LENA HORNE – STORMY LADY

Julio 6, 2009 | Por daniel-gonzalez | # Enlace permanente | Tweet

La bellísima, Lena Horne (New York 1917), no tuvo demasiadas oportunidades para demostrar sus habilidades para cantar. Era negra bajo su piel clara, y el racismo junto a la caza de brujas defendida por el senador McCarthy, se coaligaron para impedir que accediera plenamente al status de estrella del cine.

Sus inicios artísticos comenzaron formando parte del coro de bailarinas del Cotton Club en 1933 y en uno de los shows de la gran Adelaide Hall, se estrenó como cantante con el tema “As Long As i Live”, de los compositores, Harold Arlen y Ted Koechler. Ellos mismos suministraban canciones para la gran Ethel Waters y demás cantantes negras. Sin ir mas lejos, “Stormy Weather”, de tanta significación en la carrera de Lena Horne, fue uno de ellos. Mayor importancia tuvo su trabajo como vocalista con la orquesta del cantante y líder, Noble Sissle entre 1935 y 1936. Grabaron discos, fueron de giras y el renombre que adquirió le abrió las puertas al mundo negro del espectáculo. La película “The Duke is Tops” y el musical “Blackbirds of 1939″ fueron producto de esa fama.

Contratada como cantante por la bigband de Charlie Barnet (1940-1941), sufrió muy pronto la dolorosa experiencia de ser la única mujer negra que viajaba en el mismo autobús de una orquesta blanca. Su primer gran éxito con Charlie Barnet, fue el tema “Good-For Nothin’ Joe” grabado para Bluebird en 1941. En el verano de ese mismo año, Lena Horne, es acompañada por una excelente formación de estudio dirigida por el clarinetista y líder de orquesta, Artie Shaw que incluía al trompetista, Henry “Red” Allen, y al saxofonista Benny Carter, como mejores solistas. Al mismo tiempo, su estancia en el Café Society – el mismo club donde se dio a conocer, Billie Holiday- le da la oportunidad de conocer a una audiencia mixta e intelectual, grabando con el pianista, Teddy Wilson, entre otros.

El año 1941, se cierra con su interpretación de “Stormy Weather”, una versión menos dramática que todas sus antecesoras pero igualmente efectiva y expresiva. Participó en dos películas dirigidas exclusivamente al emergente público negro y que contaba con actores exclusivamente de color. Fueron: “Cabin In the Sky” de Vicente Minnelli (1942) y “Stormy Weather” de Andrew Stone (1943). Entre sus grabaciones destaca un recopilatorio de un material muy representativo entre 1941 y 1958 para Bluebird-RCA titulado “Stormy Weather” y un disco arreglado por Marty Paich en 1962 para RCA titulado: “Lovely and Alive”.

El sistema americano no la dejó ser una gran estrella del cine por el color de su piel, y eso le permitió dedicar todas sus energías en el arte del jazz vocal, algo que sus aficionados siempre se lo agradecerán.

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (Brooklyn, 30 de junio de 1917), más conocida como Lena Horne, es una actriz y cantante estadounidense de jazz y música popular. Su carrera, tanto como artista de nightclub como de intérprete de discos para diversas compañías, abarca más de sesenta años, desde los años treinta a los noventa del siglo XX.

Ha conseguido tres premios Grammy, entre los que está el Lifetime Achievement Award en 1989. Ha trabajado en 16 películas y varios cortos entre 1938 y 1978; actuó también en Broadway, como por ejemplo en su propio espectáculo Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music en 1981-1982 por el que obtuvo un premio Tony; por último, ha trabajo en varias ocasiones para la radio y la televisión.

Comprometida con la lucha contra la discriminación racial, su primer trabajo en los años 30 fue en el Cotton Club, donde podían trabajar los negros, pero no eran admitidos como clientes.

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (born June 30, 1917) is an American singer and actress. She has recorded and performed extensively, independently and with other jazz notables, including Artie Shaw, Teddy Wilson, Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington, Charlie Barnet, Benny Carter, and Billy Eckstine. She currently lives in New York City and no longer makes public appearances.

