Lena Horne Funeral

Legendary singer and actress Lena Horne was laid to rest Friday.

Family, friends and celebrities will gather at St. Ignatius Loyola Church on the Upper East Side. Horne's casket will leave the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel just before the 10 o'clock funeral service.

The Brooklyn-born entertainer died Sunday of unknown causes. She was 92-years-old.

"Stormy Weather" was her signature piece and it also in some ways could described her life in show biz. She was born in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn in 1917, the great granddaughter of a freed slave, and struggled against the bigotry that allowed her to entertain white audiences but not socialize with them.

She was just a teenager when she sang and danced in Harlem, auditioning for the dance chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub, at the age of 16. Then she performed at the famed Apollo theater.

"Lena Horne was so talented. She had it all. She could dance, act and sing. She was an incredible performer," said Billy Mitchell, Apollo historian.

In the 1940s, she was one of the first black performers to sing with a major white band, the first to play the Copacabana Nightclub and among a handful of African-American performers with a Hollywood contract.

Those who worked with her, like jazz pianist Billy Taylor, said she became an activist after repeatedly coming up against the racism of the 1940s and 50s.

"It had to do with making things betters for anyone who is black and who was being pushed around in the south. She integrated a hotel for one night at Atlanta. That was a big deal for me," Taylor said.

In 1981, she won a Tony for her year-long one-woman show. At her 80th birthday party at Lincoln Center, she was celebrated for her six-decade career that broke so many color barriers.

"I don't expect anything now. I'm laying in this little stream of water to see where it ends up," she said.

Because she'd become a private New Yorker in the last decades of her life, Horne surprised everyone that night by breaking into song.

Ironically, Horne died as the Apollo Legends Walk of Fame was being installed for the first time since she appeared in more than a dozen times. She truly was an Apollo legend.