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(Bill Robinson, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, in a press shot for the movie Stormy Weather, circa 1943)

Screen and song legend Lena Horne passed away late on Sunday evening. Her beauty and pioneering importance as a black woman both in Hollywood and as an international cabaret singer is well known….but I’m sure we’ll now see much more of her life documented on tv, in print, and in film (Alicia Keys has been allegedly cast to play Lena in a biopic).

But I was moved by two different quotes from Lena, and wanted to share:

The first, a line from Horne’s biography Stormy Weather, which was excerpted in Vanity Fair. Here Lena gave a look behind the veil of her seductive but haughty stage persona:
““They kept saying, ‘There’s so much mystery about her. What is she thinking? And she’s so sexy.’ Oh, God! I wasn’t. I just didn’t like them, really. I said, ‘I’m not gonna let them know what I’m thinking about.’”

another quote and footage of Lena Horne’s signature performance, after the jump….

Another quote that was fascinating, this one from Lena’s New York Times obit: her statement about the obstacles she faced as a black actress:
“Looking back at the age of 80, Ms. Horne said: ‘My identity is very clear to me now. I am a black woman. I’m free. I no longer have to be a ‘credit.’ I don’t have to be a symbol to anybody; I don’t have to be a first to anybody. I don’t have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, and I’m like nobody else.’“