as well as music |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1984 | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | Kennedy Center Honors[27] | Winner | For extraordinary talent, creativity, as well as perseverance |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[28] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1980 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | "Jamaica" |
Lena Horne
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
Lena Horne, described equally 1 of the NAACP's "youngest members," equally pictured inwards a 1919 edition of the Branch Bulletin. From "The Hornes: An American Family."
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Lena Horne
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Lena Horne and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a political party Ms. Horne gave inwards Dr. King’s abide by inwards New York inwards 1963. Photo past times Steve Schapiro.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
Lena Horne
Grammy Awards [edit]
| Year | Category | Title | Genre | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | An Evening with Lena Horne | Jazz | Blue Note | Winner |
| 1989 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Winner | |||
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Female | The Men inwards My Life | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Duo or Group | "I Won't Leave You Again" | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1981 | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1981 | Best Cast Show Album | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1962 | Best Female Vocal Performance | Porgy as well as Bess | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
| 1961 | Female Solo Vocal Performance | Lena at the Sands | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
Lena Horne
Other awards [edit]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site | International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[25] | 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 as well as Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[26] | Winner | Given to entertainers who have got made meaning contributions to words as well as music |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1984 | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | Kennedy Center Honors[27] | Winner | For extraordinary talent, creativity, as well as perseverance |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[28] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1980 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | "Jamaica" |
Lena Horne
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
Lena Horne, described equally 1 of the NAACP's "youngest members," equally pictured inwards a 1919 edition of the Branch Bulletin. From "The Hornes: An American Family."
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Lena Horne
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Lena Horne and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a political party Ms. Horne gave inwards Dr. King’s abide by inwards New York inwards 1963. Photo past times Steve Schapiro.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
Lena Horne
Grammy Awards [edit]
| Year | Category | Title | Genre | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | An Evening with Lena Horne | Jazz | Blue Note | Winner |
| 1989 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Winner | |||
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Female | The Men inwards My Life | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Duo or Group | "I Won't Leave You Again" | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1981 | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1981 | Best Cast Show Album | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1962 | Best Female Vocal Performance | Porgy as well as Bess | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
| 1961 | Female Solo Vocal Performance | Lena at the Sands | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
Lena Horne
Other awards [edit]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site | International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[25] | 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 as well as Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[26] | Winner | Given to entertainers who have got made meaning contributions to words as well as music |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1984 | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | Kennedy Center Honors[27] | Winner | For extraordinary talent, creativity, as well as perseverance |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[28] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1980 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | "Jamaica" |
Lena Horne
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
Lena Horne, described equally 1 of the NAACP's "youngest members," equally pictured inwards a 1919 edition of the Branch Bulletin. From "The Hornes: An American Family."
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Lena Horne
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Lena Horne and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a political party Ms. Horne gave inwards Dr. King’s abide by inwards New York inwards 1963. Photo past times Steve Schapiro.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
Lena Horne
Grammy Awards [edit]
| Year | Category | Title | Genre | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | An Evening with Lena Horne | Jazz | Blue Note | Winner |
| 1989 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Winner | |||
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Female | The Men inwards My Life | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Duo or Group | "I Won't Leave You Again" | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1981 | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1981 | Best Cast Show Album | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1962 | Best Female Vocal Performance | Porgy as well as Bess | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
| 1961 | Female Solo Vocal Performance | Lena at the Sands | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
Lena Horne
Other awards [edit]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site | International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[25] | 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 as well as Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[26] | Winner | Given to entertainers who have got made meaning contributions to words as well as music |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1984 | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | Kennedy Center Honors[27] | Winner | For extraordinary talent, creativity, as well as perseverance |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[28] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1980 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | "Jamaica" |
Lena Horne
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
Lena Horne, described equally 1 of the NAACP's "youngest members," equally pictured inwards a 1919 edition of the Branch Bulletin. From "The Hornes: An American Family."
