A woman undergoes a mastectomy after she was bitten by a brown recluse spider. WTF?
She was bitten Easter Sunday and did not think anything of it. Next she was in a 14 day coma. Can this happen to you? For the full video Click Here.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Feces and body fluids detected on new clothes bought in stores
Wow! This one is bad. I can not say it any better than the article. This may stay in the back of your mind for the rest of your life. LOL. Sorry this just has to be done. Here are some statements from the article:
"On this black and tan blouse we found representation of respiratory secretions, skin flora, and some fecal flora,"
Another jacket contained similar secretions, especially in the armpit and "buttocks" area, he said. One blouse even contained vaginal organisms and yeast in addition to fecal bacteria.
"Some garments were grossly contaminated with many organisms ... indicating that either many people tried it on or ... someone tried it on with heavy contamination,"
"A lot of people just come home and if it has a tag attached, they think it's brand new and they wear it. You really never know where it's been."
Read the full story!
"On this black and tan blouse we found representation of respiratory secretions, skin flora, and some fecal flora,"
Another jacket contained similar secretions, especially in the armpit and "buttocks" area, he said. One blouse even contained vaginal organisms and yeast in addition to fecal bacteria.
"Some garments were grossly contaminated with many organisms ... indicating that either many people tried it on or ... someone tried it on with heavy contamination,"
"A lot of people just come home and if it has a tag attached, they think it's brand new and they wear it. You really never know where it's been."
Read the full story!
COMMERCIAL ENERGY Brokers 30 Percent Commissions
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Boo Boos in the Bedroom Are More Common Than You Think
Don't Let Your Romantic Evening Land You in the ER
May 14, 2010
Love is a battlefield -- complete with head wounds,
broken bones, and the occasional penile fracture.
While most sex-related injuries don't require a trip to the doctor, getting hurt in the heat of passion is a pretty common -- but seldom discussed -- problem, sex experts say.
Julieanne Smolinski, 26, a New Yorker and blogger for Lemondrop.com, had her own brush with carnal catastrophe when she was in college.
"I did a kind of accidental back handspring off my boyfriend and cracked myself on the head," she says.
"My boyfriend got the worst of it and 'fractured' his penis. We didn't seek medical attention, [but] later I read that penile fractures can be really serious," she says, wondering in retrospect if they should have taken him to the hospital.
Though they can be embarrassing to report to your doctor, sexual injuries are fairly run-of-the-mill in the emergency department, according to a U.K. poll of one thousand adults.
The study, commissioned by a phone-recycling firm, Phonepiggybank.com, found that a third of Brits reported having a sex-related injury -- five percent admitting that they had to stay home from work while on the mend from one of those bedroom blunders
Most often, these mishaps were sustained while having sex in non-traditional settings, such as on stairs, over kitchen tables, or in closets, or when trying new sexual positions.
ABCnews.com asked sex experts and emergency room doctors to weigh in on the kinds of sexual injuries they encounter most often and how to safeguard against them.
Everyday Erotic Accidents
Not all sexual injuries involve the kind of sexual acrobatics that Smolinski tried. Most often, a simple muscle pull or stumble is enough to leaving you throbbing in a less-than-pleasurable way.
In the U.K. study, the most common sex injury was a pulled muscle, with back injuries, carpet burns, and cricked necks pulling in close behind. And perhaps surprisingly, the most dangerous spots for sex were also the most ordinary: the sofa, a chair, or the shower.
In the U.S., "we don't have a good handle on how common [these injuries] are, mainly because people do not admit that that is how they got injured," says Debby Herbenick, research scientist at Indiana University and author of "Because It Feels Good."
"Patients will say they slipped in the shower if it's something [particularly embarassing]," she says.
The most common issue she hears about is small tears or cuts in the vagina, which can occur when sex is more vigorous and there isn't enough lubrication.
