Lena Horne ~ Susan Hayward: Astrological Twins

Tomorrow, 30 June, would have been the birthday of Lena Horne, who died this year, and Susan Hayward who died in 1975. Both women were born in Brooklyn, New York, at 11:45 PM and 4:01PM respectively. Astrodatabank has given Susan Hayward's birth time a DD rating though, which means it's not verified.

Their charts are very similar, rising signs being the only major difference. Aries rising for Lena Horne, Scorpio for Susan Hayward (if time of birth is correct). Just 5 degrees of Scorpio separates their natal Moons.

These two are almost astrological twins. It's an interesting exercise to compare significant points in their lifestories, noting whether they coincide with any planetary transits.




Both women were glamorous, exuded sensuality, and both had early ambition to act, though Lena Horne's African American background prevented the same meteoric rise in that sphere as was enjoyed by Susan Hayward. In those days, racial and social integration in the USA still had a long way to go. Lena, though, had an alternative talent, and in her case one that was far more valuable: music.

For the purpose of this brief post, I'll concentrate on just two periods when events in these women's lives show them to have been in tune with the same astrological transits.



In the mid 1950s Susan Hayward was filming in Utah, starring with John Wayne in the movie The Conqueror.

Of the 220 persons who worked on The Conqueror on location in Utah in 1955, 91 had contracted cancer as of the early 1980s and 46 died of it, including stars John Wayne, Susan Hayward, and Agnes Moorehead, and director Dick Powell. Experts say under ordinary circumstances only 30 people out of a group of that size should have gotten cancer. The cause? No one can say for sure, but many attribute the cancers to radioactive fallout from U.S. atom bomb tests in nearby Nevada.(See HERE)

That event set the scene for Susan's too early demise in the mid 1970s when she succumbed to the brain cancer diagnosed a few years earlier.

In the mid 1950s Lena Horne's civil rights activism and friendship with (Paul)Robeson and others marked her as a Communist sympathizer. Like many politically active artists of the time, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to perform on television or in the movies. For seven years the attacks on her person and political beliefs continued. During this time, however, Horne worked as a singer, appearing in nightclubs and making some of her best recordings. (See HERE)

In the early 1970s, around the time Susan Hayward received that fatal diagnosis, Lena Horne

... had found in her growing audience a renewed sense of purpose. All of this came crashing down when her father, son and husband died in a period of twelve months during the early 1970s. Horne retreated almost completely from public life. It was not until 1981 that she fully returned, making a triumphant comeback with a one-person show on Broadway.

In the mid 1950s and mid- 1970s transits of Saturn reflected challenging times in both women's lives. In the mid-1950s Saturn was transiting the middle degrees of Scorpio where both women's natal Moons lay. In the early to mid 1970s Saturn transited Gemini and early Cancer where both women had Sun and three personal planets, Mercury, Mars and Jupiter.

QED (as we used to write in school):
quod erat demonstrandum = which was to be demonstrated.

(Click on charts to enlarge)