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Lena Horne
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Lena Horne and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a political party Ms. Horne gave inwards Dr. King’s abide by inwards New York inwards 1963. Photo past times Steve Schapiro.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
Lena Horne
Grammy Awards [edit]
| Year | Category | Title | Genre | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | An Evening with Lena Horne | Jazz | Blue Note | Winner |
| 1989 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Winner | |||
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Female | The Men inwards My Life | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Duo or Group | "I Won't Leave You Again" | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1981 | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1981 | Best Cast Show Album | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1962 | Best Female Vocal Performance | Porgy as well as Bess | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
| 1961 | Female Solo Vocal Performance | Lena at the Sands | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
Lena Horne
Other awards [edit]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site | International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[25] | 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 as well as Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[26] | Winner | Given to entertainers who have got made meaning contributions to words as well as music |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1984 | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | Kennedy Center Honors[27] | Winner | For extraordinary talent, creativity, as well as perseverance |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[28] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1980 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | "Jamaica" |
Lena Horne
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
Lena Horne, described equally 1 of the NAACP's "youngest members," equally pictured inwards a 1919 edition of the Branch Bulletin. From "The Hornes: An American Family."
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Lena Horne
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Lena Horne and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a political party Ms. Horne gave inwards Dr. King’s abide by inwards New York inwards 1963. Photo past times Steve Schapiro.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
Lena Horne
Grammy Awards [edit]
| Year | Category | Title | Genre | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | An Evening with Lena Horne | Jazz | Blue Note | Winner |
| 1989 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Winner | |||
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Female | The Men inwards My Life | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Duo or Group | "I Won't Leave You Again" | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1981 | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1981 | Best Cast Show Album | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1962 | Best Female Vocal Performance | Porgy as well as Bess | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
| 1961 | Female Solo Vocal Performance | Lena at the Sands | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
Lena Horne
Other awards [edit]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site | International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[25] | 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 as well as Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[26] | Winner | Given to entertainers who have got made meaning contributions to words as well as music |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1984 | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | Kennedy Center Honors[27] | Winner | For extraordinary talent, creativity, as well as perseverance |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[28] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1980 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | "Jamaica" |
Lena Horne
SOURCE:
USO entertainer as well as vocalist Lena Horne (C), shown with a service fellow member (L) as well as USO volunteer (R) inwards an undated photo. (Photo belongings of USO Archives)
Ms. Horne subsequently claimed that for this as well as other reasons, including her friendship with leftists similar Paul Robeson as well as W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted as well as “unable to exercise films or tv set for the adjacent 7 years” after her tenure with MGM ended inwards 1950.
This was non quite true: equally Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared oftentimes on “Your Show of Shows” as well as other tv set shows inwards the 1950s, as well as inwards fact “found to a greater extent than acceptance” on tv set “than almost whatever other dark performer.” And Mr. Gavin as well as others have got suggested that at that spot were other factors inwards add-on to politics or race involved inwards her lack of celluloid work.
Although absent from the screen, Ms. Horne works life success inwards nightclubs as well as on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run inwards 1957, reached the Top 10 as well as became the best-selling album past times a woman someone vocalist inwards RCA Victor’s history.
In the early on 1960s Ms. Horne, e'er outspoken on the discipline of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating inwards numerous marches as well as protests.
In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the dearest involvement of a white actor, Richard Widmark, inwards “Death of a Gunfighter.”
She was to deed inwards solely 1 other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch inwards “The Wiz,” the celluloid version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.
She continued to tape prolifically good into the 1990s, for RCA as well as other labels, notably United Artists as well as Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway inwards 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music,” which ran for fourteen months as well as won both rave reviews as well as a Tony Award.
Lena Horne inwards the flick "Cabin inwards the sky"
Ms. Horne’s vocalisation was non especially powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally past times acting equally good equally singing the romantic standards similar “The Man I Love” as well as “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The someone she e'er credited equally her main influence was non some other vocalist but a pianist as well as composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.