Women will often not feel any pain until after sex, because the arousal raises pain tolerance, Herbenick says, but if the cuts are sizable and bleeding doesn't stop on its own, a woman should seek medical attention to prevent infection.
Irritation or tearing from vigorous sex can be minimized by using a lubricant, she says, "but aside from that, there isn't much you can do. If you want to have rough sex, it's going to be … rough."
When Sexual Play Goes Awry
Those working in the emergency room see the more serious cases of sexual injury, says Dr. Billy Goldberg, assistant professor of emergency medicine at the NYU School of Medicine, and "they're not an uncommon complaint." he says.
"People do some strange stuff."
Goldberg says he's seen "a lot of rectal foreign bodies," citing one case in which a man had to be brought to the hospital by his mother after a screwdriver became lodged in his rectum during a sexual act.
Penile fractures, like the one Smolinski's boyfriend may have sustained, are notorious copulation catastrophes, and ones that can cause permanent damage.
One patient of Goldberg's, a man in his sixties, suffered a fracture when he fell down while masturbating in an attempt to rush to the door to lock it when he heard his mother trying to get in.
Penile fractures are not actually fractures so much as tears in the tissue of the penis, Herbenick says. They occur when the erect penis is bent forcefully; there may be a popping or cracking sound.
Women don't escape the wrath of a romantic evening gone bad, says Dr. Gabe Wilson, associate medical director of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York. He had one woman who came in because her partner had performed oral sex on her too quickly after eating a spicy meal, and she sustained mild burns from the hot sauce.
Lost condoms are a more common affliction for women, Goldberg says, though one that is easily remedied.
A New Kind of Safe Sex
These sexual hazards give new meaning to a desire for "safe sex," but does this mean that protection has to take the form of knee pads and a helmet?
Most of the safety tips are just common sense, says Dr. Mache Seibel, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Massachusetts Medical school.
"If anything causes discomfort it should be discontinued," he says. "Just because something is supposed to be 'fun,' doesn't mean it works for you."
It's also wise not to push yourself past your own level of flexibility or cardiovascular health, Seibel says.
"Some people can't touch their toes…or have been advised by a doctor not to raise the heart rate [following a heart attack or stroke], so when it starts to get physical or acrobatic, they will have a problem."
Herbenick echoes this sentiment, noting that stretching isn't a bad idea if you're injury prone, and it may be wise to clear the area of pointy objects and keep lit candles a good distance from you.
Also, "keep pets out of the room," she say, citing a recent study she conducted on the subject. Cats have been known to jump on the bed and "scratch at genitals" when they see their owners getting frisky.
Ideally, with a little common sense, and maybe a little warmup, your romantic evening will stay between you and your loved one -- no medical intervention required.
Monday, May 10, 2010
TODDLER WORKS THE POLE LIKE A PRO
Having a pole in the basement is usually the sign of a good girlfriend, but when your little one starts swinging from the rafters like LisaRaye in 'The Players Club,' there's a problem. It's not even like this little girl's mistaken the pole for monkey bars 'cause she's clearly shaking her moneymaker Pampers like a pro. This makes the R. Kelly sex tape look like a Disney flick.
Lena Horne dies at 92; singer and civil rights activist who broke barriers
Lena Horne, the silky-voiced singing legend who shattered Hollywood stereotypes of African Americans on screen in the 1940s as a symbol of glamour whose signature song was "Stormy Weather," died Sunday in New York City. She was 92
Horne died at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, a spokeswoman said. No cause of death was given.
Beginning as a 16-year-old chorus girl at the fabled Cotton Club in Harlem in 1933, Horne launched a more than six-decade career that spanned films, radio, television, recording, nightclubs, concert halls and Broadway.
As a singer, Horne had a voice that jazz critic Don Heckman described in a 1997 profile in The Times as "smooth, almost caressing, with its warm timbre and seductive drawl — honey and bourbon with a teasing trace of lemon."
She was, Heckman wrote, "one of the legendary divas of popular music" — a singer who "belonged in the pantheon of great female artists that includes Ethel Waters, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae."
