Lena Horne - Early career, Changes of direction, Tributes and re-releases, Personal life, Albums
Singer and actress, born in Brooklyn, New York, USA. Raised by her actress mother, by the age of 16 she was dancing at Harlem's Cotton Club, becoming a popular singer with bands such as those of Noble Sissle and Teddy Wilson. She performed in the musical Blackbirds of 1939, and went into film, becoming the first African-American to be signed to a long-term contract (although her scenes were sometimes excised for distribution in the South). The title song of Stormy Weather (1943) became her signature. She was blacklisted in the early 1950s for little more than her friendship with Paul Robeson and her outspokenness about discrimination, but she performed in the musical Jamaica (1957) and later made several other films. She toured Europe and the USA as a nightclub singer, spoke out increasingly against racism, and published her autobiography, Lena (1965).
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (born June 30, 1917 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States) is an American popular singer.
Early career
Lena Horne was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 30, 1917. Her father, Edwin "Teddy" Horne, who worked in the gambling trade, left the family when Lena was three. Horne was mainly raised by her grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne. After a false start headlining an obscure 1938 musical film called, The Duke is Tops, Horne became the first African American performer to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio, namely Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She made her debut with MGM in 1942's Panama Hattie and became famous in 1943 for her rendition of Stormy Weather in the movie of the same name (which she made while on loan to 20th Century Fox from MGM).
She appeared in a number of MGM musicals, most notably Cabin in the Sky (also 1943), but was never featured in a leading role due to her race and the fact that films featuring her had to be reedited for showing in southern states where theatres could not show films with African American performers. As a result, most of Horne's film appearances were standalone sequences that had no bearing on the rest of the film, so editing caused no disruption to the storyline;
Stormy Weather did feature Horne in a major acting role, with a more substantial part than what she had in Cabin in the Sky, but as noted, this was not an MGM musical. She was originally considered for the role of Julie LaVerne in MGM's 1951 version of Show Boat (having already played the role when a segment of Show Boat was performed in Till the Clouds Roll By) but Ava Gardner was given the role instead (the production code office had banned interracial relationships in films). III Horne stated that MGM executives required Gardner to practice her singing using recordings of Horne performing the songs, which offended both Horne and Gardner (ultimately, Gardner ended up having her singing voice overdubbed by another actress for the threatrical release, though her own voice was heard on the soundtrack album).
Changes of direction
Disenchanted with Hollywood by the mid-1950s, and increasingly focused on her nightclub career, she only made two major appearances in MGM films during the decade, 1950's Duchess of Idaho (which was also Eleanor Powell's film swan song), and the 1956 musical Meet Me in Las Vegas. She returned to the screen three more times, playing chanteuse Claire Quintana in the 1969 film Death of a Gunfighter, Glinda the Good Witch in The Wiz (1978), with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, and co-hosting the aforementioned 1994 MGM retrospective That's Entertainment!
She appeared in Broadway musicals several times and in 1958 was nominated for the Tony Award for "Best Actress in a Musical" (for her part in the "Calypso" musical Jamaica) In 1981 she received a Special Tony Award for her show, Lena Horne: "The Lady and Her Music".
Tributes and re-releases
In 2003, ABC announced that Janet Jackson would star as Horne in a television biopic (after it was rumored for years that Whitney Houston would take the job). In the weeks following Jackson's so-called "wardrobe malfunction" debacle during the 2004 Super Bowl, however, Variety reported that Horne demanded Jackson be dropped from the project. "ABC executives resisted Horne’s demand," according to the Associated Press report, "but Jackson representatives told the trade newspaper that she left willingly after Horne and her daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, asked that she not take part." Oprah Winfrey stated to Alicia Keys during a 2005 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show that she might possibly consider producing the biopic herself, casting Keys as Horne.
In 2006 According to Hollywood Sources Lena Horne has indeed blessed Whitney Houston's offer for Houston to play her in the ABC biopic of Lena Horne, citing "This could be a wonderful chance for Whitney to get back into acting she been out since 1996,that's 10 years ago.
In January 2005, Blue Note Records, her label for more than a decade, announced that "the finishing touches have been put on a collection of rare and unreleased recordings by the legendary Horne made during her time on Blue Note.
Personal life
Horne was married to Lennie Hayton, a white, Jewish American from 1947 until his death in 1971. Hayton was one of the premier musical conductors and arrangers at MGM. Studio executives disapproved of the marriage, and eventually both Horne and Hayton were let go. MGM) Cabin in the Sky (1943; MGM) Thousands Cheer (1943; MGM) Stormy Weather (1943; MGM) Two Girls and a Sailor (1944; MGM) Swing Fever (1944; MGM) Broadway Rhythm (1944; MGM) Boogie-Woogie Dream (1944; MGM) Ziegfeld Follies (1946; MGM) Studio Visit (1946; MGM short subject) Words and Music (1948; MGM) Duchess of Idaho (1950; MGM) Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956; MGM) Death of a Gunfighter (1969; MGM)
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