LEGEND LENA HORNE DEAD

Jazz singer and actress LENA HORNE who rose against the tide to super-stardom has passed at 92. 

Horne died at New York Presbyterian Hospital her rep confirmed but didn't reveal any other details.

The enchanting beauty whose magnetic sex appeal and sultry voice was great-granddaughter of a freed slave,  born in Brooklyn June 30, 1917, to a leading black family

Lena dropped out of school at 16 to support her ailing mother, joining the chorus line at the famed Harlem nightspot  Cotton Club,  where the only whites present were in the audience.

In 1935, Lena left the club in 1935 to tour with Noble Sissle's orchestra, billed as Helena Horne, the name she used when she toured with  Charlie Barnet's all-white orchestra in 1940, appearing at the Copacabana.

As a light skinned African American, Lena was often accused of trying to pass for "white".

But when she joined MGM's stable of stars but Horne refused to go along with boss Louis B.Mayer's desire to pass her off as an exotic Latin American. Mayer even had makeup whiz Max Factor design a makeup for Lena dubbed "Egyptian".

"I don't have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I'd become," Horne said in an interview. "I'm me, and I'm like nobody else." 

After toplining in all-black musical Cabin In the Sky, Lena shot to stardom but MGM was still skittish about promoting a sexy, black star during that racially segregated era.

In other films for MGM she'd appear in stand-alone musical numbers that later could be cut for the racially sensitive and often volatile Southern audiences.

In 1943, MGM Studios loaned the contract player out to 20th Century-Fox to star in the all-black movie musical Stormy Weather. Her smooth sensual rendition of the title song became a major hit  -- and Lena's signature piece for the rest of her long life.

Whether glimmering on celluloid, or packing the house at Carnegie Hall or the in smoke filled blues clubs Horne could do it all - from the Broadway rhythms of Rodgers and Hart to the darkest blues in the night, overshadowing tragic blues queen Billie Holiday in both fame and fortune.

On the occasion of her Broadway debut as the lead in Jamaica in 1957, a reviewer  called Lena "one of the incomparable performers of our time"

But she became a social activist for change after entertaining post-WW2 troops in Germany at a concert where white ex-Nazis sat front and center while US black soldiers were relegated to the back.

In 1963, Lena joined celebs like Charlton Heston and Burt Lancaster and 250,000 other protesters for the March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. told the world "I Have a Dream".

Lena also supported Medgar Evers, appearing at a rally just days before assassination.

In 1981 her one-woman Broadway show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, won a special Tony Award .

"I was always battling the system to try to get to be with my people.

"Finally, I wouldn't work for places that kept us out ... it was a damn fight everywhere I was, every place I worked, in New York, in Hollywood, all over the world," Lena said in an interview.

Lena ultimately won that fight and now the entire world mourns the loss of a truly talented and remarkable woman.

The sky is crying. With the loss of Lena, there can only be "Stormy Weather".