Horne, 80 at the time and cutting a new album, took a different view.
"Oh, please," she said. "I'm really not Miss Pretentious. I'm just a survivor. Just being myself."
When Horne first began dancing in the chorus at the Cotton Club — three shows a night, seven nights a week for $25 a week — she did so to help out her financially troubled family during the Depression.
By the time she arrived in Hollywood for a nightclub job in 1941, she had been a vocalist for the Noble Sissle and Charlie Barnet orchestras, had done some recording and was a cabaret sensation at the prestigious Cafe Society Downtown club in New York's Greenwich Village.
She created a similar response, performing at the Little Troc, a small club on the Sunset Strip, where, according to one news account, "she has knocked the movie population bowlegged and is up to her ears in offers."
Signed by MGM to a seven-year contract in an era when no other blacks were under long-term contracts at the major movie studios, Horne went on to become one of the best-known African American performers in the country.
With her copper-toned skin, strong cheekbones and dazzling smile, she was a breakthrough on the silver screen — "Hollywood's first black beauty, sex symbol, singing star," as Vogue magazine described her decades later.
"I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept," Horne once said. "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."
Refusing to play maids and other stereotypical roles offered to black actors at the time, Horne appeared in a nonspeaking role as a singer in her first MGM movie, "Panama Hattie," a 1942 comedy musical starring Red Skelton and Ann Sothern.
That set the tone for most of her screen appearances in the '40s, a time in which she appeared in more than a dozen movies, including "I Dood It," "Swing Fever," "Broadway Rhythm" and "Ziegfeld Follies."
In most of them, she had only cameos as a singer, who was typically clad in a glamorous evening gown and singing while leaning against a pillar. It became her on-screen trademark.
"They didn't make me into a maid, but they didn't make me into anything else either," she wrote in "Lena," her 1965 autobiography. "I became a butterfly pinned to a column singing away in Movieland."
Horne's musical numbers usually were shot independent of the films' narratives, making them easy to be deleted when screened in the Jim Crow South.
Two exceptions were the all-black musicals in which she was one of the stars: "Cabin in the Sky" and "Stormy Weather," both released in 1943.
Her memorable rendition of Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen's "Stormy Weather" in the movie became a hit recording for Horne, as well as becoming her signature song.
Horne died at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, a spokeswoman said. No cause of death was given.
Beginning as a 16-year-old chorus girl at the fabled Cotton Club in Harlem in 1933, Horne launched a more than six-decade career that spanned films, radio, television, recording, nightclubs, concert halls and Broadway.
As a singer, Horne had a voice that jazz critic Don Heckman described in a 1997 profile in The Times as "smooth, almost caressing, with its warm timbre and seductive drawl — honey and bourbon with a teasing trace of lemon."
She was, Heckman wrote, "one of the legendary divas of popular music" — a singer who "belonged in the pantheon of great female artists that includes Ethel Waters, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae."
Horne, 80 at the time and cutting a new album, took a different view.
"Oh, please," she said. "I'm really not Miss Pretentious. I'm just a survivor. Just being myself."
When Horne first began dancing in the chorus at the Cotton Club — three shows a night, seven nights a week for $25 a week — she did so to help out her financially troubled family during the Depression.
By the time she arrived in Hollywood for a nightclub job in 1941, she had been a vocalist for the Noble Sissle and Charlie Barnet orchestras, had done some recording and was a cabaret sensation at the prestigious Cafe Society Downtown club in New York's Greenwich Village.
She created a similar response, performing at the Little Troc, a small club on the Sunset Strip, where, according to one news account, "she has knocked the movie population bowlegged and is up to her ears in offers."
Signed by MGM to a seven-year contract in an era when no other blacks were under long-term contracts at the major movie studios, Horne went on to become one of the best-known African American performers in the country.
