Dusty Ayres
Commodore
From here:
One more star in Heaven, who will be missed down on Earth. Goodbye, Lena.
Lena Horne, whose beauty and talent – and race – helped pave the way for future generations of African American stars, died Sunday night at Manhattan's New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital, reports The New York Times. She was 92 and had been in failing health the past few months, sources tell PEOPLE.
As she recounted in her successful, Tony-winning 1981 one-woman Broadway show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, the star – MGM's first leading actress of color, though she was often relegated to secondary scenes that could be edited out of movies when shown Down South – was born in Brooklyn and rose from the nightclub chorus to the rank of headliner, starting at Harlem's Cotton Club. Once West, her films included 1943's all-black screen musicals Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather (the latter's title song became her anthem), though she was denied the role she long coveted: the mulatto saloon singer Julie in MGM's 1950 Show Boat, which instead went to her friend Ava Gardner.
One more star in Heaven, who will be missed down on Earth. Goodbye, Lena.