“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to larn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked equally her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”
Strayhorn was also “the solely homo I ever loved,” she said, but Strayhorn was openly gay, as well as their unopen friendship never became a romance. “He was precisely everything that I wanted inwards a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested inwards me sexually.”
Lena Horne was born inwards the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Reported to live descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her line solid unit of measurement were a mixture of European American, Native American, as well as African-American descent, as well as belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated blacks.
Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1892–1970), a numbers kingpin inwards the gambling trade, left the line solid unit of measurement when she was 3 as well as moved to an upper-middle-class dark community inwards the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1895–1985), miss of inventor Samuel R. Scottron, was an actress with a dark theater troupe as well as traveled extensively. Scottron's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Lena Horne was mainly raised past times her grandparents, Cora Calhoun as well as Edwin Horne.
Lena Horne, described equally 1 of the NAACP's "youngest members," equally pictured inwards a 1919 edition of the Branch Bulletin. From "The Hornes: An American Family."
When Horne was five, she was sent to alive inwards Georgia. For several years, she traveled with her mother. From 1927 to 1929 she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, who was dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute (now business office of Fort Valley State University) inwards Fort Valley, Georgia, as well as who would subsequently go an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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.She so attended Girls High School, an all-girls populace high schoolhouse inwards Brooklyn that has since go Boys as well as Girls High School; she dropped out without earning a diploma. Aged 18, she moved inwards with her manful someone parent inwards Pittsburgh, staying inwards the city's Little Harlem for almost v years as well as learning from native Pittsburghers Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, with others.
Her paternal grandparents, Edwin as well as Cora Horne, were early on members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as inwards Oct 1919, at the historic menstruum of 2, Lena was the encompass miss for the organization’s monthly bulletin.
By so the spousal human relationship of her parents, Edna as well as Teddy Horne, was inwards trouble. “She was spoiled as well as badly educated as well as he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote inwards her line solid unit of measurement history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his chore with the New York Department of Labor as well as fled to Seattle, as well as Edna had fled to a life on the phase inwards Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised past times her paternal grandparents until her woman parent took her dorsum iv years later.
Two dark icons: Lena Horne as well as Hazel Scott
When she was 16, her woman parent pulled her out of schoolhouse to audition for the trip the lite fantastic chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks as well as the proprietors were gangsters. H5N1 yr after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo trip the lite fantastic inwards the short-lived demo “Dance With Your Gods” inwards 1934.
At 19, Ms. Horne married the starting fourth dimension homo she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, as well as became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her miss Gail was born inwards 1937 as well as a son, Teddy, inwards 1940. The spousal human relationship ended before long afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to surrender Teddy, although he did allow the man child long visits with his mother.
In 1938, Ms. Horne starred inwards a quickie dark musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her provide to movies was on a grander scale.
She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to opened upward inwards Hollywood inwards the autumn of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My solely friends were the grouping of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their ain grouping — similar Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg as well as Harold Arlen, as well as Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson as well as me inwards their houses.”
Since blacks were non allowed to alive inwards Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the line solid equally if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors works life out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived correct across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing to a greater extent than or less a petition to acquire rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent give-and-take over to the line solid that if anybody bothered me, delight allow him know.”
Lena Horne
Roger Edens, the composer as well as musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s main protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society as well as also went to hear her at the Little Troc. (The state of war had scaled downward Mr. Young’s ambitions to a small-scale guild with a gambling den on the 2d floor.) He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, hear to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, as well as before long she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She was non the starting fourth dimension dark performer nether contract to a major studio — MGM had signed the actress Nina Mae McKinney for v years inwards 1929 — but she was the starting fourth dimension to brand an impact.