With her copper-toned skin, strong cheekbones and dazzling smile, she was a breakthrough on the silver screen — "Hollywood's first black beauty, sex symbol, singing star," as Vogue magazine described her decades later.
"I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept," Horne once said. "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."
Refusing to play maids and other stereotypical roles offered to black actors at the time, Horne appeared in a nonspeaking role as a singer in her first MGM movie, "Panama Hattie," a 1942 comedy musical starring Red Skelton and Ann Sothern.
That set the tone for most of her screen appearances in the '40s, a time in which she appeared in more than a dozen movies, including "I Dood It," "Swing Fever," "Broadway Rhythm" and "Ziegfeld Follies."
In most of them, she had only cameos as a singer, who was typically clad in a glamorous evening gown and singing while leaning against a pillar. It became her on-screen trademark.
"They didn't make me into a maid, but they didn't make me into anything else either," she wrote in "Lena," her 1965 autobiography. "I became a butterfly pinned to a column singing away in Movieland."
Horne's musical numbers usually were shot independent of the films' narratives, making them easy to be deleted when screened in the Jim Crow South.
Two exceptions were the all-black musicals in which she was one of the stars: "Cabin in the Sky" and "Stormy Weather," both released in 1943.
Her memorable rendition of Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen's "Stormy Weather" in the movie became a hit recording for Horne, as well as becoming her signature song.
A World War II pinup girl, the glamorous Horne in 1944 became the first African American to appear on the cover of a movie magazine, Motion Picture.
"Anybody who was not madly in love with Lena Horne should report to his undertaker immediately and turn himself in," actor and friend Ossie Davis said on "Lena Horne: In Her Own Voice," a 1996 installment of PBS' "American Masters" biography series.
"In the history of American popular entertainment, no woman had ever looked like Lena Horne. Nor had any other black woman had looks considered as 'safe' and non-threatening," Donald Bogle wrote in his book "Brown Sugar: Over One Hundred Years of America's Black Female Superstars."
"The Horne demeanor — distant and aloof — suggested that she was a woman off somewhere in a world of her own …. who appeared as if all her life she had been placed on a pedestal and everything had come easily to her. That was the way she appeared to be.... The reality was another matter."
She was born Lena Mary Calhoun Horne on June 30, 1917, in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Her family lived in the home of her father's middle-class parents. Horne's grandmother was active in the Urban League, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and the women's suffrage movement.
Horne's father left his wife and daughter when Horne was 3. And her mother, unhappy living with her strong-willed mother-in-law, soon moved out to pursue an acting career with a Harlem-based black stock company.
That left young Lena in the care of her grandparents until she joined her mother on the road in the South a few years later.
Horne was living in Harlem with her mother and her out-of-work stepfather when she left school at 16 and joined the chorus at the Cotton Club in 1933.
While continuing to work at the club, she made her Broadway debut in 1934 with a small role in "Dance With Your Gods," an all-black drama that ran for only nine performances.
Leaving the Cotton Club in 1935, she became a featured singer in the all-black Noble Sissle Society Orchestra but quit two years later to marry Louis Jones, a Pittsburgh friend of her father's who was about nine years her senior.
At 19, she settled into domestic life in Pittsburgh and gave birth to her two children, Gail and Teddy. But she and her husband separated in 1940 and were divorced in 1944.
Although Horne gave up show business when she married Jones, money problems during the marriage prompted her to accept the co-starring role in "The Duke Is Tops," a low-budget, 1938 African American movie musical shot in 10 days.
She also appeared in "Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1939," a Broadway revue that had only nine performances.
Moving back to New York after her marriage broke up, Horne was hired as a vocalist for the Barnet orchestra, becoming one of the first black performers to sing with a major white band, with whom she had a hit record, "Good for Nothing Joe,"
After leaving the Barnet band in 1941, Horne began an extended engagement at Cafe Society Downtown, where she first met and became friends with singer-actor and political activist Paul Robeson.
