Trailblazing stage, screen and recording star Lena Horne has become the first Black woman to have a Broadway theatre named in her honour.
Most recently known as the Brooks Atkinson Theater (renamed in 1960 after famed New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson), the Lena Horne Theater on West 47th Street, New York is the Broadway home of Six.
Attendees at the re-naming ceremony included the star’s grand-daughter, screenwriter Jenny Lumet, who urged the crowd to take inspiration from her grandmother’s story, saying: “She would say ‘Let it soar. Let your cup runneth over. Do your thing. Make more art and believe’.”
Another attendee, actress and singer Vanessa Williams, posted on Instagram: “So proud to sing ‘Stormy Weather’ as a tribute to the incomparable Lena Horne as part of the ceremonial reveal of her new marquee on the Lena Horne Theater. Lena Horne paved the way for each Black female entertainer in the business of show! We never forget and her name on that Marquee will always be a testament for us all.”
Born in Brooklyn in 1917, the ground-breaking actress, singer and civil rights activist, joined the chorus of the legendary Cotton Club when she was just 16 and was a well-known nightclub entertainer in New York and later in LA before Hollywood came calling.
Signed by Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Horne made her MGM screen debut in 1942 in Panama Hattie, performing what would become one of her signature songs ‘Stormy Weather’. Horne would go on to star in a number of Hollywood Golden Age musicals but reportedly became increasingly disillusioned with Hollywood, returning to her live performance roots.
In 1958, Horne became the first African American woman to be nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress In A Musical for her performance as Calypso in Jamaica.
A multi-Grammy Award winner, Horne’s long association with the owners of the new Lena Horne Theater, the Nederlander Organisation began when she was invited to play a four-week engagement at the newly named Nederlander Theatre on West 41st Street. The show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music was a spectacular success. It was extended to a full year run, and won Horne a special Tony Award, and two Grammy Awards for the cast recording.
Horne was 92 when she died in New York in 2010 some years after retiring from public life.
Angela Thomas
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