Lena Mary Calhoun Horne, June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010
Oh, I have a sad feeling that the tributes won't and/or can't do her justice, due to her having been an outspoken, unapologetically sexual and unashamedly ambitious black woman, only a very tiny fraction of whose talent ever made it onto film, due to the overtly racist and not-so-overtly sexist reasons that prevented her from being cast in the parts she deserved.
And if I had the time, and could still write, I'd write one myself, but...since I don't and can't, I guess I'll just settle for excerpting wiki....
Lena Horne joined the mike chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Due to the Red Scare and her progressive political views, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood.
[...]
She made her debut with MGM in 1942's Panama Hattie, and performed the title song of Stormy Weather (1943), 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 because of her ethnicity and the fact that films featuring her had to be re-edited for showing in states where theaters could not show films with black 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.***
[...]
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 lost the part to Ava Gardner due to the Production Code's ban on interracial relationships in films.
[...]
Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society and worked with Paul Robeson, a communist and 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 for groups in which German POWs were seated in front of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography. Since the US Army refused to allow integrated audiences, she wound up putting on a show for a mixed audience of black US soldiers and white German POWs.
She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, the weekend before Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House two days before he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington and spoke and performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC and the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws.
...and adding:
RIP, Lena Horne. You were more than just another pretty face.
Stay black.
* * * * * * * * * (*** "Ain't It the Truth," which is not the clip posted, because I couldn't find a clip of it.)
by Laodicean » Sun May 09, 2010 8:11 pm 
