Lena Horne died on Sunday, May 9th, at the age of 92. My first memory of Lena Horne is from The Muppet Show. As a child, I remember watching her on The Muppet Show and being awed by her presence – she seemed soooo nice and soooo beautifully elegant to me. I was too young to know that she was revered as a ground-breaking singer, actress and civil rights activist. Then, a few years later, she was Glinda the Good Witch in The Wiz; the “urbanized” retelling of one of my favorite books, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
By the time The Wiz came out, I was just old enough to realize that Lena Horne was someone special. Born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn, Lena Horne’s career in show business began at the tender age of 16 as a chorus girl at The Cotton Club. In 1942, she became the first African-American to be put under contract by a major movie studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, after refusing to pass for a Latina. As beautiful as she was, she was resentful that she got parts because of the way she looked. The more I learned about her the more I was intrigued.
While movies helped to put her on the map, it was her singing and political activism that we’ll all remember her for. Well, that and her beauty; although, I’m not sure her looks are what she would want to be remembered for. Lena Horne’s outspokenness wrapped in her graceful presence helped to teach me a very valuable lesson - Beauty is only skin deep; what truly matters is who you are and what you are about.
Her life touched millions; she definitely touched mine as an awkward, gangly pre-teen with braces. When she was singing Believe in Yourself to Dorothy in The Wiz, I thought she was singing to me – telling me to believe in myself just as she believed in me. Thank you, Lena! Rest In Peace.
wedge sandals about two years ago on a fine Spring day while shopping with a client. We were on 34th Street in a shoe store looking for shoes to match an evening gown she’d just purchased. It had been a long day. I was tired and my dogs were sho ’nuff barkin’. I looked up from my client’s feet and saw a suburban mom who was very well put together in a kind-of JCrew meets Martha Stewart kind of way. She had on these really cool patent leather kelly green wedge sandals. They looked sooooo comfortable! As I was wistfully eyeing her shoes, she made a beeline over to me with a pair of sparkly heels in hand to ask my opinion. Interestingly, I get that a lot. I wasn’t doing anything overtly “stylist-like”, I like to think that I look more stylish than most and one stylish person to another kind of karma was going on. Anyway, she showed me the shoes and a picture of her daughter’s prom dress. She wanted to know if I thought they’d work together. She’d made a great choice and I told her so.
