Celebrity Biographies
Lena Horne
Lena Horne broke barriers in Hollywood. When it was unthinkable for a black actress to star in a movie, she headlined the cast in Stormy Weather . Veteran actress and singer Ella passed away on Sunday, May 9, 2010, at age 92, at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. She was 92 years old and suffered from multiple sclerosis.
Born June 30, 1917, in Brooklyn, Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was half African-American and half Indian. Her parents separated from her when she was two years old, and also, her childhood was marked by discrimination, since neither whites nor blacks accepted her easily because of her light skin. She endowed with a privileged voice, at the age of 14 she made her debut as a showgirl at the legendary Cotton Club, where great black artists such as Louis Armstrong performed , although at that time only whites were admitted as clients. She was also the first African-American to tour with an all-white jazz band, though she couldn’t stay overnight in the same hotels as her classmates.
He made his film debut in 1938 with the musical The Duke is Tops . In 1942, she became the first African American to sign a contract with MGM. By then she had also signed on to her company Vincente Minnelli , who recruited her for A Cabin in the Sky , her first film as a director of hers. Next, Lena Horne achieved enormous success as the lead in Stormy Weather , with spectacular musical numbers, such as the last one, in which the actress interprets the theme song “Stormy Weather”. She was chosen to play Julie, one of the protagonists of Magnolia (1951) , but at the end of it they decided to replace her with a white actress, so her role went to her great friendAva Gardner .
After divorcing Louis Jones, Lena Horne married a white man, Lennie Hayton , but their wedding took place in France, and it had to be made public much later, because interracial marriages were still raising blisters at that time. In fact, they received death threats. She had two children from her first marriage, one of whom is the writer Gail Lumet Buckley, who married Sidney Lumet , the film director.
It was also a great success on the Broadway stage. She owns two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, as a singer and actress. She was nominated for a Tony in 1957 for her work in “Jamaica,” and in the 1980s she found great success starring in the show “Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music.” Her last film job was as the good witch Glenda, from The Wizard , a revision of The Wizard of Oz with Michael Jackson .