{"id":19393,"date":"2022-11-03T15:49:55","date_gmt":"2022-11-03T15:49:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/lena-horne-first-black-actress-to-have-broadway-theatre-named-in-her-honour"},"modified":"2022-11-03T19:11:46","modified_gmt":"2022-11-03T19:11:46","slug":"lena-horne-first-black-actress-to-have-broadway-theatre-named-in-her-honour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/angola\/all-news\/lena-horne-first-black-actress-to-have-broadway-theatre-named-in-her-honour","title":{"rendered":"Lena Horne first black actress to have Broadway theatre named in her honour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Angola. <\/strong><\/span>Actress Lena Horne has become the first black woman to have a Broadway theatre named in her honour.<\/b><\/p>\n

The theatre, on West 47th Street, was built in 1926 and is currently hosting the hit British musical Six.<\/p>\n

It comes a couple of weeks after another Broadway theatre was named after Star wars actor James Earl Jones.<\/p>\n

Horne, who died in 2010, battled racial segregation to win a major Hollywood film contract and later found international fame as a singer.<\/p>\n

She later became the first black woman to be nominated for a Tony Award, Broadway theatre’s highest honour, for her starring role in the 1957 calypso musical Jamaica.<\/p>\n

In 1981, she received a special Tony Award for Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, a one-woman Broadway show in which she sang and discussed the ups and downs of her life.<\/p>\n

“She opened so many doors for us that we as people of colour can thank her for being a beacon of light,” singer and actress Vanessa Williams told ABC News.<\/p>\n

US singer Lena Horne dies aged 92<\/b><\/p>\n

Horne’s granddaughter, Jenny Lumet, attended Wednesday night’s unveiling and said she was overwhelmed by the honour.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t quite realise how emotional it was until I started speaking about it,” she said.<\/p>\n

“My grandmother would’ve pretended not to be as thrilled as she was. But she would have been completely, completely thrilled.”<\/p>\n

Born in 1917, Horne got her start in the chorus line of Harlem’s famed Cotton Club when she was a teenager. She soon became a popular singer, and MGM signed her to star in its movie musicals in 1942.<\/p>\n

She was not the first black woman to land a studio contract – MGM had signed actress Nina Mae McKinney for five years in 1929 – but she was the first to make an impact.<\/p>\n

In 1943, she played Selina Rogers in the all-black film musical Stormy Weather, and the title song became both a major hit and her signature tune.<\/p>\n

However, she never became a fully-fledged film star. She later recalled that her appearances in all-star musicals like Two Girls And A Sailor and Ziegfeld Follies often amounted to a few minutes of screen time that could be easily cut when the movies played in America’s southern states.<\/p>\n

When Horne’s contract ended, she became a successful theatre star, recording artist and civil rights advocate, taking part in the historic March on Washington in 1963 where Martin Luther King delivered his “I have a dream” speech.<\/p>\n

She won four Grammy Awards, including a lifetime achievement prize in 1989, while her 1957 live album, Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria, was the best-selling record by a female singer in RCA Victor’s history.<\/p>\n

When actress Halle Berry became the first black woman to win a best actress Oscar in 2002, she cited Horne as a pioneer who had paved the way for her breakthrough.<\/p>\n

However, Horne often downplayed the scale of her achievements.<\/p>\n

“I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept,” she once said.<\/p>\n

“I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The newly-christened Lena Horne Theater was originally the Mansfield Theater. It was renamed in honour of the New York Times critic Justin Brooks Atkinson in 1960.<\/p>\n

Horne’s name was selected to fulfil a promise made by Broadway’s three biggest landlords when black artists pressed for greater recognition in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.<\/p>\n

In September, the Shubert Organisation renamed its Cort Theater in honour two-time Tony Award winner James Earl Jones.<\/p>\n

“It means a lot. It’s too heavy for me to try to define,” said the actor, who has appeared in 21 Broadway shows, and is best-known as the voice of Darth Vader.<\/p>\n

Jujamcyn Theaters already had a venue named for American playwright August Wilson, who died in 2005.<\/p>\n

New York City Mayor Eric Adams welcomed the changes to what is known as The Great White Way – the Broadway district that houses 41 professional theatres.<\/p>\n

“What we are saying is that The Great White Way must have some chocolate on it,” he told reporters.<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Angola<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Angola. Actress Lena Horne has become the first black woman to have a Broadway theatre named in her honour. The theatre, on West 47th Street, was built in 1926 and is currently hosting the hit British musical Six. It comes a couple of weeks after another Broadway theatre was named after Star wars […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":19392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[233,337,329],"class_list":["post-19393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-culture-and-art","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-angola","tag-angola"],"yoast_head":"\nLena Horne first black actress to have Broadway theatre named in her honour - Angola<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Actress Lena Horne has become the first black woman to have a Broadway theatre named in her honour. 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