While under contract to MGM in the '40s, Horne met Lennie Hayton, a white staff composer and arranger at the studio who became her second husband.
Fearing public reaction when they married in Paris in 1947, they did not announce their marriage until three years later.
Horne later said she initially became involved with Hayton because she thought he could be useful to her career.
"He could get me into places no black manager could," she told the New York Times in 1981. "It was wrong of me, but as a black woman, I knew what I had against me." But, she said, "because he was a nice man and because he was in my corner, I began to love him."
"Anybody who was not madly in love with Lena Horne should report to his undertaker immediately and turn himself in," actor and friend Ossie Davis said on "Lena Horne: In Her Own Voice," a 1996 installment of PBS' "American Masters" biography series.
"In the history of American popular entertainment, no woman had ever looked like Lena Horne. Nor had any other black woman had looks considered as 'safe' and non-threatening," Donald Bogle wrote in his book "Brown Sugar: Over One Hundred Years of America's Black Female Superstars."
"The Horne demeanor — distant and aloof — suggested that she was a woman off somewhere in a world of her own …. who appeared as if all her life she had been placed on a pedestal and everything had come easily to her. That was the way she appeared to be.... The reality was another matter."
She was born Lena Mary Calhoun Horne on June 30, 1917, in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Her family lived in the home of her father's middle-class parents. Horne's grandmother was active in the Urban League, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and the women's suffrage movement.
Horne's father left his wife and daughter when Horne was 3. And her mother, unhappy living with her strong-willed mother-in-law, soon moved out to pursue an acting career with a Harlem-based black stock company.
That left young Lena in the care of her grandparents until she joined her mother on the road in the South a few years later.
Horne was living in Harlem with her mother and her out-of-work stepfather when she left school at 16 and joined the chorus at the Cotton Club in 1933.
While continuing to work at the club, she made her Broadway debut in 1934 with a small role in "Dance With Your Gods," an all-black drama that ran for only nine performances.
Leaving the Cotton Club in 1935, she became a featured singer in the all-black Noble Sissle Society Orchestra but quit two years later to marry Louis Jones, a Pittsburgh friend of her father's who was about nine years her senior.
At 19, she settled into domestic life in Pittsburgh and gave birth to her two children, Gail and Teddy. But she and her husband separated in 1940 and were divorced in 1944.
Although Horne gave up show business when she married Jones, money problems during the marriage prompted her to accept the co-starring role in "The Duke Is Tops," a low-budget, 1938 African American movie musical shot in 10 days.
She also appeared in "Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1939," a Broadway revue that had only nine performances.
Moving back to New York after her marriage broke up, Horne was hired as a vocalist for the Barnet orchestra, becoming one of the first black performers to sing with a major white band, with whom she had a hit record, "Good for Nothing Joe,"
After leaving the Barnet band in 1941, Horne began an extended engagement at Cafe Society Downtown, where she first met and became friends with singer-actor and political activist Paul Robeson.
While under contract to MGM in the '40s, Horne met Lennie Hayton, a white staff composer and arranger at the studio who became her second husband.
Fearing public reaction when they married in Paris in 1947, they did not announce their marriage until three years later.
Horne later said she initially became involved with Hayton because she thought he could be useful to her career.
"He could get me into places no black manager could," she told the New York Times in 1981. "It was wrong of me, but as a black woman, I knew what I had against me." But, she said, "because he was a nice man and because he was in my corner, I began to love him."
But being married to a white man, whom she once said "taught me everything I know musically," took a toll — from her impatience with black critics who questioned the marriage to her sometimes using her husband as a "whipping boy" and making him "pay for everything the whites had done to us."
Horne's last film for MGM — a singing cameo in the musical "Duchess of Idaho," starring Esther Williams and Van Johnson — was released in 1950, the same year she triumphantly appeared at the London Palladium.
Primarily due to her friendship with Robeson and her involvement with the Council for African Affairs and the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee to the Arts, Science and Professions, both of which were named as Communist fronts, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to appear on radio and television in the early '50s.
