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Lena Horne
Background information
Birth name	Lena Mary Calhoun Horne
Born	June 30, 1917 (age 89)
Origin	Brooklyn, New York
Genre(s)	Jazz, Pop
Occupation(s)	Singer, Actress
Years active	1938– Present
Label(s)	MGM Records
Associated acts	Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Doris Day

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (born June 30, 1917 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York City, New York) is a popular African American singer. She has recorded and performed extensively with jazz musicians (notably Artie Shaw, Teddy Wilson), Billy Strayhorn, and Duke Ellington. She currently lives in New York City and still makes public appearances. She might be best-known for her version of the song "Stormy Weather", which was a hit in the 1940s.

Contents 1 Early career 2 Changes of direction 3 Tributes and re-releases 4 Personal life 5 Ancestry 6 Hit singles 7 Films 8 Albums 9 Trivia 10 External links

Lena Horne was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 30, 1917. Her father, Edwin "Teddy" Horne, who worked in the gambling trade, left the family when Lena was three. Her mother, Edna Scottron, was the daughter of inventor Samuel R. Scottron; she was an actress with an African American theater troupe and traveled extensively. Horne was mainly raised by her grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne.

After a false start headlining a 1938 musical race movie called The Duke is Tops, Horne became the first African American performer to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio, namely Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She made her debut with MGM in 1942's Panama Hattie and became famous in 1943 for her rendition of Stormy Weather in the movie of the same name (which she made while on loan to 20th Century Fox from MGM).

She appeared in a number of MGM musicals, most notably Cabin in the Sky (also 1943), but was never featured in a leading role due to her race and the fact that films featuring her had to be reedited for showing in southern states where theatres could not show films with African American performers. As a result, most of Horne's film appearances were standalone sequences that had no bearing on the rest of the film, so editing caused no disruption to the storyline; a notable exception was the all-black musical Cabin in the Sky, though even then one of her numbers had to be cut because it was considered too suggestive by the censors.

Stormy Weather did feature Horne in a major acting role, with a more substantial part than what she had in Cabin in the Sky, but as noted, this was not an MGM musical. She was originally considered for the role of Julie LaVerne in MGM's 1951 version of Show Boat (having already played the role when a segment of Show Boat was performed in Till the Clouds Roll By) but Ava Gardner was given the role instead (the production code office had banned interracial relationships in films). In the documentary That's Entertainment! III Horne stated that MGM executives required Gardner to practice her singing using recordings of Horne performing the songs, which offended both Horne and Gardner (ultimately, Gardner ended up having her singing voice overdubbed by another actress for the threatrical release, though her own voice was heard on the soundtrack album).

Disenchanted with Hollywood by the mid-1950s, and increasingly focused on her nightclub career, she only made two major appearances in MGM films during the decade, 1950's Duchess of Idaho (which was also Eleanor Powell's film swan song), and the 1956 musical Meet Me in Las Vegas. She returned to the screen three more times, playing chanteuse Claire Quintana in the 1969 film Death of a Gunfighter, Glinda the Good Witch in The Wiz (1978), with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, and co-hosting the aforementioned 1994 MGM retrospective That's Entertainment! III in which she was candid about her treatment by the studio. During the mid 70's, she made an appearance on The Muppet Show where she sang with Kermit the Frog.

She appeared in Broadway musicals several times and in 1958 was nominated for the Tony Award for "Best Actress in a Musical" (for her part in the "Calypso" musical Jamaica) In 1981 she received a Special Tony Award for her show, Lena Horne: "The Lady and Her Music". She also made occasional TV appearances, such as a guest appearance as herself on Sanford and Son in the 70s and a mid-1980s performance on The Cosby Show. In 1989, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 1994, she released the album We'll Be Together Again featuring many songs written by her friends Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. Included in this project is Day Follows Day a duet with Johnny Mathis. In general, Horne has been disinclined to record duets.

In 2003, ABC announced that Janet Jackson would star as Horne in a television biopic (after it was rumored for years that Whitney Houston would take the job). In the weeks following Jackson's so-called "wardrobe malfunction" debacle during the 2004 Super Bowl, however, Variety reported that Horne demanded Jackson be dropped from the project. "ABC executives resisted Horne’s demand," according to the Associated Press report, "but Jackson representatives told the trade newspaper that she left willingly after Horne and her daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, asked that she not take part." Oprah Winfrey stated to Alicia Keys during a 2005 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show that she might possibly consider producing the biopic herself, casting Keys as Horne.

