And Tuesday night Great White Way will show it's respects to the Bedford-Stuyvesant-born singer with a dimming of the lights.
The marquees of Broadway theaters in New York will be dimmed in her memory on Tuesday, May 11th, at exactly 7:00pm for one minute.
“Lena Horne was a national treasure who broke through racial barriers with the gift of her voice," said Charlotte St. Martin, Executive Director of The Broadway League. "Her contributions to Broadway were bright, and her legendary talent contributed significantly to the movie musical genre."
Horne’s career began at the age of 16 when she auditioned at the famous Harlem nightclub, the Cotton Club. She was hired, dancing alongside star Duke Ellington, and in 1934 made her Broadway debut in "Dance With Your Gods" followed by Lew Leslie's "Blackbirds" of 1939. She was a 1958 Tony Award nominee for Best Actress in a Musical for the hit Harold Arlen musical "Jamaica," in which she starred, singing "Ain't It the Truth?"
In 1981, she burst back onto the scene as the star of her own one-woman show, "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music," and was the recipient that year of the special Tony Award.
Horne died Sunday at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, she was 92.
