No Lena Horne obituary will be candid enough to say this so I will. She was the first African-American actress-performer to inspire tumescence among mildly racist white guys of the 1940s and ’50s. Horne was a great singer with wonderfully soothing pipes, but she was plain hot besides. The racist joke used to go, “Who would you rather do — Kate Smith or Lena Horne?”
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