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| 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. write your comments about the article :: © 2010 Jazz News :: home page |