Lena Horne

Singer, actor, and activist

• Born: June 30, 1917
• Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
• Died: May 9, 2010
• Place of death: New York, New York

Best known as a singer who performed in nightclubs such as the famedCotton Club,Horne gained international recognition through her roles in films during the early 1940s. She also performed as a vocalist and host on the Armed Forces Radio Service broadcast Jubilee during World War II.

Early Life

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was born in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, on June 30, 1917. Her father, Teddy, and mother, Edna, lived with her paternal grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne.

Horne’s father deserted the family when she was three years old, and her mother went in search of an acting career, leaving the young child with her grandparents. Cora was involved in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Urban League, National Association of Colored Women, Ethical Culture movement, and the Brooklyn board of directors of the Big Brother and Big Sister Federation. The family was one of middle-class respectability, with meetings of social organizations often occurring at their home.

When Horne was seven years old, she left her grandparents’ home to take care of her mother. Horne traveled extensively, assisting her mother as Edna auditioned for one acting job after another. In order to make ends meet, the young girl worked various part-time jobs, and often gave her food to her mother. This lack of nutrition led to a severe case of rickets that might have caused continuing problems with her legs as she grew to adulthood.

By the time Horne was sixteen, her mother had remarried; her new husband was a White Cuban army officer, Miguel Rodriguez. Horne worked to support her mother and stepfather by performing in the once-prestigious Cotton Club as a chorus girl. Her biological father’s connections with gamblers ensured that Horne was not bothered in any way. Both her mother and her stepfather attended all the shows, causing difficulty for Horne with the other chorus members and the management. The gig with the Cotton Club did not last.

Horne next began singing with Noble Sissle and his orchestra; Sissle renamed her Helena to match her glamorous looks. Later, Horne joined Charlie Barnet’s all-White band. However, while traveling with Barnet’s band, she endured racial slurs—worse than those she had endured while living in the South with her mother—and decided to leave after a year.

Horne’s mother, seeing in the young woman something beyond talent and beauty, took her to Hollywood. Horne became the first African American woman since 1915 to sign a contract with MGM Studios. She also was the only Black actor under contract to a studio at the time. Horne later said in interviews that the studio limited her roles so that they could easily be removed when films were shown in southern theaters.

Life’s Work

By the 1940s, Horne was struggling to support herself and her two children, Gail and Edwin (Teddy), from her first marriage to Louis Jones. Jones worked with Horne’s father as a number-runner and had expensive taste; their marriage dissolved shortly after Teddy’s birth. Jones refused to let Horne take their son but turned over custody of Gail. Horne resolved to get her son back and make a secure home for herself and her children. She got a job at Café Society in New York and began to work for the second time under the name Helena Horne.

Café Society, a successful jazz and blues club in Greenwich Village, was the only integrated nightclub in New York outside Harlem. At the time, Horne specialized in contemporary pop standards. The club’s owner, Barney Josephson, insisted that Horne learn to interpret the jazz songs she was to perform. He began to tutor her about Black American history, politics, and race relations, so that she could better understand the subtext of the songs she sang. At Café Society, Horne found the education she had been seeking. She sought out books and took time to listen to people. As she listened, she developed a new appreciation for her grandparents and their role in organizations such as the NAACP and the National Urban League. Horne also learned music and began to take on more work. Her fame spread as she became one of the featured singers for NBC Radio’s Strictly for Dixie and WOR Radio’s Kats and Jammers. She also cut two albums for RCA Victor.

After the United States entered World War II in late 1941, Horne worked with the United Service Organizations (USO) and with the newly formed Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS), both of which entertained troops. The management at the AFRS created a show called Jubilee, aimed at Black American soldiers involved in the war effort. The show featured skits and popular artists, including Horne. The elegant singer became a popular pinup girl for Black and White soldiers alike. She projected an air of cool confidence over the radio. In addition to performing in skits, she sang ballads and acted as a guest master of ceremonies at a time when it was highly unusual for a Black American woman to host a national radio show.

