Lena Horne Dies At Age 92

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panthera

panthera

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She was so good!

I have read that studios had to plan her shots so the reels sent to the South could be "adjusted" so as not to offend those who were easily offended.
Well, plus ça change, plus c'est la même merde.

Check out the clip - now, that was singing!

!
 
How sad, a great and classy lady in any era. Miss. Horne will be missed.

As for "south" and motion pictures, that sort of thing happened all the time back in the day. Because of Jim Crow laws and public feeling Hollywood studios had to take great care in how films were distributed, cast, plot lines, and so forth.

Hattie MacDaniel, (Mammy in GWTW), was not invited much less would have been allowed to walk down the red carpet when the film was opened in Atlanta. However her friends in Hollywood made sure she was not only at the Hollywood opening, but was front and center.

Back to Miss. Horne:

While she still lived here in NYC, the lady was almost a recluse the past decade or so, some wondered if she was still alive.

View attachment launderess++5-10-2010-01-35-42.jpg
 
She was

one of those very rare entertainers who actually is a multi-talent.

It's interesting to note how far we have come in some ways - Obama, Colin Powell.

On the other hand, the Arizona law is clearly aimed at dark-skinned people (you can tell an undocumented person by their shoes? Really???), gays are still denied human status and the creationists, ID and those sailing their barges down de-nial on natural-science are still determining politics in 2010.

Wait for the outcries over Kagan. She's a woman. She's Jewish. She's not a mother (the one and only reason for women to exist, of course), she's a lib-roll.

And still - we have the Lena Hornes of this world. Not often enough, not nearly enough. But what she left us!

!
 
Lena Hornes

did not ever look her age as a lot of black actresses don't. The first time I remember her was on a Sanford & Son show where Fred tried to say his son Lamont had some kind of tropical disease to get her to sing. Beautiful woman and a wonderful singer. We are losing a lot of the old studio actor and actresses.
John
 
Black Don't Crack

So the saying goes! *LOL*

While it is sad Miss.Horne has passed on,she outlived many others from the "studio system" days, even those that came much later, towards the end.

The lady had good innings, and lived a full life. She was born into an era when kings and queens still ruled Europe (1917) (until the end of WWI got rid of most), and not only lived through Jim Crow, the Civil Rights movement, but lived long enough to see an African Amercian man made president of the United States.

As for the song "Stormy Weather", originally Miss. Horne didn't want to sing the song nor be in the film. However the studio stood firm and she was caught between a rock and a hard place. Miss. Horne went to see Miss. Hattie MacDaniel at her home. The later was "queen" of African Americans in Hollywood and a great friend of many out there, black and white, also had a beautiful home in an all white area.

Miss. Horne poured out her woes to Hattie MacDaniel who gave good commonsense advice:

Hattie McD to Miss Horne - You got children?
LH - "Yes"
Hattie McD - "You got any money"
LH - "No"
Hattie McD - "Sing the song"

*LOL* And that was that.

Miss. Horne had left her husband and arrived in Hollywood with her two small children and needed to work. Hattie MacDaniel was not a woman to mince words and often took heat from the black "community" of the time for playing domestics in films (her reply was "I'd rather play a maid than be one", knew Hollywood well and while understanding of Miss. Horne's problem with her role and such, saw the bigger picture.

Have Miss. Horne's CD of the live one-woman Broadway. My two favourites are "Yesterday When I Was Young", and "Something To Live For".

Miss. Horne's voice always takes one back to a much classier age. A time when the only way to cross the Atlantic was via an ocean liner (in First Class of course), cocktail parties, nightclubs, dressing for dinner in short glamour.

Something to live for was written by Billy Strayhorn (and out gay black man at at time when neither was in vouge nor safe), whom many say was Miss. Horne's true love. Sadly for her he was gay, but their friendship was tight and lasted until the day he died (in his (white) lover's arms in a NYC hospital).
Miss. Horne always said Mr. Strayhone was the one man, if not the only who understood her.
 
Keven--Too Funny

Laundress--Thanks for a great story. I shared it with a friend who saw Miss Horne in a production in New York. After the show, she came out on stage and the place erupted. She said no one wanted to leave. They just wanted to stand and applaud Lena Horne.
 
A wonderful voice and a gutsy woman.

Unfortunately, Jon Wilson, the early-morning anchorman on KELO TV from Sioux Falls, SD accidentally pronounced it "Lena Horny" before quickly correcting himself.

I nearly spit out my coffee all over my shirt and tie!
 
I have been humming 'New Fangled Tango' to myself all day long as I remember this being played at home as a child, my parents both being fans of Lena Horne and on hearing the news on TV this morning this is the first tune I thought of. I have collected several of her albums over the years, one of my favourites being 'Soul' and she sure had a lot of that. Her recording of 'People Will Say We're In Love' will always have a very special place in my heart.

Another real star gone.
 

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