Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (1917 - 2010)

Ancestors

Biography

Lena Horne was an American jazz cabaret singer, dancer, actress and civil rights activist with a career spanning over 70 years in film, television, and theater. In 1958, she became the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. She holds the record for the longest-running solo performance in Broadway history.^[1]

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne, daughter of Edwin Fletcher Horne and Edna Louise Scottron, was born in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York on June 30, 1917.^[2][3]

Both sides of her family were of African-American, Native American, and European American descent, and belonged to the well-educated Black middle-class. Lena lived a few years in New York with her parents and grandparents, Edwin Horne and Cora (Calhoun) Horne,^[4] but in 1920, her father, Edwin Fletcher "Teddy" Horne, Jr., a hotelier, gambler, and numbers racketeer, left the family and moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Louise, an actress who traveled extensively with a Black theater troupe, brought Lena with her to Atlanta. For about two years she lived with her uncle, Frank S. Horne, dean of students at Fort Valley Junior Industrial Institute in Fort Valley, Georgia, and later an adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She and her mother returned to New York when Lena was about twelve years old. She attended Girls High School, an all-girls public high school in Brooklyn (today the Boys and Girls High School), but dropped out without graduating. Instead, in the fall of 1933, at age sixteen and with her mother's encouragement, she joined the chorus line of the Cotton Club in New York City,^[5] and was taken under the wing of Adelaide Hall, who became a life-long friend.^[1]

At about age eighteen, she moved to her father's home in Pittsburgh for about a year. She worked in the Hill District's Little Harlem until about 1938 with local talent Billy Strayhorn and Billy Eckstine, both of whom remained her close friends.

She married Louis Jordan Jones in January 1937 in Pittsburgh. Their daughter, Gail Jones Lumet Buckley, author of The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights with One African American Family, was born there in December of that year, and their son Edwin Jones was born there in 1940.^[6] They divorced in 1944.

After her son was born, her career began to take off. She was one of the first to work both sides of the color line, touring with Charlie Barnet's primarily white swing band for about a year, but she left the band for a non-traveling, gig in New York's integrated club Cafe Society. In 1941, she replaced Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBC's The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street, and began recording for RCA Victor. In 1942 she was hired to perform on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood.^[7]

A few weeks after her Hollywood nightclub debut, she was signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Her MGM debut was just a song in Panama Hattie in 1942, but in 1943 she was Bill Robinson's leading lady, performing the hit title song, in the musical showcase of African-American talent, Stormy Weather. That same year she also starred in Vincente Minnelli's all-Black production of Cabin in the Sky. Although she would have many parts in movies, Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky remained until 1969 her only starring vehicles, as scenes with Black cast members in typical Hollywood movies were designed to be edited out for showings in "whites only" venues.^[5] The racism "glass ceiling" inevitably contributed to her disenchantment with Hollywood. It may also have contributed to her becoming socially and politically involved with Socialists, who were advocating equality. This association during the "Red Scare" of the 1950s resulted in her being blacklisted in Hollywood for about seven years. In that time she was able to continue singing in clubs and recording.^[5]

Horne's second marriage was to Leonard George Hayton, the white music director at MGM, in December 1947 in Paris. Due to the interracial aspect, they kept the marriage secret for three years.^[8] They separated in the early 1960s, but never divorced; he died in 1971. No children were born to the marriage.^[1]

All the while she was working as a performer in nightclubs and on television and releasing well-received record albums, she was also working with the Civil Rights Movement. She was at the rally with Medgar Evers days before he was assassinated in June of 1963, and performed and spoke at Martin Luther King's March on Washington in August of that same year. She and the leadership of the Democratic National Committee met with President John F. Kennedy on 20 November 1963, two days before his assassination. In 1969 she starred in Death of a Gunfighter as a madame who marries the title character, her first straight dramatic role and one of the first Hollywood movies to feature an interracial couple, albeit without reference to race or color.^[1]

