Singer & Actress Lena Horne dies at 92

Singer and actress Lena Horne dies at 92
 


Lena Horne, the
acclaimed American singer and actress, has died at the age of 92, the
New York Times reported Monday.

She died on Sunday night in a New
York hospital, according to the report, which quoted her son-in-law
Kevin Buckley.

Horne began her career in the 1930s and went on to
become the first black movie star to sign a major Hollywood studio
contract. At the age of 16, the native New Yorker took to the stage at
the Cotton Club in Harlem, at a time when black singers performed for
all-white audiences.

In the early 1940s, Horne starred in MGM
musicals such as Cabin in the Sky, Stormy Weather and Ziegfeld Follies.

In
1947, she secretly married Lennie Hayton, a white conductor and
pianist, in France, because mixed marriages were then still prohibited
in California.

Horne later made her name as a jazz singer. In
1981, she starred in the Grammy Award-winning one-woman Broadway show,
Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music and continued to release records into
the 1990s.

In 1995, she won a Grammy for best jazz vocal
performance for An Evening with Lena Horne.