Lena Calhoun Horne was born June 30, 1917, in Brooklyn, New York. In her biography she stated that on the day she was born, her father was in the midst of a card game trying to get money to pay the hospital costs. Her parents divorced while she was still a toddler. Her mother left later in order to find work as an actress and Lena was left in the care of her grandparents. When she was seven her mother returned and the two traveled around the state, which meant that Lena was enrolled in numerous schools (for a time she also attended schools in Florida, Georgia and Ohio). Later she was to return to Brooklyn. She quit school when she was 14 and got her first stage job at 16, dancing and later singing at the famed Cotton Club in Harlem (a renowned theater in which black performers played before white audiences. It was immortalized in The Cotton Club). She was in good hands at the club, especially when people such as Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington took her under their wings and helped her over the rough spots. Before long her talent resulted in her playing before packed houses. If she had never made a movie, her music career would have been enough to have ensured her legendary status in the entertainment industry, but films were icing on the cake. After she made an appearances on Broadway, Hollywood came calling. At 21 years of age Lena made her first film, The Duke Is Tops. It would be four more years before she appeared in another, Panama Hattie, playing a singer in a nightclub. By now Lena had signed with MGM but, unfortunately for her, the pictures were shot so that her scenes could be cut out when they were shown in the South, since most theaters in the South refused to show films that portrayed blacks in anything other than subservient roles to whites, and most movie studios did not want to take a chance on losing that particular source of revenue. Lena did not want to appear in those kinds of stereotyped roles (and who could blame her?). In 1943 MGM loaned her to 20th Century-Fox to play the role of Selina Rogers in the all-black musical Stormy Weather, which did extremely well at the box-office. Her rendition of the title song became a major hit on the musical charts. In 1943 she appeared in Cabin in the Sky, regarded by many as one of the finest performances of her career. She played Georgia Brown opposite Ethel Waters and Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson in the all-black production. Rumors were rampant that she and Waters just did not get along well, although there was never any mention of the source of the alleged friction. That was not the only feud on that picture, however. Other cast members sniped at one another and it was a wonder the film was made at all. Regardless of the hostilities, the movie was released to very good reviews from the ever tough critics. It went a long way in showing the depth of the talent that existed among black performers in Hollywood, especially Lena. Lena's musical career flourished, but her movie career stagnated. Minor roles in films such as Boogie-Woogie Dream, Words and Music and Mantan Messes Up did little to advance her film career, due mainly to the ingrained racist attitudes of the time (aven at the height of Lena's musical career, she was often denied rooms at the very hotels in which she performed, because they would not let blacks stay there). After Meet Me in Las Vegas, Lena left films to concentrate on music and the stage. She returned in 1969, as Claire Quintana in Death of a Gunfighter. Nine years later she returned to the screen again in the all-black musical The Wiz, where she played Glinda the Good Witch. Although that was her last big-screen appearance, she stayed busy in television, appearing in A Century of Women and That's Entertainment! III.

Had it not been for the prevailing racial attitudes during the time when Lena was just starting her career, it's fair to say that it would have been much bigger, and come much sooner, than it was. Even taking those factors into account, Lena Horne is still one of the most respected, talented and beautiful performers of all time--and she's still singing!
While at MGM, her appearances in movies were shot so that they could be cut easily from the film. This was because MGM feared audiences of the day, (especially in the South, would not accept a beautiful black woman in romantic, non-menial roles. Many in the business believed that this was the main reason she lost out on playing the mulatto Julie in MGM's remake of Show Boat. Ironically, the role was played by one of Lena's close off-screen friends, Ava Gardner, who practiced for it by singing to Horne's recordings of the songs, and Lena had already appeared in the "Show Boat" segment of Till the Clouds Roll By, in which she appeared as Julie singing "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" (which was, as all her MGM appearances, shot in such a way that filmed so that it could be removed easily). Another irony is that she had been invited by Jerome Kern and 'Oscar Hammerstein II (II)) (qv_ themselves to play Julie in the 1946 Broadway revival of "Show Boat", but had had to refuse because MGM would not release her from her contract. Her signature song is "Stormy Weather." Lost her father, husband and son in one year. She is the mother of journalist and author Gail Lumet Buckley, whose articles have appeared in Vogue Magazine (USA) and The Los Angeles Times (CA, USA); Buckley has researched and authored two books "The Hornes: An American Family" (New American Library, 1986) and "American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm" (Random House, 2001). Lives in Manhattan's fabled West Side apartment building, the Apthorp, whose residents include 'Rosie O'Donnell; , Conan O'Brien, Steve Kroft, Cyndi Lauper and Kate Nelligan. Former mother-in-law of director Sidney Lumet. Lumet was married to Horne's daughter Gail Jones (Gail Lumet Buckley). Inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1991. She was branded a Communist sympathizer because of her association with Paul Robeson and her progressive political beliefs (which led her to be blacklisted in the 1950s). According to her autobiography, she photographed so light in her initial screen tests that MGM was afraid people would mistake her for a white woman, so they had makeup legend Max Factor create a make-up line for her called "Dark Egyptian", so she could appear as a "Negro" onscreen. Ironically, Hedy Lamarr used this same makeup in White Cargo when she played a half-caste African native. Sought the lead role in the controversial film Pinky, about a black girl who passes for white. 20th Century-Fox boss Darryl F. Zanuck decided to take the safe road and choose a white star who had box-office appeal and picked Jeanne Crain. "Pinky," which was a slang term for a light-skinned black, won Crain her only Oscar nomination. Ranked #62 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Rock N Roll She has a weakness for Godiva chocolate. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Received a Special Tony Award in 1982 for "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music." She had previously been nominated for Broadway's 1958 Tony Award as Best Actress (Musical) for "Jamaica." Grandmother of Jenny Lumet.