Horne’s popularity continued to grow with her roles in two important 1943 films, Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky. “Stormy Weather” became Horne’s theme song. In the film of the same name, she sings about stormy weather while looking out a window at a street scene. The scene changes into an African American revue reminiscent of the Cotton Club chorus numbers in which Horne had first performed as a teenager. The popular musical film brought Horne to the attention of a broader audience of both White and Black Americans.

By 1946, Jubilee had changed its format and no longer featured Black American performers. Horne, however, had become a major celebrity. She had helped in the war effort, assisted First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt with antilynching legislation, and labored to bring restitution to Japanese Americans who had been imprisoned in internment camps during the war. She also had quietly married Lennie Hayton, a White musician, in Paris in 1947.

During the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy revitalized the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to ferret out communism in the United States. The primary target was Hollywood and the actors who openly professed “liberal” views. One of these actors was Horne’s friend Paul Robeson, who (with William Patterson) had presented a book-length petition, We Charge Genocide: The Crime of the Government Against the Negro People, to the United Nations in 1951. Horne, who had signed the petition, was blacklisted from Hollywood for seven years. She was unable to work in television, film, or radio. However, Horne could make recordings. During this time, she released one of her most important albums, Lena Horne at the Waldorf Astoria (1957).

In the 1960s, Horne became active in the civil rights movement. She joined Martin Luther King Jr. on his March on Washington, worked with the National Council of Negro Women, and performed at various rallies throughout the United States, primarily in the South. Horne returned to performing on television shows, such as The Perry Como Show and The Ed Sullivan Show.

At the beginning of the 1970s, Horne weathered the deaths of her father, son, and husband. She took a brief hiatus from her career, but by 1973, was touring with Tony Bennett throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. At the end of the tour, she decided to move west to California, where she appeared as Glinda the good witch in the musical film The Wiz (1978). In mid-June, 1980, she began her farewell tour. However, the retirement did not last, and she came out of retirement in 1981 with Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music.

Horne continued to perform intermittently until 2000, when she retired again. She spent her final years in New York City, where she died on May 9, 2010, at age ninety-two.

Significance

Horne’s formal schooling was fragmented because of the nomadic life she lived with her mother. When the owner and musicians in the predominantly White Café Society introduced her to the wonders of her own Black American culture, Horne realized what a rich heritage she had in her own family. Her grandmother, Cora, taught Horne elegance and class. Her grandfather, Edwin, loved books, and tried to instill in his granddaughter a similar love. Horne’s intellectual curiosity served her well as she supplemented her minimal education with independent studies. It also led her to become politically active, and Horne campaigned for civil rights and integration throughout her career.

From early childhood, Horne also had to support her family, and she did so through entertainment. Her tireless work on stage, screen, and radio was born of her desire for the security and stability she lacked in her youth. To recognize her place in entertainment history, a Broadway theater in New York was renamed from the Brooks Atkinson Theatre to the Lena Horne Theatre in her honor in 2022.

Bibliography

Bellamy, Claretta. "Lena Horne Becomes the First Black Woman to Have a Broadway Theater Named in Her Honor." NBC News, 3 Nov. 2022, www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/lena-horne-becomes-first-black-woman-broadway-theater-named-honor-rcna55497. Accessed 19 Dec. 2022.

Bloom, Ken. The American Songbook: The Singers, Songwriters, and the Songs. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2005.

Bogle, Donald. Brown Sugar: Over One Hundred Years of America’s Black Female Superstars. New York: Continuum, 2007.

Buckley, Gail Lumet. The Hornes: An American Family. New York: Applause Books, 2002.

Gavin, James. Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne. New York: Atria Books, 2009.

Sklaroff, Lauren Rebecca. “Variety for the Servicemen: The Jubilee Show and the Paradox of Racializing Radio During World War II.” American Quarterly 56, no. 4 (December, 2004): 945-973.

Vogel, Shane. “Performing ’Stormy Weather’: Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, and Katherine Dunham.” South Central Review (Spring, 2008).

Williams, Megan E. “The Crisis Cover Girl: Lena Horne, the NAACP, and Representations of African American Femininity, 1941-1945.” American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography 16, no. 2 (2006): 200-218.