But the cabaret business remained untouched by the blacklist, and she focused on her critically acclaimed nightclub/cabaret act.
Her "Lena Horne at the Waldorf Astoria" became RCA Victor's biggest-selling album by a female vocalist in 1957.
"Lena, for most of us, defined the art of nightclub performing," the late cabaret singer Bobby Short told USA Today in 1997. "You can't discount her great beauty, but behind all of that is a great deal of talent and the ability to transmit the composer's intent to the audience."
Horne, who was able to resume appearing on television in 1956, also starred in the hit Broadway musical "Jamaica," which ran from 1957 to '59 and earned her a Tony Award nomination.
Unable to stay in many of the hotels she performed in because she was black, Horne developed what she later described as "a toughness, a way of isolating" herself from the audience as a performer.
"There was no cuteness or coyness about her," comedian Alan King said of Horne on "Lena Horne: In Her Own Voice." "Lena came out there and stuck it right in their face — boom! She was radiantly and subtly brazen, saying to herself, You want to take me to bed, but you won't let me come in the front door.'"
Throughout her early career, Horne experienced the injustices suffered by African Americans at the time.
While touring with the USO during World War II, she was expected to entertain the white soldiers before appearing before African American troops
A day after performing for white soldiers in a large auditorium at Ft. Riley, Kan., she returned to entertain black troops in the black mess hall.
But when she discovered that the whites seated in the front rows were German prisoners of war, she became furious. Marching off the platform, she turned her back on the POWs and sang to the black soldiers in the back of the hall.
Horne's long-suppressed anger over the treatment of blacks in white society erupted in 1960 when she overheard a drunk white man at the Luau restaurant in Beverly Hills refer to her using a racial epithet.
Jumping up, she threw an ashtray, a table lamp and several glasses at him, cutting the man's forehead.
When reports of her outburst appeared in newspapers across the country, Horne was surprised at the positive response, mostly from African Americans.
"Phone calls and telegrams came in from all over," she told the Christian Science Monitor in 1984. "It was the first time it struck me that black people related to each other in bigger ways than I realized."
In the early '60s, Horne became more active in the civil rights movement, participating in a meeting with prominent blacks in 1963 with then-Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy in the wake of violence in Birmingham, Ala., and singing at civil rights rallies.
In the early '70s, Horne faced three personal tragedies within an 18-month period: In 1970, the same year her father died, her son died of kidney disease; and Hayton died of a heart attack in 1971.
Horne later said she "stayed in the house grieving" until Alan King "bullied" her out of her depression, and she returned to singing and recording.
She also toured with Tony Bennett, as well as doing 37 performances on Broadway of "Tony & Lena Sing" in 1974. And she played Glinda, the Good Witch in "The Wiz," the 1978 movie musical directed by Sidney Lumet, her then-son-in-law.
Then, in 1981, she made a triumphant return to Broadway in the hit "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music."
Horne, then 63, went on to win the Drama Desk Award and a special Tony Award for her autobiographical show that ran on Broadway for more than a year and led to a Grammy Award-winning soundtrack album and a cross-country tour of the show before going to London.
Her rendition of "Stormy Weather" was, naturally, a show-stopper.
She actually sang the song twice, first as she had in the movie when she was in her 20s and, she said in an interview, she couldn't sing it "worth a toot."
Then, at the end of the show, she electrified her audience by singing it again from the perspective of a woman in her 60s, who had experienced a lifetime of love and misery.
As Horne said in the documentary "Lena Horne: In Her Own Voice": "My life has been about surviving. Along the way I also became an artist. It's been an interesting journey. One in which music became first my refuge and then my salvation."
Horne was a Kennedy Center Honors recipient in 1984, and she received a lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1998.
Horne's last film for MGM — a singing cameo in the musical "Duchess of Idaho," starring Esther Williams and Van Johnson — was released in 1950, the same year she triumphantly appeared at the London Palladium.
