Horne, Lena (Calhoun)

(born June 30, 1917, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. singer and actress. In her youth she was a dancer at Harlem's Cotton Club, and by age 18 she was singing with popular bands. She starred in many films, including Stormy Weather (1943) and The Wiz (1978). Her album Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria (1957) was a great success, as was her appearance in the musical Jamaica (1957). Her one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music (1981), was hailed as her masterpiece. She continued to perform and record into the 1990s.

Horne, Lena (Calhoun) (1917– ) singer, actress; born in New York City. Raised by her actress mother, by age 16 she was dancing at Harlem's Cotton Club; with her stunning looks and electric voice, she soon became a popular singer with bands such as those of Noble Sissle and Teddy Wilson, and she performed in the musical Blackbirds of 1939. By 1938 she was making movies and she became the first African-American to be signed to a long-term contract (although her scenes were sometimes excised for distribution in the South). The title song of the movie Stormy Weather (1943) became her signature. She was blacklisted in the early 1950s for little more than her friendship with Paul Robeson and her outspokenness about discrimination, but she performed in the musical Jamaica (1957) and later made several movies. She toured Europe and the United States as a nightclub singer, spoke out increasingly against racism, and published her autobiography, Lena (1965).