Lena Horne

Happy Birthday, Lena Horne 1917-2010...Born to upper middle class parents in Brooklyn, N.Y., Horne's mixed race heritage (European American, Native American and African American) gave her exotic beauty and at times held her back in her film career. Her parents separated early in her life and she spent some time traveling with her actress mother and some time with her grandparents. By the time she was 14, she dropped out of high school to try show business herself.

Horne joined the chorus line at the Cotton Club at the age of 16 and, mentored by Adelaide Hall, she soon began singing in the show as well. A few years later she joined Noble Sissle's band recording for the first time under the name of Helena Horne. She got a great deal of notice when she joined Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1939 which lead to her being signed with Charlie Barnett's band. Touring with an all-white band gave her first hand experience of the segregation policies of the times and cemented her determination to fight for civil rights. She left the band after a short time and headlined at Cafe Society and the Savoy-Plaza Hotel, becoming the highest paid black entertainer in 1943.

Hollywood came knocking and in 1943 she signed a 7 year contract with MGM. She made two stand-out appearances in the films "Stormy Weather" and "Cabin in the Sky". "Cabin in the Sky" was Vincent Minnelli's first film as a director and in it Horne played a brazen, sexy handmaiden of the devil. One number, "Ain't it the Truth", was cut from the film because watching Horne sing it in a bubble bath was considered too risque. Despite the attention that came with those movies, producers found her difficult to cast. Her light skin made it difficult to cast her in full color films along side popular African American actors but she wasn't "white" enough to be cast with white actors. She also refused to accept parts that stereotyped African American women and for that she was ironically shunned by many black performers. The next films she made would compartmentalize her scenes in movies featuring white actors (mainly of her singing) so they could be easily cut when the films were shown in racially segregated communities.

Horne was an outspoken opponent of segregation and by the end of the 40's she had sued several restaurants and theaters for discrimination. She was also a popular performer for the troupes during WW2 and was up front about her outrage at the way black soldiers were treated. She recalled, "So the U.S.O. got mad and they said, 'You're not going to be allowed to go anyplace anymore under our auspices.' So from then on I was labeled a bad little Red girl." Horne claimed that for this and other reasons, including a friendship with leftist Paul Robeson, she was blacklisted during the McCarthy era and could make no film or television appearances for seven years. Undeterred, she would continue to work for civil rights throughout her life.

Although absent from the screen, Horne found success in nightclub appearances and with recordings. "Lena Horn at the Waldorf-Astoria" was made during her successful 8-week run there and became the best selling album by a female singer in RCA Victor's history. She headlined in clubs and concert halls throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. In 1958 she became the first African American woman to be nominated for a Tony Award for "Best Actress in a Musical" for her role in "Jamaica", which at her request featured her long time friend Adelaide Hall. When the ban was finally lifted she appeared in only four more films.

For the rest of her career she made countless successful television, club and stage appearances, many of them generating award winning recordings. In 1981, at the age of 64, she won a special Tony award for her one-woman show "Lena Horn: The Lady and Her Music" which still holds the record for the longest running solo performance in Broadway history. In the 1990's she continued to be active in the recording studio, most notably making a recorded tribute to her good friend Billy Strayhorn which featured songs written by him and Duke Ellington. It was Strayhorn whom she credited with being her biggest influence. "I wasn't born a singer," she said,"I had to learn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally. He taught me the basics of music because I didn't know anything." Although Strayhorn was openly gay, Horne called him, "The only man I really loved." "He was just everything I wanted in a man except he wasn't interested in me sexually." Her last concert appearances would coincide with the release of that album.

Looking back at her life at the age of 80 Horne said, "My identity is very clear to me now. I am a black woman. I'm free. I no longer have to be a "credit". I don't have to be a symbol to anybody; I don't have to be a 'first' to anybody. I don't have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I'd become. I'm me, and I'm like nobody else." Horne died of heart failure on May 9, 2010 at the age of 92.