Primarily due to her friendship with Robeson and her involvement with the Council for African Affairs and the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee to the Arts, Science and Professions, both of which were named as Communist fronts, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to appear on radio and television in the early '50s.
But the cabaret business remained untouched by the blacklist, and she focused on her critically acclaimed nightclub/cabaret act.
Her "Lena Horne at the Waldorf Astoria" became RCA Victor's biggest-selling album by a female vocalist in 1957.
"Lena, for most of us, defined the art of nightclub performing," the late cabaret singer Bobby Short told USA Today in 1997. "You can't discount her great beauty, but behind all of that is a great deal of talent and the ability to transmit the composer's intent to the audience."
Horne, who was able to resume appearing on television in 1956, also starred in the hit Broadway musical "Jamaica," which ran from 1957 to '59 and earned her a Tony Award nomination.
Unable to stay in many of the hotels she performed in because she was black, Horne developed what she later described as "a toughness, a way of isolating" herself from the audience as a performer.
"There was no cuteness or coyness about her," comedian Alan King said of Horne on "Lena Horne: In Her Own Voice." "Lena came out there and stuck it right in their face — boom! She was radiantly and subtly brazen, saying to herself, You want to take me to bed, but you won't let me come in the front door.'"
Throughout her early career, Horne experienced the injustices suffered by African Americans at the time.
While touring with the USO during World War II, she was expected to entertain the white soldiers before appearing before African American troops
A day after performing for white soldiers in a large auditorium at Ft. Riley, Kan., she returned to entertain black troops in the black mess hall.
But when she discovered that the whites seated in the front rows were German prisoners of war, she became furious. Marching off the platform, she turned her back on the POWs and sang to the black soldiers in the back of the hall.
Horne's long-suppressed anger over the treatment of blacks in white society erupted in 1960 when she overheard a drunk white man at the Luau restaurant in Beverly Hills refer to her using a racial epithet.
Jumping up, she threw an ashtray, a table lamp and several glasses at him, cutting the man's forehead.
When reports of her outburst appeared in newspapers across the country, Horne was surprised at the positive response, mostly from African Americans.
"Phone calls and telegrams came in from all over," she told the Christian Science Monitor in 1984. "It was the first time it struck me that black people related to each other in bigger ways than I realized."
In the early '60s, Horne became more active in the civil rights movement, participating in a meeting with prominent blacks in 1963 with then-Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy in the wake of violence in Birmingham, Ala., and singing at civil rights rallies.
In the early '70s, Horne faced three personal tragedies within an 18-month period: In 1970, the same year her father died, her son died of kidney disease; and Hayton died of a heart attack in 1971.
Horne later said she "stayed in the house grieving" until Alan King "bullied" her out of her depression, and she returned to singing and recording.
She also toured with Tony Bennett, as well as doing 37 performances on Broadway of "Tony & Lena Sing" in 1974. And she played Glinda, the Good Witch in "The Wiz," the 1978 movie musical directed by Sidney Lumet, her then-son-in-law.
Then, in 1981, she made a triumphant return to Broadway in the hit "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music."
Horne, then 63, went on to win the Drama Desk Award and a special Tony Award for her autobiographical show that ran on Broadway for more than a year and led to a Grammy Award-winning soundtrack album and a cross-country tour of the show before going to London.
Her rendition of "Stormy Weather" was, naturally, a show-stopper.
She actually sang the song twice, first as she had in the movie when she was in her 20s and, she said in an interview, she couldn't sing it "worth a toot."
Then, at the end of the show, she electrified her audience by singing it again from the perspective of a woman in her 60s, who had experienced a lifetime of love and misery.
As Horne said in the documentary "Lena Horne: In Her Own Voice": "My life has been about surviving. Along the way I also became an artist. It's been an interesting journey. One in which music became first my refuge and then my salvation."
Horne was a Kennedy Center Honors recipient in 1984, and she received a lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1998.
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