She announced her retirement from show business in March 1980, but the next year came back to star 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 with the show, earning numerous awards and accolades-- and also was awarded the Spingarn Medal for her civil rights activism in 1983. She continued recording and performing into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000.^[1]

Lena Horne died in New York on May 9, 2010, at the age of 92.^[9] Her funeral took place at St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue in New York. Thousands gathered, and attendees included Leontyne Price, Dionne Warwick, Liza Minnelli, Jessye Norman, Chita Rivera, Cicely Tyson, Diahann Carroll, Leslie Uggams, Lauren Bacall, Robert Osborne, Audra McDonald, and Vanessa Williams. Her remains were cremated.^[10]

Her grandchildren include screenwriter Jenny Lumet, known for her award-winning screenplay, Rachel Getting Married. Jenny is the daughter of filmmaker Sidney Lumet and Horne's writer daughter Gail Lumet Buckley. Her other grandchildren include Gail's other daughter, film producer Amy Lumet, and her son's four children. Her great-grandchildren include the actor Jake Cannavale.^[1]

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5} Wikipedia contributors, "Lena Horne," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lena_Horne&oldid=1184984939 (accessed December 12, 2023).
2. ↑ Ancestry Record 61457 #1697818, Ancestry.com., "New York, New York, U.S., Birth Index, 1910-1965," [database on-line], (Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2017), citing BIRTHS REPORTED IN 1917-BOROUGH OF BROOKLYN, New York City Department of Health, courtesy of www.vitalsearch-worldwide.com. Digital Images;

   Birth Index for "Lina C Horne" 30 Jun 1917, Brooklyn, NYC., Certificate Number: 26583.

3. ↑ Brazil Immigration Card: "Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Immigration Cards, 1900-1965"
   FHL Film Number: 004809343
   Ancestry Sharing Link - Ancestry Record 9800 #5723567 (accessed 20 April 2024)
   Name: Lena Horne Hayton; Gender: Female; Marital Status: Married; Birth Date: 30 de jun de 1917 (30 Jun 1917); Birth Place: Eua; Arrival Date: 1960; Arrival Place: Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Father: Edwin; Mother: Edna; Traveling With Children: No.
4. ↑ "United States Census, 1920", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MJ5C-XLV : 2 February 2021), Lena Horne in entry for Edwin F Horne, 1920.
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1 5.2} Lena Horne: In her Own Words, PBS, American Masters, Premiere: 11/25/1996, "Lena Horne Biography," 14 May 2010.
6. ↑ "United States Census, 1940," FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KQNR-X6Q : Tue Nov 28 18:04:34 UTC 2023), Ward 5, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh City, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 69-88, sheet 62B, line 43, family 180, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, NARA digital publication T627. Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790 - 2007, RG 29. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012, roll 3654. Entry for Louis Janes[sic] and Lena Jones, 1940.
7. ↑ Bio for Felix Young and Cafe Trocadero, Live link and Archived link.
8. ↑ Ancestry, Newspapers.com, "Lena Horne and Lennie Hayton Wedding 1950," citing Rapid City Journal, (Rapid City, South Dakota, Thur., Jun 22, 1950) p. 7.
9. ↑ "United States Social Security Death Index," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VM87-HP5 : 12 January 2021), Lena Horne, 09 May 2010; citing U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, ongoing).
10. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/52189627/lena-horne: accessed 15 December 2023), memorial page for Lena Horne (30 Jun 1917–9 May 2010), Find A Grave: Memorial #52189627; Cremated, Ashes given to family or friend; Maintained by Find a Grave. Includes biography.

See also:

• "United States Census, 1930," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X4NJ-8LF : accessed 2 November 2021), Lena Horne in household of Walter H Bunn, Brooklyn (Districts 0251-0500), Kings, New York, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 276, sheet 10B, line 78, family 227, NARA microfilm publication T626 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002), roll 1502; FHL microfilm 2,341,237.
• "Family Tree," database, entry for Lena Horne(PID https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/4:1:LJLT-8JV); contributed by various users.
• Wikidata: Item Q112307