Biography

[edit] Early years

Lena Horne was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York. Both sides of her family are mixture of African American, Native American, and Caucasian descent. Both were part of what W. E. B. Du Bois called “the talented tenth,” the upper stratum of middle-class, well-educated African Americans.^[1][2] She grew up in an upper middle class black community. Her father, Edwin “Teddy” Horne, who worked in the gambling trade, left the family when she was three. Her mother, Edna Scottron, was the daughter of inventor Samuel R. Scottron; she was an actress with an African American theater troupe and traveled extensively. Horne was mainly raised by her grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne. Her uncle, Frank S. Horne, was an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.^[3] She is a reported descendant of the John C. Calhoun family. Lena Horne attended Girls High School, an all-girls public high school in Brooklyn which has since become Boys & Girls High School, on Fulton Street; she dropped out without earning a diploma.

[edit] Career

In the fall of 1933, Lena Horne joined the chorus line of the Cotton Club in New York City. In the spring of 1934, she had a featured role in the Cotton Club Parade. A few years later she joined Noble Sissle’s Orchestra and toured with this orchestra. After she separated from her first husband, Lena Horne toured with bandleader Charlie Barnet in 1940-41, but disliked the travel and left the band to work at the Cafe Society in New York. She replaced Dinah Shore as the featured vocalist on NBC’s popular jazz series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. The show’s resident maestros, Henry Levine and Paul Laval, recorded with Horne in June 1941 for RCA Victor. Horne left the show after only six months to headline a nightclub revue on the west coast; she was replaced by Linda Keene.

Lena Horne already had two low-budget movies to her credit: a 1938 musical feature called The Duke is Tops (later reissued with Horne’s name above the title as The Bronze Venus); and a 1941 two-reel short subject, Boogie Woogie Dream, featuring pianists Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons. Horne’s songs from Boogie Woogie Dream were later released individually as Soundies. Horne was primarily a nightclub performer during this period, and it was during a 1942 club engagement in Hollywood that talent scouts approached Horne to work in pictures. She chose Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the most prestigious studio in the world, and became the first African American performer to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio.

She made her debut with MGM in 1942’s Panama Hattie and became famous in 1943 for her rendition of “Stormy Weather” in the movie of the same name (which she made at 20th Century Fox, on loan from MGM). She appeared in a number of MGM musicals, most notably Cabin in the Sky (also 1943), 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 states where theaters could not show films with African American performers. As a result, most of Horne’s film appearances were stand-alone 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. “Ain’t it the Truth” was the song (and scene) cut before the release of the film Cabin in the Sky. It featured Lena Horne singing “Ain’t it the Truth,” while taking a bubble bath (considered too “risque” by the film’s executives). This scene and song are featured in the film “That’s Entertainment III“, which also features commentary from Lena Horne on why the scene was deleted prior to the film’s release.

In Ziegfeld Follies (1946) she performs “Love” by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane.

Horne wanted to be considered for the role of Julie LaVerne in MGM’s 1951 version of Show Boat (having already played the role when a segment of Show Boat was performed in Till the Clouds Roll By) but Ava Gardner was hired to play the part (the production code office had banned interracial relationships in films). In the documentary That’s Entertainment! III Horne stated that MGM executives required Gardner to practice her singing using recordings of Horne performing the songs, which offended both actresses (ultimately, Gardner ended up having her singing voice overdubbed by another actress (Annette Warren (Smith)) for the theatrical release, though her own voice was heard on the soundtrack album).

[edit] Changes of direction

By the mid-1950s, Horne was disenchanted with Hollywood 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 was blacklisted during the 1950s for her political views.^[4] She returned to the screen three more times, playing chanteuse Claire Quintana in the 1969 film Death of a Gunfighter, Glinda in The Wiz (1978), and co-hosting the 1994 MGM retrospective That’s Entertainment! III, in which she was candid about her treatment by the studio.

fter leaving Hollywood, Lena Horne established herself as one of the premiere nightclub performers of the post-war era. She headlined at clubs and hotels throughout the US, Canada and Europe, including the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles and the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. In 1957, a live album entitled, “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” became the largest selling record by a female artist in the history of the RCA-Victor label.

