Lena Calhoun Horne (born June 30, 1917)
is an American popular singer. While she has recorded and performed extensively with jazz
musicians (notably Artie Shaw and Teddy Wilson), she is usually not considered a jazz singer
because she does not improvise. She currently lives in New York City but no longer makes
public appearances.
She was the first African American performer to sign a long-term contract with a major
Hollywood studio, and became famous in 1943 for her rendition of Stormy Weather in the movie
of the same name. She later appeared in a number of MGM musicals, most notably Cabin in the
Sky, 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. She was originally considered for the lead role in the 1951 version of Show Boat
but Ava Gardner was given the role instead.
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 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 1994 MGM retrospective That's Entertainment! III.
In 2003, ABC announced that pop star Janet Jackson would star as Horne in a television biopic.
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."
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 My Life, was recorded in 1999 but remained unreleased for six years.
The new album is scheduled for release on May 24, 2005.
Films:
The Duke is Tops (1938; Million Dollar Pictures)
Panama Hattie (1942; MGM)*
Thousands Cheer (1943; MGM)
Stormy Weather (1942; 20th Century Fox)
I Dood It (1943; MGM)
Cabin in the Sky (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)
Mantan Messes Up (1946; Toddy Pictures)
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)
Albums:
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)
This article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire
work (including additions) remains under this license. See
http://www.gnu.org/
copyleft/fdl.html
for details. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Lena Horne", which you can find
at http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Lena_Horne
|