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Lena Horne
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Lena Horne was born Lena Calhoun Horne on June 30, 1917, in Brooklyn. Her mother, Edna, had an extremely fair complexion, and the hospital staff thought she was Caucasian. Her father, Teddy, wasn't there at her birth -- he was out gambling to win enough money to pay the hospital bill. Her mother pushed Lena into showbiz -- Edna got her hired at age 16 as a chorus girl at Harlem's Cotton Club. Lena had to quit school and become the family breadwinner with a salary of just $25 weekly. She married Lewis Jones young and by age 20 already had a daughter.
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Lena Horne's second marriage was to Lennie Hayton, a Jewish American, from 1947 until his death in 1971. Hayton was one of the premier musical conductors and arrangers at MGM. In her as-told-to autobiography Lena by Richard Schickel, Horne recounts the enormous pressures she and her husband faced as an interracial married couple. However, she later admitted (Ebony, May 1980) that she really married Hayton to advance her career and cross the "color-line" in show business. She is ... a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated.
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Lena Horne has a quality of timelessness about her. Elegant and wise, she personifies both the glamour of Hollywood and the reality of a lifetime spent battling racial and social injustice. Pushed by an ambitious mother into the chorus line of the Cotton Club when she was sixteen, and maneuvered into a film career by the N.A.A.C.P., she was the first African American signed to a long-term studio contract. In her rise beyond Hollywood's racial stereotypes of maids, butlers, and African natives, she achieved true stardom on the silver screen, and became a catalyst for change even beyond the glittery fringes of studio life.
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A pioneer among African-American performers, Lena Horne had the talent and beauty to crack the race barrier in Hollywood. A smooth singer of bluesy ballads, Horne appeared onstage in Harlem when she was only 14 years old, and by age 16 she was singing in the famous Cotton Club. Eventually she made her way into films, starring in the popular 1943 musicals Stormy Weather (with the tap-dancing The Nicholas Brothers) and Cabin in the Sky (with jazz legend Louis Armstrong). Horne's active career spanned six decades, and in 1989 she was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
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Born in Brooklyn, Lena Horne was determined to become a performer from a very early age, despite her family's objections. She got her first job as a chorus girl at Harlem's Cotton Club when she was only fifteen. One year later, in 1934, she received a small role in an all-black Broadway show, Dance With Your Gods. In 1935 she became the featured singer in Noble Sissle's Society Orhcestra under the name Helena Horne (presumably more glamorous than Lena). After appearing in the film The Duke is Topes in 1938, she returned to New York to sing in Blackbirds of 1939. The show ended after only eight nights.
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Singer and actress Lena Horne began her stage career as a chorus girl in Harlem's Cotton Club, but soon moved on to appearances on Broadway and featured roles in nightclubs. In 1942 she became the first black woman in almost thirty years to sign a term contract with a major Hollywood film studio. Horne's beauty, natural grace, and apparently limitless talents opened doors that were otherwise closed to many gifted African American performers. Among her awards and honors are two Grammy Awards, a Tony Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors Award for lifetime contribution to the arts.
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Lena Horne