In 2006 According to Hollywood Sources Lena Horne has indeed blessed Whitney Houston's offer for Houston to play her in the ABC biopic of Lena Horne, citing "This could be a wonderful chance for Whitney to get back into acting she been out since 1996,that's 10 years ago. Whitney Houston is on the road for a big comeback and this would be the perfect incentive. Whitney Houston is beautiful, talented, strong-minded black woman that reminds me of myself. She is now currently my first and only choice to portray me in this upcoming biopic".

In January 2005, Blue Note Records, her label for more than a decade, announced that "the finishing touches have been put on a collection of rare and unreleased recordings by the legendary Horne made during her time on Blue Note. Remixed by her longtime producer Rodney Jones, the recordings sound wonderful and include versions of such signature songs as 'Something To Live For', 'Chelsea Bridge' and 'Stormy Weather'." The album, originally titled Soul but renamed Seasons of a Life, was recorded in 1999 but remained unreleased for six years. The album was released on January 24, 2006.

Lena Horne was married to Lennie Hayton, a white, Jewish American from 1947 until his death in 1971. Hayton was one of the premier musical conductors and arrangers at MGM. 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. However, in 1980, she admitted (Ebony, May 1980) that she really married Hayton to advance her career and cross the "color-line" in show business.

Lena Horne is multiracial like many African-Americans; She is of Afro-Latino, Blackfoot Indian, Portuguese, Scots-Irish and Senegalese heritage.[1]

• "Love Me or Leave Me" (1955) #19 U.S. Pop

• The Duke is Tops (1938; Million Dollar Pictures)
• Panama Hattie (1942; MGM)
• Cabin in the Sky (1943; MGM)
• Thousands Cheer (1943; MGM)
• Stormy Weather (1943; 20th Century Fox)
• I Dood It (1943; MGM)
• Two Girls and a Sailor (1944; MGM)
• Swing Fever (1944; MGM)
• Broadway Rhythm (1944; MGM)
• Boogie-Woogie Dream (1944; Official Films short subject)
• Till the Clouds Roll By (1946; MGM)
• Ziegfeld Follies (1946; MGM)
• Studio Visit (1946; MGM short subject)
• Words and Music (1948; MGM)
• Duchess of Idaho (1950; MGM)
• Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956; MGM)
• Death of a Gunfighter (1969; Universal Studios)
• The Wiz (1978; Universal Studios)
• That's Entertainment! III (1994; MGM)

• "Moanin' Low" (1948 Victor Musical Smart Set)
• It's Love (1955; RCA)
• Stormy Weather (1956; RCA)
• At the Waldorf Astoria (1957; RCA)
• Jamaica [Original Cast Recording] (1957; RCA)
• Give the Lady What She Wants (1958; RCA)
• Porgy & Bess (1959; RCA) - with Harry Belafonte
• Songs by Burke and Van Heusen (1960; RCA)
• At the Sands (1961; RCA)
• Lena on the Blue Side (1962; RCA)
• Lovely & Alive (1963; RCA)
• Lena Goes Latin (1963; Charter)
• Sings Your Requests (1963; Charter)
• Here's Lena Now! (1964; 20th Century)
• Feelin' Good (1965; UA)
• Lena in Hollywood (1966; UA)
• Merry from Lena (1966; UA)
• Soul (1966; UA)
• Lena & Gabor (1970; Skye)
• Nature's Baby (1971; Buddah)
• Lena and Michel (1975; RCA)
• Lena: A New Album (1976; RCA)
• The Lady and Her Music (1981; Qwest) - Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
• The Men in My Life (1988; Three Cherries)
• We'll Be Together Again (1994; Blue Note)
• An Evening with Lena Horne (1995; Blue Note) - Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album
• Being Myself (1998; Blue Note)
• Seasons of My Life (2005; Blue Note; recorded 1999)

• Reported descent from John C. Calhoun family. [2]
• In the episode The Cartoon of Seinfeld Kramer states to Jerry,"You know what women you look like, Lena Horne."

• biography

• Lena Horne at the Internet Movie Database