A new limited series about Grammy-winning singer, Broadway performer, Civil Rights activist, and Hollywood star Lena Horne is in development at Showtime. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the show will be penned and executive-produced by Horne's granddaughter Jenny Lumet, a writer known for Rachel Getting Married and Star Trek.
Titled Blackbird: Lena Horne and America, the series will span 60 years of Horne's life, beginning with her early-career years dancing at the famed Cotton Club in the 1930s.
READ: Lena Horne Reveals How The Lady and Her Music Came to Broadway in This 1981 Interview
Horne starred in numerous films, including The Wiz, Ziegfeld Follies, Cabin in the Sky, and Stormy Weather. She made her Broadway debut in 1934 in Dance With Your Gods, and also appeared in Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds of 1939, Jamaica, and Tony & Lena Sing alongside Tony Bennett.
In 1981 Horne made a triumphant return to Broadway with her solo show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music. Originally announced as a limited four-week engagement, the show ran for more than a year at the Nederlander Theatre, earning the performer a Special Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Leading Actress in a Musical.
As an activist, Horne entertained at camps for Black military men during World War II and advocated for Japanese Americans against discriminatory housing after the war. She worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching legislation, performed at Civil Rights rallies throughout the 1960s, and walked in the 1963 March on Washington.
Horne earned a Kennedy Center Honor in 1984, and her name marks the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. She passed away in 2010.
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