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/wiki/File:Lena_Horne_in_Till_the_Clouds_Roll_By_2.jpg" title="in
the film Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)">
in the film Till the
Clouds Roll By (1946)
Clouds Roll By (1946)
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30, 1917
Brooklyn, New
York, U.S.
jazz, traditional
pop
music, Broadway
dancer, actress
RCA Victor, United Artists, Blue Note
Lennie Hayton, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn,
Billie
Holliday, Sammy
Davis, Jr.
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (born June 30, 1917, Brooklyn,
New York), is an
American singer, actress and
dancer.
Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at
the age of sixteen and became a
nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood where she had small parts
in
numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy
Weather . Due to the red scare and her
progressive political views, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable
to get
work in Hollywood.
Returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, Horne took part in
the March on
Washington, and continued to work
as a performer, both in nightclubs as well as television, and releasing
well
received albums. In the early 1970s, her husband, son and father died
within a
period of twelve months. Horne announced her retirement in March 1980,
but the
next year starred in a one woman show, Lena
Horne: The Lady and Her
Music, which ran for more than three hundred performances on
Broadway,
and earned her numerous awards and accolades. Horne recorded
sporadically
following the show, but now no longer makes public appearances.
Personal life
Horne married Louis Jordan Jones in January 1937 and lived in
Pittsburgh. In
December 1937 they had a daughter, Gail,
and in February 1940, a son, Edwin. Horne and Jones separated in 1940
and were
divorced in 1944.
Horne's second marriage was to Lennie Hayton, a Jewish American and one
of the premier musical conductors and arrangers at MGM, in December
1947. They
separated in the early 1960s but were legally married at the time of his
death
in 1971. 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. She later admitted in a 1980 Ebony interview
she had married Hayton to advance her career and cross the "color-line"
in show
business.
Horne is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated.
Screenwriter Jenny Lumet,
known for her award-winning screenplay Rachel
Getting Married, is Horne's
granddaughter, the daughter of filmmaker Sidney Lumet and
Horne's daughter Gail.