From the late 1950s through the 1960s, Horne was a staple of TV variety shows, appearing multiple times on Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall, Ed Sullivan, The Dean Martin Show and The Bell Telephone Hour. Other programs included, The Judy Garland Show, The Hollywood Palace and The Andy Williams Show. Besides two television specials for the BBC (later syndicated in the US), Horne starred in her own US television special in 1969, Monsanto Night Presents Lena Horne. In 1970, she co-starred with Harry Belafonte in the hour long “Harry & Lena” for ABC; in 1973, she co-starred with Tony Bennett in “Tony and Lena.” Horne and Bennett subsequently toured the US and UK in a show together. A very memorable appearance was in the 1976 program “America Salutes Richard Rodgers,” where she sang a lengthy medley of Rodgers songs with Peggy Lee and Vic Damone. Horne also made several appearances on The Flip Wilson Show.

Additionally, Horne played herself on television programs as The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and Sanford and Son in the 1970s, as well as a 1985 performance on The Cosby Show and a 1993 appearance on A Different World.

In the summer of 1980, Lena Horne, 63 years old and intent on retiring from show business, embarked on a two month series of benefit concerts sponsored by Delta Sigma Theta. These concerts were represented as Horne’s farewell tour, yet her retirement lasted less than a year.

In May 1981, The Nederlander Organization booked Lena Horne for a four week engagement at the newly named Nederlander Theatre (formerly the Trafalgar, the Billy Rose and the National) on West 41st Street in New York City. The show was an instant success and was extended to a full year run, garnering Horne a special Tony award, and two Grammy Awards for the cast recording of her show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music. The 333 performance Broadway run closed on Horne’s 65 birthday, June 30, 1982. Later that same week, the entire show was performed again and video taped for television broadcast and home video release. The tour began a few days later at Tanglewood (MA) during the 1982 July 4 weekend. “The Lady and Her Music” toured 41 cities in the U.S and Canada through June 17, 1984. It played in London for a month in August and ended its run in Stockholm, Sweden, September 14, 1984.

In 1958, Horne was nominated for a Tony Award for “Best Actress in a Musical” (for her part in the “Calypso” musical Jamaica) In 1981 she received a Special Tony Award for her one-woman show, Lena Horne: “The Lady and Her Music”. Despite the show’s considerable success (Horne still holds the record for the longest-running solo performance in Broadway history), she did not capitalize on the renewed interest in her career by undertaking many new musical projects. A proposed 1983 joint recording project between Horne and Frank Sinatra (to be produced by Quincy Jones) was ultimately abandoned, and her sole studio recording of the decade was 1988’s The Men In My Life, featuring duets with Sammy Davis, Jr. and Joe Williams. In 1989, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

The 1990s found Horne considerably more active in the recording studio – all the more remarkable considering she was approaching her 80th year. Following her 1993 performance at a tribute to the musical legacy of her good friend Billy Strayhorn (Duke Ellington’s longtime pianist and arranger), she decided to record an album composed largely of Strayhorn’s and Ellington’s songs the following year, We’ll Be Together Again. To coincide with the release of the album, Horne made what would be her final concert performances at New York’s Supper Club and Carnegie Hall. That same year, Horne also lent her vocals to a recording of “Embraceable You” on Sinatra’s “Duets II” album. Though the album was largely derided by critics, the Sinatra-Horne pairing was generally regarded as its highlight. In 1995, a “live” album capturing her Supper Club performance was released (subsequently winning a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album). In 1998, at the age of 81, Horne released another studio album, entitled Being Myself. Thereafter, Horne essentially retired from performing and largely retreated from public view, though she did return to the recording studio in 2000 to contribute vocal tracks on Simon Rattle’s Classic Ellington album.

[edit] Civil rights activism

Horne also is noteworthy for her contributions to the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society and worked with Paul Robeson, a singer who also combated American racial discrimination. During World War II, when entertaining the troops for the USO, she refused to perform “for segregated audiences or to groups in which German POWs were seated in front of African American servicemen” ^[5], according to her Kennedy Center biography. She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi the weekend before Evers was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington and spoke and performed in behalf of the NAACP, SNCC and the National Council for Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws. ^[6]

[edit] Tributes and rereleases

In 2003, ABC announced that Janet Jackson would star as Horne in a television biopic. In the weeks following Jackson’s “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.” Oprah Winfrey stated to Alicia Keys during a 2005 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show that she might possibly consider producing the biopic herself, casting Keys as Horne.

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 featured Horne in remarkably secure voice for a woman of her years, 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 a Life, was released on January 24, 2006.

