Lena Horne dies, Hollywood's 'black leading lady that white people could accept'

Trailblazer: Lena Horne, pictured in 1948, paved the way for black actresses to claim starring roles in Hollywood
Miranda Bryant12 April 2012

Lena Horne, who overcame racism to become Hollywood's first black leading lady, has died at 92.

The jazz singer, known as the "Negro Cinderella" in the early stages of her career, died last night in a hospital in New York.

Horne — whose beauty and sex appeal often overshadowed her voice — was one of the first black performers hired to sing with a major white band and was the first to play the Copacabana nightclub. While she did not make it as a major film star, she is credited with paving the way for other black actresses to get bigger roles.

"I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept," she once said.

"I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked."

Her biographer James Gavin said Hollywood considered her "as the Negro beautiful enough — in a Caucasian fashion — for white Americans to accept."

She began her career as a 16-year-old dancer at the Cotton Club and moved to Hollywood in the late Thirties. In 1943 she played Selina Rogers in the all-black movie musical Stormy Weather. Her rendition of the title song became a major hit and her signature piece.

In her first big Broadway success, as the star of Jamaica in 1957, reviewer Richard Watts Jr called her "one of the incomparable performers of our time".

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