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society as well as 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 inwards which High German POWs were seated inwards forepart of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Because the U.S. Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound upward putting on a demo for a mixed audience of dark U.S. soldiers as well as white High German POWs. Seeing the dark soldiers had been forced to sit down inwards the dorsum seats, she walked off the phase to the starting fourth dimension row where the dark troops were seated as well as performed with the Germans behind her. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers inwards Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend earlier Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House 2 days earlier he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington as well as spoke as well as performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC, as well as the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to exceed anti-lynching laws.
Lena Horne and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a political party Ms. Horne gave inwards Dr. King’s abide by inwards New York inwards 1963. Photo past times Steve Schapiro.
Tom Lehrer mentions her inwards his vocal "National Brotherhood Week" inwards the line "Lena Horne as well as Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek" referring (wryly) to her as well as to Sheriff Jim Clark, of Selma, Alabama, who was responsible for a fierce assault on civil rights marchers inwards 1965.
In 1983, she was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated her contract equally a weapon inwards its state of war to acquire improve flick roles for dark performers. Her manful someone parent weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My manful someone parent said, ‘I tin dismiss acquire a maid for my daughter. I don’t desire her inwards the movies playing maids.’ ”
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne as well as Cab Calloway inwards "Stormy Weather"
Ms. Horne is survived past times her daughter; Gail Lumet Buckley; half dozen grandchildren; as well as 3 great-grandchildren. Her boy died of kidney failure inwards 1970; her hubby died the next year.
Looking dorsum at the historic menstruum of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is really clear to me now. I am a dark woman. I’m free. I no longer have got to live a ‘credit.’ I don’t have got to live a symbol to anybody; I don’t have got to live a starting fourth dimension to anybody. I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else.”
Lena Horne
Grammy Awards [edit]
| Year | Category | Title | Genre | Label | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance | An Evening with Lena Horne | Jazz | Blue Note | Winner |
| 1989 | Lifetime Achievement Award | Winner | |||
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Female | The Men inwards My Life | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1988 | Best Jazz Vocal Performance – Duo or Group | "I Won't Leave You Again" | Jazz | Three Cherries | Nominee |
| 1981 | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1981 | Best Cast Show Album | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Pop | Qwest | Winner |
| 1962 | Best Female Vocal Performance | Porgy as well as Bess | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
| 1961 | Female Solo Vocal Performance | Lena at the Sands | Pop | RCA | Nominee |
Lena Horne
Other awards [edit]
| Year | Organization | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site | International Civil Rights Walk of Fame[25] | 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 as well as Publishers | The ASCAP Pied Piper Award[26] | Winner | Given to entertainers who have got made meaning contributions to words as well as music |
| 1985 | Emmy Award | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music | Nominee | |
| 1984 | John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts | Kennedy Center Honors[27] | Winner | For extraordinary talent, creativity, as well as perseverance |
| 1980 | Howard University | Honorary doctorate[28] | Honored | |
| 1980 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress – Musical | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1980 | New York Drama Critics Circle Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1981 | Tony Awards | Special Citation | Winner | Lena Horne: The Lady as well as Her Music |
| 1957 | Tony Awards | Best Actress | Nominee | "Jamaica" |
Lena Horne
SOURCE:
Lena Horne, entertainer, died on May 9th, aged 92
TO THOSE few Americans inwards the 1950s who did non attention nigh race—who did non quibble nigh one-thirty-seconds or one-sixty-fourths, as well as who were happy to portion washroom or soda natural springtime with people of some other shade—Lena Horne was only 1 of the most beautiful women inwards the world. There was something of Audrey Hepburn inwards her large brownish eyes, as well as of Hedy Lamarr inwards her tall forehead; her olfactory organ was bobbed as well as cute. But to everyone else Ms Horne, earlier her beauty was fifty-fifty considered, was black.
