Lena Horne Research Paper

Lena Horne was born on the thirtieth of June, 1917, in Bedford - Stuyvesant, New York (biography.com). Horne’s father, Edwin Fletcher “Teddy” Horne Jr., was born in New York (geni.com). After divorcing Horne’s mother, he remarried and became “a hotel owner and Hill District gambling kingpin” (pittsburghmusichistory.com). Her mother, Edna Louise Horne, was also born in New York. She worked as an actress for a traveling theater troupe (notablebiographies.com). When Edna Horne was gone, her only child, Lena Horne, was sent to live with her grandparents, Cora and Edwin Horne Sr. When her mother remarried, Horne moved back in with them. Horne later died on the ninth of May 2010, in Manhattan, New York due to congestive heart failure (biography.com/latimes.com).

This caused her education to be constantly disrupted (notablebiographies.com). Horne moved to places like Florida, Georgia, and other Southern states. There, she attended “various small-town, segregated” schools (pittsburghmusichistory.com). When Horne was staying with her grandparents, “she attended the Ethical Cultural School, the Girls High School, and a secretarial school” (notablebiographies.com). When Horne was sixteen, she dropped out of school to pursue her dreams of becoming a performer despite her family’s wishes, who felt she should have higher goals

She started to take singing lessons, and got her first small role in the all-black Broadway show “Dance With Your God.” Her performances quickly “caught the interest of a talent scout from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)”, casting her in movies such as, “Cabin in the Sky,” “Stormy Weather,” “Death of a Gunfighter,” “The Wiz” and many more (biography.com). Her recording career “includes over forty albums and twenty-six singles”, one being a cover of the title song for “Stormy Weather”. Her career won her eight Grammy Awards, two Tony Awards, a spot in the Pittsburgh Jazz Hall of Fame, and national honors from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (pittsburghmusichistory.com). In the 1980’s, after the death of her father and son, she made her way back into the limelight with her award-winning show, “Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music”. Horne’s last performance was in 1994 in New York’s Supper Club, where it was released in 1995 as “An Evening With Lena Horne: Live at the Supper Club”