Lena Horne Died on May 9, 2010

The first black performer who had a long term contract with a major Hollywood studio and achieved international fame as a singer Lena Horne died. On May 9, 2010 she dies. According to NY Times, Lena Horne died on Sunday night at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York.

She was 92 and lived in Manhattan. Her death was announced by her son-in-law, Kevin Buckley. Ms. Horne might have become a major movie star, but she was born 50 years too early, and languished at MGM in the 1940s because of the color of her skin, although she was so light-skinned that, when she was a child, other black children had taunted her, accusing her of having a “white daddy.”

Ms. Horne was stuffed into one “all-star” musical after another — “Thousands Cheer” (1943), “Broadway Rhythm” (1944), “Two Girls and a Sailor” (1944), “Ziegfeld Follies” (1946), “Words and Music” (1948) — to sing a song or two that could easily be snipped from the movie when it played in the South, where the idea of an African-American performer in anything but a subservient role in a movie with an otherwise all-white cast was unthinkable.

“The only time I ever said a word to another actor who was white was Kathryn Grayson in a little segment of ‘Show Boat’ ” included in “Till the Clouds Roll By” (1946), a movie about the life of Jerome Kern, Ms. Horne said in an interview in 1990. In that sequence she played Julie, a mulatto forced to flee the showboat because she has married a white man.

So far, there’s no immediate statement when Lena Horne funeral will be held.

Tags: Lena Horne Died on May 9, 2010, Lena Horne Died On Sunday Night, Lena Horn Died, Lena Horne Died, Lena Horne Funeral.