1994: Horne inwards New York. 'My identity is really clear to me now,' she would say a few years later. 'I am a dark woman. I’m costless ... I don’t have got to live an fake of a white adult woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, as well as I’m similar nobody else'
There were ways of maxim this gently, of course. She was non coal or piccaninny black; she was “dusky”, “sepia”, “milk-chocolate”, café au lait. At Harlem's Cotton Club, where she started her career at 16 equally a dancer, she was “tan as well as terrific”, similar the others. The MGM Studios inwards Hollywood, where she went at 24 inwards 1941, tried to exceed her off equally a Latina on her contract. H5N1 special make-up, called Light Egyptian, would live rubbed on her pare to brand her facial expression to a greater extent than coloured: a improve check for the ink-black mammies as well as funny-men to a greater extent than or less her.
1981: Starring inwards the Broadway production Lena Horne: the Lady as well as Her Music. Her one-woman demo won a special Tony award
Her race-blind fans would have got been prepared to come across her star inwards whatever show, equally elegant, satin-clad as well as triumphant equally she eventually appeared inwards 1981 inwards “The Lady as well as her Music” inwards New York. But to casting directors during segregation she could solely live a lady's maid or a jungle girl. At best she could star inwards all-black comedies, equally a devil-sent temptress inwards “Cabin inwards the Sky” (1943), or equally the Pb inwards the Broadway musical “Jamaica” (1957). She belonged inwards the piny woods or nether the palms.
Because she was lovely, as well as could sing bewitchingly, she was also allowed a few solo scenes inwards “white” films. There, similar “a butterfly pinned to a column”, she would deliver a discover which could live seamlessly cutting when the painting was shown inwards southern cinemas. Her greatest promise was to live allowed to play Julie, a mulatto, inwards “Show Boat”. But Julie had to autumn inwards dearest with a white man; so Ava Gardner played her, initially lip-synching to Miss Horne's recordings as well as fifty-fifty made browner with her Light Egyptian. Lena as well as Ava were friends. But it wound to the halt of her days.
1948: Horne was considered Hollywood's starting fourth dimension dark sexual activity symbol. 'I had the worst variety of acceptance,' she in 1 lawsuit said, 'because it was never for how keen I was or what I contributed. It was because of the agency I looked'
It wound all the to a greater extent than because the immature Lena did non think of herself equally dark particularly. Her blood was mixed upward on both sides with white European as well as native American, so that inwards her dark schoolhouse she was “yellow” to her playmates, as well as was whispered to have got a white Daddy. Both blacks as well as whites felt she was non 1 of them. Her family's social models were the white bourgeoisie; her father, resplendent inwards a suit with a diamond stick-pin, had told Louis B. Mayer to his human face upward that he didn't desire his miss playing maids inwards Hollywood, because she could have got maids of her own. Not that it did whatever good. At 1 of her lowest points Miss Horne went to tea with Hattie McDaniel, who had played Mammy inwards “Gone with the Wind”. They ate tiny sandwiches as well as cakes inwards her grand drawing room, piece Hattie explained that a maid's go was her solely realistic hereafter on the screen. Pretty before long afterwards, she threw inwards the acting life.
Singing, though she made her career inwards it, proved no simpler. She toured with Charlie Barnet's all-white band inwards 1940, sleeping inwards the band autobus when hotels would non select her in, but counted inwards her repertoire songs similar “Sleepy Time Down South”, which blacks were expected to sing. She felt forced into jazz, as well as non much proficient at it. Although she covered songs past times Billie Holiday as well as Ethel Waters, her neat enunciation, expressiveness as well as clarity made her audio to a greater extent than similar Judy Garland. Waters's “Stormy Weather” became her theme, but when she sang it—especially inwards the celluloid of 1943, against rain-soaked metropolis streets—she looked, as well as sounded, somewhere over the rainbow, as well as closer to Kansas.
The insults she suffered, therefore—debarred from lodging houses, spat at inwards the street, forbidden from mixing with white customers—were all the worse because she did non experience she represented a race, solely herself. And conversely, the barriers she broke—first dark star on a long-term contract with a studio, starting fourth dimension dark on the encompass of Motion Picturemagazine, starting fourth dimension star whose painting could live pinned upward past times dark GIs inwards their lockers—gave her neither pride nor joy, because she idea solely of the label that had been stuck on her. She was non a symbol, non a credit, non a starting fourth dimension this as well as that, equally she cried bitterly inwards her old age. “I'm me, as well as I'm similar nobody else.”
