Lena Horne - the stunning fair skinned black beauty, darling of the white nightclub crowd, was an ingenue actress, whose sex-kitten appeal was not surpassed until the arrival of Marilyn Monroe. Her clear voice and competent delivery puts her league of the best night club singers of her time, like the great Dianah Shore or the young Doris Day.

Her first movie, the 1941 Cabin in the Sky, bears ample testament to Lena Horns qualities as an actress and a singer. She is put opposite perhaps the greatest black actress/ singer of the time - Ethel Waters.

Waters - 20 years senior to Horne, cannot compete on sex appeal, but she makes it up with her superb and warm-hearted acting, and great stylish singing.

Ethel Waters 1933 First Recording of Stormy Weather is much less known than Lena Horn's photogenic 1943 movie performance. We have brought them together here for your pleasure, and scrambled the images a little for your viewing pleasure.


The two versions of Stormy Weather also drastically illustrate the change in style and musical attitude within 10 years: From Ethel Waters 1933 bluesy showtune sung with delicious ironic detachment, to the 1943 swing era song, given as a straight torch song.

Horne's performance is so much prettier, and not only in the visual: Horne has a great voice with secure intonation, secure in the torch-song style.. However, her singing is stiff like her acting: Pretty, but ultimately unbelievable, it does not convey much emotion.

Ethel Waters - who could not read music - never had a conventional beautiful voice. While her top notes were always a little rough, they had become husky by 1933. Purists will also notice her sometimes unclean intonation.

Ethel Waters was one of the most popular African-American singers and actresses of the 1920s. She moved to New York in 1919 after touring in vaudeville shows as a singer and a dancer. She made her recording debut in 1921 on Cardinal records with "The New York Glide" and "At the New Jump Steady Ball" , but switched over to African-American owned Black Swan label, and recorded "Down Home Blues" and "Oh Daddy" the first Blues numbers for that company. She frequently sang with Fletcher Henderson during the early 1920s, but by the mid-1920s Waters had became more of a pop singer. She performed in a number of musical revues throughout the rest of the decade and appeared a couple of films, including "Check and Double Check" with Amos 'n' Andy and Duke Ellington. By the end of the 1930s she was a big star on Broadway. In 1949, she was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress in the film "Pinky" , and the next year she won the New York Drama Critics Award for best actress. Waters got religion in the late Fifties and performed and toured with evangelist Billy Graham until her death in 1977.