Born Helena Mary Calhoun Horne June 30, 1917 in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York, Lena Horne was raised mainly by her grandparents. Her father Edwin was in the gambling trade and left the family when she was three. Her mother Edna Scottron was the daughter of inventor Samuel Scottron, who invented among other things the curtain rod and support brackets for mirrors to be attached to walls. She is of African-American and Cherokee decent.
Horne Continues to record today but rarely makes public appearances. She has recorded and performed extensively since the 1930’s. She made her first film in 1938 in “The Duke is Tops.” Her signature song “Stormy Weather” was featured in the film of the same name. Horne never got leading roles in films due to her race and the fact that films had to be reedited for showing in southern states where theaters couldn’t show films with African-American performers. Most of her performances in films were stand-alone sequences that had no bearing on the rest of the film. The one exception was “Cabin in the Sky” though even then one of her numbers was censored because she was too suggestive, according to the censors. She has won several Grammy Awards for her work in recorded music, but not until later in her career.
{ 0 comments }