In the 1950s she was blacklisted for her friendship with Paul Robeson, a communist sympathiser; it hampered her career inwards her best years, though the vocalisation soared on. In the 1960s she campaigned for civil rights, drawn equally much to the militancy of Malcolm X equally to Martin Luther King's non-violence. When a homo called her “nigger” inwards a Beverly Hills eating spot she hurled an ashtray, a light as well as several spectacles at him, until he bled. She used her white husband, Lennie Hayton, equally a whipping man child for her frustration. “Never promise also hard,” she said. “Never pans out.”
Miss Horne's producers in 1 lawsuit complained that she opened her oral cavity also broad to sing. They meant it was a Negro thing. Certainly Miss Horne had a wide, extravagant smile, a existent show-stopper. But it was on the human face upward of a tiger. It hid a lifetime of ferocious resentment as well as regret.
1969: With Richard Widmark inwards the western Death of a Gunfighter. She would non provide to the covert for almost a decade because hollywood couldnt select that she is black
Tuskegee Airmen with Lena Horne as well as Noel Parrish. Silver gelatin print.Noel Parrish Collection. Manuscript Division. (8-7)
Lena Horne visiting Tuskegee Airmen inwards Alabama inwards 1943.
Lena Horne waits backstage at the Mayan Theater inwards downtown Los Angeles where Dorothy Dandridge appeared inwards the musical “Sweet n’ Hot” (1944)
Lena Horne
A painting is sure worth a chiliad words. What improve agency to celebrate Black History Month than past times taking a minute to admit the snapshots of fourth dimension that correspond the struggle as well as triumph of African-Americans through the years?
As business office of our Black History Month coverage, nosotros volition live featuring 1 photograph a twenty-four hours that honors years of groundbreaking achievements within the dark community. These photos convey tears to our eyes, instill pride inwards our hearts as well as motivate us to demeanour on the legacy of strength as well as perseverance.
Today's photograph was taken on Jan 1, 1945, showing legendary entertainer Lena Horne with a grouping of Tuskegee Airmen. During World War II, Horne was really pop with both dark as well as white servicemen as well as performed alive on several USO tours. However, after dark soldiers were barred from 1 of her concerts as well as forced to sit down behind High German prisoners at another, she became upset with how African American servicemen were treated as well as quit the tours altogether. Instead, she payed her ain agency to perform for soldiers inwards the West as well as the South, paying multiple visits to the Tuskegee Airmen at their preparation base of operations inwards Alabama.
Tuskegee air squadron, Roscoe Brown Jr., spoke at Horne's funeral saying:
"This wonderful, beautiful lady, Lena Horne, came to see us. She sang, she talked with us as well as she made us all her boyfriends. The men took her painting as well as lay it on our barracks, on our planes, as well as she became our pinup girl."
CABIN IN THE SKY (1943)–The greatest entertainers of their era–Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne–sing nigh a gambler caught betwixt the Soldiers of the Lord’s Army vs. Lucifer, Jr.. The ability of a wife’s fervant prayers to purchase a wayward hubby a picayune to a greater extent than time
Lena Horne as well as Aretha Franklin at 1993 Essence Awards
Lena horne as well as Bill "Bojangles" Robinson;" King of Tap "
Lena Horne Hugging Daughter, Writer Gail Lunet Buckley, after Concert at Carnegie Hall, NYC
Lena on Broadway show
Family And Friends Attend Services For Entertainer Lena Horne
Hazel Scott as well as Lena Horne c. 1940s
UNITED STATES - APRIL 01 1993: Aretha Franklin as well as Lena Horne (Photo past times Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
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