In celebration of Black History Month, Notes to Women are going to celebrate a few notable women. We begin with singer, actress, Lena Horne.
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was born in Bedford-sTuyvesant, Brooklyn. Her father, Edwin Fletcher Horne left the family when she was three years old. Her mother was the daughter of inventor Samuel R. Scottron. She was an actress with a black theatre troupe and travelled extensively. Lena was raised by her grandparents. When she was five, she was sent to Georgia to live. For seeral years she travelled with her mother. For two years, she lived with her uncle who would later serve as an adviser to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
At the age of sixteen, Lena joined the chorus of the Cotton Club and became a nightclub performer before she moved to Hollywood. In Hollywood she had small parts in movies, notably Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. She was never cast in a leading role because of her race and the films featuring her had to be re-edited for showing in states where theatres would not show films with black performers. Interestingly enough, Lena was the first African American elected to serve on the Screen Actors Guild board of directors.
In 1951, Lena wanted to be considered for the role of Julie LaVerne in the MGM’s version of Show Boat but lost the part to her friend, Ava Gardner due to the Production Code’s ban on interracial relationships in films. Lena stated in the documentary, That’s Entertainment! III that MGM executives wanted Ava Gardner to practice her singing using Lena’s recordings. Both actresses were offended by this.
Not surprisingly, Lena was disenchanted with Hollywood and she began to focus more on her nightclub career. She made two major appearances in MGM films in the 1950s, Duchess of Idaho and Meet Me in Las Vegas. It was during this time that she was blacklisted for her political views.
After she left Hollywood, Lena made waves as one of the premier nightclub performers of the post-war era. She headlined clubs and hotels throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. In 1958, she was the first African American woman to be nominated for a Tony Award for “Best Actress in a Musical”. She appeared in variety shows on TV such as The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show and The Judy Garland Show and in 1969., she starred in her own television special, Monsanto Night Presents Lena Horne.
In 1970, she co-starred with Harry Belafonte in ABC’s show, Harry & Lena and in 1973 with Tony Bennett in Tony and Lena. She toured the U.S. and U.K. with Bennett. In 1981, she received a special Tony Award for her one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music. In the 1990s she was active in the recording studio.
Lena was also a Civil Rights activist. She was involved in the movement for years. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society and Paul Robeson, another blacklisted performer. During World War II, Lena refused to perfom for segregated audiences or for groups where German POWS were sitting in front of African American servicemen. The U.S. Army refused to have integrated audiences so Lena ended up putting on a show for a mixed audience of black U.S. soldiers and white German POWs. When she saw that the black soldiers were forced to sit in the back seats, she walked off the stage to the first row where they were seated and performed with the German POWs behind her. Way to go Lena!
She was a participant at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers the weekend before he was assassinated and she met John F. Kennedy at the White House two days before he was assassinated. She participated at the March on Washington where she spoke and performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC adn the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt, another champion of civil rights, to pass anti-lynching laws. She received the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 1983.
On a more personal note, Lena was married to Louis Jordan Jones. They had a daughter and a son. Sadly, their son died of a kidney disease. In 1940, Lena and her husband separated. They divorced in 1944. In 1947, she remarried. Her second husband was Lennie Hayton, Music Director and one of the premier musical conductors and arrangers at MGM. In the early 1960s they separated but never divorced. Lennie died in 1971. In her biography, Lena, she recalled the pressures they faced as an interracial couple. She admitted that she married him to advance her career and cross the “color line” in show business but had learned to love him very much.
Fame runs in the family. Lena’s daughter, Gail, a best-selling author, was married to director, Sidney Lumet. Their daughter, Jenny Lumet, a screenwriter, is known for her award winning screenplay, Rachel Getting Married.
On May 9, 2010, Lena Horne died in New York city of heart failure. Among those gathered to pay their respects at her funeral were Leontyne Price, Dionne Warwick, Liza Minnelli, Jessye Norman, Chita Rivera, Cicely Tyson, Diahann Carroll, Leslie Uggams and Lauren Bacall. At the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony held on February 27, 2011, actress Halle Berry presented a tribute to Lena.
Notes to Women salute this phenomenal woman who was not afraid to speak out against racism and was the first African-American actress to have a major studio contract with the stipulation that she would not have to play any demeaning, stereotypical roles. In doing this, she paved the way for other African American actresses.
In my early days I was a sepia Hedy Lamarr. Now I’m black and a woman, singing my own way.
I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept. I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.
Always be smarter than the people who hire you
It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.
My identity is very clear to me now, I am a black woman, I’m not alone, I’m free. I say I’m free because 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.
You have to be taught to be second class; you’re not born that way.
I never considered myself a movie star. Mostly, I just sang songs in other people’s movies.
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena_Horne; http://womenshistory.about.com/cs/quotes/a/qu_lena_horne.htm; http://www.qotd.org/quotes/Lena.Horne; http://www.blackclassicmovies.com/Artist_Profile/lena_horne.html; http://www.biography.com/#!/people/lena-horne-9344086; http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0395043/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
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