“A local journalist wrote of Miss Horne in terms that had hereto been reserved for Madame Récamier and Theda Bera.”…”What charm, what grace, what beauty!” sighed another [journalist], blowing his nose hard to keep back the tears.”
“When she was sixteen she was in the chorus at the Cotton Club in Harlem, getting that job through her mother who was then playing in-stock at the old Lafayette Theater on Lenox Avenue… Her name up to then was Helena Horne, but Barney [Josephson] ruthlessly dropped the added letters. He also taught her a great deal about using her personality in her songs.”
She would play important rolls in two Hollywood films before the year was through.
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