| WATCH LENA HORNE TRIBUTE VIDEO | | | | speculation what level of star she would have |
| >>Click Here To Read More and Watch A | | | | become without those obstacles. That speculation |
| Tribute Video For Our Dearest Star<< | | | | was reinforced by the universal embrace she |
| | | | | received for her Broadway show, "The Lady and |
| Lena Horne epitomized hot and she epitomized | | | | Her Music." |
| cool. | | | | "The Lady and Her Music" was a concert whose |
| As an actress, she might be the most elegant | | | | songs also told the singer's story. She included |
| vision that much of America never saw. For | | | | two versions of her signature song, "Stormy |
| many years Hollywood didn't think the country | | | | Weather" - one the way she sang it when she |
| was ready for a black leading lady, even one | | | | was in her 20s, the other as she now sang it in |
| whose elegance and beauty could take an | | | | her 60s. "I Got A Name" reminded her of her |
| audience's breath away. | | | | father, she said, and she started singing |
| As a singer, she was in her mid-60s before her | | | | "Yesterday When I Was Young" after her close |
| one-woman tour de force on Broadway in | | | | friend Hazel Scott died. The show sold out for 14 |
| 1981-82 showed everyone in the city and the | | | | months and won her every award this side of |
| world just what she could do with a song. | | | | Super Bowl MVP. |
| Horne, who died Sunday in New York | | | | "The reason they never let Lena Horne star in |
| Presbyterian Hospital at the age of 92, lit up the | | | | the movies was pretty obvious," said the late |
| sky from the moment in 1932 when she took | | | | Gregory Hines around that time. "She would have |
| her first steps in the Cotton Club chorus line. The | | | | blown all the other ‘stars' away." |
| sky just had a lot of clouds in it for a lot of | | | | Her two most-remembered roles came in two |
| years. | | | | all-black musicals made during World War II: |
| She began singing in the mid-1930s, with a voice | | | | "Stormy Weather" and "Cabin in the Sky." In |
| that was powerful and warm yet somehow | | | | "Stormy Weather," she sang the title song and |
| wistful. It would take her years to really | | | | played the improbable lady friend of an aging Bill |
| understand her songs, she later said, but the | | | | "Bojangles" Robinson. In "Cabin" she played the |
| voice was always there. | | | | devil, leaving no question how a man could be |
| The movies came next. Her tall-and-tan glamour | | | | lured from a life of goodness to the kind of |
| and flashing brown eyes, not to mention a smile | | | | mischief her eyes were suggesting. |
| that could melt the polar icecap, turned her into | | | | Both were relatively low-budget productions with |
| the kind of screen goddess who would, in the | | | | spectacular song-and-dance: the music of Horne, |
| phrase of the day, make a bulldog jump the | | | | Fats Waller and Ethel Waters, the feet of |
| fence. | | | | Robinson, John Bubbles and the Nicholas Brothers. |
| But even though she also went on to star in | | | | Horne said four decades later that she was proud |
| nightclubs and on Broadway, it would take almost | | | | of them, adding that "Even though most people |
| half a century before America would fully | | | | seem to like ‘Stormy' better, I was always a |
| embrace Lena Horne - because throughout her | | | | little more fond of ‘Cabin'." |
| prime performing years, neither Hollywood nor | | | | Still, those films didn't thaw mainstream |
| the music business was ready to give a "colored | | | | Hollywood's cold shoulder, and that roadblock was |
| girl" a full fair shot in the mainstream. | | | | a major reason Horne spent much of her career |
| She breached the barrier occasionally, winning a | | | | on the singing circuit, in theaters and nightclubs. |
| Tony nomination for her starring role in the 1957 | | | | While she was occasionally called a jazz or blues |
| Broadway show "Jamaica" with Ossie Davis. But | | | | singer there, she brushed aside those labels for |
| Hollywood would rarely let her act at all, instead | | | | the more broad-reaching category of "popular." |
| limiting her to musical "inserts." Producers would | | | | "I never sang ‘Stormy Weather' as a blues," |
| darken her skin with a special makeup called | | | | she said in 1982, simply because she came up in |
| "Egyptian Dark," put her in a beautiful outfit and | | | | the big band singing for the pop audience of the |
| have her sing a song that could be snipped out of | | | | day. The bands with which she performed |
| the print that was sent to Southern theaters, | | | | included Artie Shaw and Teddy Wilson, though she |
| where some of the owners said their patrons | | | | would later say one of her favorite musical gigs |
| didn't cotton to race-mixing on the screen. | | | | was her first, with Charlie Barnet. |
| | | | Unfortunately, working with the white Barnet band |
| "I was like a butterfly pinned to a pillar," Horne | | | | in the early ‘40s came at a debilitating cost. |
| would later say, but she had little choice. When | | | | When the band would go into a restaurant for a |
| she pressed hard in 1951 for the role of the tragic | | | | meal after a gig, they were often told the |
| Julie in the film remake of "Show Boat," MGM | | | | "colored girl" would have to eat in the back with |
| decided it was too risky to have a black actress | | | | the help. Barnet would leave when this happened, |
| play a black character and instead cast Ava | | | | Horne said, but eventually it became so wearing |
| Gardner. | | | | that she started making excuses not to go into |
| "I had things in my life that helped me fight off | | | | restaurants at all, waiting until the musicians had |
| the bitterness," Horne said in a 1982 interview. | | | | left and trying to find a place that would sell her a |
| "But I didn't really enjoy my career until I was 50. | | | | sandwich. |
| I always felt like an outsider." | | | | When she left Barnet she took a club gig at |
| Born in Brooklyn in 1917 to parents who would | | | | Café Society, where she became more of a |
| soon divorce, Horne was raised by her | | | | song stylist and started meeting fellow artists and |
| grandmother for the first years of her life. When | | | | activists like Paul Robeson. She became a more |
| she was 19 she married Louis Jones, and they | | | | outspoken public activist herself during those |
| had two children, Gail and Teddy, before divorcing | | | | years and that didn't help her career, either, since |
| in 1944. Gail would become a well-known author | | | | Robeson and anyone associated with him were |
| as Gail Lumet Buckley, while Teddy died in 1970 | | | | treated as if they were radioactive. But she said |
| of kidney failure. | | | | in 1982 that she never considered pulling back. |
| | | | "I joined the causes I would have joined if I |
| | | | weren't a public person," she said, and clearly "The |
| While Horne in later years said she had stopped | | | | Lady and Her Music" took some of its richness |
| defining her career by the obstacles she faced | | | | from the tug-of-war between the pure songs she |
| and fought, there always remained considerable | | | | loved and a hard world she came to distrust. |