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In a 2009 interview, James Gavin, author of Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne, discusses the challenging yet inspiring life of one of the 20th century’s most revered entertainers

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James Gavin, author of Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne

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…..Drawing on a wealth of unmined material and hundreds of interviews – one of them with Lena Horne herself – critically acclaimed author James Gavin gives us a “deftly researched” (The Boston Globe) and authoritative portrait of the American icon. Horne broke down racial barriers in the entertainment industry in the 1940s and ’50s even as she was limited mostly to guest singing appearances in splashy Hollywood musicals. Incorporating insights from the likes of Ruby Dee, Tony Bennett, Diahann Carroll, and Bobby Short, Stormy Weather reveals the many faces of this luminous, complex, strong-willed, passionate, even tragic woman – a stunning talent who inspired such giants as Barbra Streisand, Eartha Kitt, and Aretha Fran

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Lena Horne

Singer, actress, dancer and activist (1917–2010)

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, actress, dancer and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned more than seventy years and covered film, television and theatre.

Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving on to Hollywood and Broadway. A groundbreaking African-American performer, Horne advocated for civil rights and took part in the March on Washington in August 1963. Later she returned to her roots as a nightclub performer and continued to work on television while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than 300 performances on Broadway. She then toured the country in the show, earning numerous awards and accolades. Horne continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, retreating from the public eye in 2000.

Early life

Lena Horn

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Ethereal, tormented, and tough as nails, Lena Horne—who would have turned 103 this week—would evolve from angelic Cotton Club ingenue into a civil rights icon and one of the most dynamic, fiery performers of her generation. In Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne, published in 2009, James Gavin recounts the star’s turbulent life—from her love-hate relationship with fellow groundbreaker Harry Belafonte to her soulmate connection to composer Billy Strayhorn and admiration for Malcolm X, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Aretha Franklin. Even as she faced appalling racism, the always brave, always searching Horne would inspire a generation of performers—while never quite finding what she was after. “I was never able to enjoy this damned thing,” she would say in later life, according to Gavin. “It was always a hassle. A fight.”

Parental Control

When a 25-year-old Horne told her wealthy father, Teddy, that Walter White, then head of the NAACP, was urging her to take a stab at Hollywood stardom in the early 1940s, this son of a serious, intellectual, activist family was less than impre