Lena Horne, Light Egyptian

Josephine Baker may have created the road for Black women on the stage and screen but Lena Horne paved it for all who came after. Starting with her 1943 breakout performance in Stormy Weather, Lena Horne became America's first African American sex symbol. Not only was she stunning she was talented. Not only was she talented she was savvy. Not only was she savvy she was not afraid to speak her mind. The original mocha showgirl. I met Lena Horne once when I was working as a manager at a kitchen store named Lechter's. It was 1995 or so. The store was located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I was near the back when I noticed a thin women of impeccable taste glissade into our establishment. I was used to seeing glamorous older women shopping  but something about her caught my eye. When I noticed who she was I rushed to the front and introduced myself. Her hands were soft and eyes dimmed with age were still full of life. I gushed like a chorus girl. After she left I turned to the cashier and said "Didn't you recognize her?" She said "Yeah, the lady from the toothpaste commercials." If I could I would have fired her on the spot.

Our paths crossed one again when I had the pleasure of seeing Lena Horne perform one of her legendary cabaret shows. The crowd was sparkling and I must admit I was probably 35 years younger than most of the patrons. Lena sauntered onto the stage and put on one of the most spectacular shows I've ever seen in person. I was thinking I was about to sip a cool iced tea made with refined sugar, what I got was potent blend of bourbon and sugarcane. She sang with such pith and soul I could feel each note tug at my heart. And she was bawdy and sexual. A woman in her eighties rolling the floor in a silk gown growling like a tigress in heat. I loved it. She was a Brooklyn girl.

Maybe Native New Yorker fierceness made her never shy from being candid. From working closely with Civil Rights leaders to speaking openly about Hollywood racism, Lena was a one of a kind. When the studio thought she wasn't reading "Negro enough" on film they had famed make-up artist Max Factor make her a custom shade named "Light Egyptian", as Lena recalled in her 1981 Broadway show Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, the studio took the Light Egyptian make up put it on Ava Gardner and gave her the part on the movie version of Showboat.

In her long almost 100 years on this earth Lena Horne touched so many lives, from breaking barriers to breaking heart. She was always a class act and she always proved that Black Girls Rock.

Lena Horne and Bill Robinson giving musical realness, Stormy Weather, 1943

Lena serving you more legs than a bucket of chicken, darling

Lena's Tour de France, on board the steamship Liberté with her husband MGM musical director Lennie Hayton on their return to America, 1952

 

Pretty angry, Lena Horne by Ricard Avedon, 1958

Lena believed in keeping a fetching man around the house. Her first husband Louis Jordan Jones in Pittsburgh, 1937

 A studio still from 1935

Blackglamazon, What Becomes a Legend Most? Lena in fur that's what, 1969

Lena lifting spirits with Tuskegee Airmen in Alabama, 1943

 The King and Queen, Lena and Harry Belafonte threw Dr. Martin Luther King a party after the March on Washington, 1963

Lena with Medgar Evers shortly before his murder, 1963

Now Sissy That Walk, Lena using New York City sidewalks as a runway

Ava darling I love you but you know Lena shoulda been Julie LaVerne

Broadway Baby, Lena outside the Nederlander Theater, 1981 

Fight the Power, Lena fighting for equality at the March on Washington, August 1963

Her face is sickening!

Background noise, apparently the fitters couldn't take Lena

Baby I just want to join whatever cause these two are championing

Lena Horne's iconic pic that inspired me to write

Girl I make this look too easy!

In living color, 1947

Now we know where Miss Piggy got her style, Lena Horne on the Muppet Show