In 2007, Horne was portrayed by Leslie Uggams as the older Lena and Nikki Crawford as the younger Lena in the stage musical Stormy Weather which is playing at the Pasadena Playhouse in California (January, February, and through March 1, 2009).

[edit] Personal life

Horne married Louis Jordan Jones in January 1937 and they lived in Pittsburgh. In December 1937 they had a daughter, Gail and in February 1940, a son, Edwin. Horne and Jones separated in 1940 and they divorced in 1944.

Lena Horne’s second marriage was to Lennie Hayton, a Jewish American, from December 1947 until his death in 1971. Hayton was one of the premier musical conductors and arrangers at MGM. In her as-told-to autobiography Lena by Richard Schickel, Horne recounts the enormous pressures she and her husband faced as an interracial married couple. However, she later admitted (Ebony, May 1980) that she really married Hayton to advance her career and cross the “color-line” in show business.

Horne is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated.

Filmography

[edit] Film

The stormy life of Lena Horne

Mike Douglas, the genial daytime talk show host, once cooed to Lena Horne about her legendary beauty, a look that epitomized – and helped diversify – golden-era Hollywood glamour. Always quick with a quip, Horne drawled, “I’m like that portrait of Dorian Gray. You know how lovely it was outside? You should see what’s goin’ on in here!’’ Like a swan that mesmerizes onlookers with its serene glide across a lake, only Horne understood just how much upheaval thrashed beneath the surface.

STORMY WEATHER: The Life of Lena Horne

By James Gavin

Atria, 608 pp., illustrated, $27

In fact, Horne’s troubled life gives new pathos to her signature song, “Stormy Weather,’’ which is also the name of James Gavin’s deftly researched biography of the enigmatic entertainer. He reveals a woman who, despite her successes in films, nightclubs, and recordings, found happiness alien and love suspect. She wore her iconic status as the “Negro Cinderella’’ like a crown of thorns, and never forgave those whose racism barred her from greater professional heights.

Horne’s personal life was just as sour. As Gavin tells it, she could not claim among her parents, two husbands, or children, a genuinely close relationship. Many of her friends didn’t fare much better. In the book’s index, there’s even a notation for “friends discarded by’’ Horne, with 10 pages listed.

In many ways, Horne, born in Brooklyn in 1917, earned her attitude. She spent much of her childhood bouncing between her stern, unloving grandmother and her selfishly ambitious mother, who would forever resent her daughter for achieving the fame she herself craved. (Her father left early, drifting in and out of her life.)

Starting her career at 16 as one of the “tall, tan, and terrific’’ dancers at Harlem’s Cotton Club, Horne was noticed by Hollywood, but it came at a cost. Horne’s first marriage, which produced two children from whom she was often estranged, ended in a bitter divorce.

Though Horne starred in such all-black musicals as “Cabin in the Sky’’ and “Stormy Weather,’’ she wasn’t allowed to do much more than look beautiful and sing in other films. And her appearances were restricted to isolated scenes that could be snipped before they reached Southern theaters. Still, her elegant presence in any film was a welcome respite for black audiences more accustomed to seeing themselves portrayed as compliant mammies or slack-jawed simpletons.

Gavin maintains acting wasn’t Horne’s strength, but allows that she was never given the opportunity to be more than an ornament. That sting remained for Horne and fueled her mistrust of people and their motives. Still, she could be just as calculating. She admitted to marrying her second husband, musical director Lennie Hayton, because, as a white man, “he could get me into places a black man couldn’t.’’

At times, “Stormy Weather’’ recalls what a critic said of Horne’s 1950 memoir: “It is natural that she should be bitter, but a whole book of bitterness makes sad and frustrating reading.’’ Gavin, who also wrote “Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker,’’ knows his way around a damaged artist, and Horne may be the unhappiest performer this side of Judy Garland.

Still, while this is no hagiography, neither is it a hatchet job. Gavin, who once interviewed Horne, though not for this book, sands away Horne’s public veneer, and if the woman who emerges isn’t necessarily likable, she’s certainly more human – which is how Horne wanted to be regarded and treated. And that’s no small feat for a woman who, now 92 and out of the public eye for a decade, remains for many a totem of grace, beauty, and pride.

Renée Graham is a freelance writer.