Lena Horne
| Lena Horne | |
|---|---|
Publicity photo of Horne from her own stage show Nine O'Clock Revue, 1961
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| Born |
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne June 30, 1917 Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Died | May 9, 2010 (aged 92) Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Congestive Heart Failure |
| Nationality | African American |
| Education | Boys and Girls High School |
| Occupation |
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| Years active | 1933–2000 |
| Spouse(s) |
Louis Jordan Jones (m. 1937; div. 1944) Lennie Hayton (m. 1947–71) (his death) |
| Children | 2 |
| Parent(s) | Edwin Horne, Jr. Edna Scottron |
| Family |
Kayla Sanders (granddaughter) Jenny Lumet (granddaughter) Jake Cannavale (great–grandson) |
| Musical career | |
| Origin | Harlem, New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Genres | |
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Labels | |
| Associated acts | |
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an African American jazz and pop music singer, dancer, actress, and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned over 70 years appearing in film, television, and theater. Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of 16 and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the 1943 films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Because of the Red Scare and her political activism, 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 in August 1963 and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs and on television while releasing well-received record albums. She 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. She then toured the country in the show, earning numerous awards and accolades. Horne continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000. Horne died of congestive heart failure on May 9, 2010, at the age of 92.
Lena Horne was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Reportedly descended from the John C. Calhoun family, both sides of her family were a mixture of African-American, Native American, and European American descent, and belonged to the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated people. Her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr. (1893–1970), a numbers kingpin in the gambling trade, left the family when she was three and moved to an upper-middle-class black community in the Hill District community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Edna Louise Scottron (1894–1976), was a granddaughter of inventor Samuel R. Scottron; she was an actress with a black theatre troupe and traveled extensively. Edna's maternal grandmother, Amelie Louise Ashton, was a Senegalese slave. Horne was mainly raised by her grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne.
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