Lena Horne

 

 Lena Horne, who died over the weekend at age 92, did in fact have a reasonably big impact on TV in the '60s, and she was a pal of Bill Cosby's. Check out the famous cameo  below. For Cliff Huxtable's birthday, the family arranges a very special present.

Horne: One of the great torch song singers who battled racism -- overt and tacit through her early-to-mid career, as chronicled in her bio, "Stormy Weather" -- and studios (and hey, if the studio was MGM, who didn't?).

She was an incandescently radiant performer who appeared frequently on a form of TV that no longer exists -- the musical variety show headlined by a famous crooner, like Perry Como or Dean Martin. There were many such credits through the '60s,  though she never had a starring vehicle on the tube of her own.

Some clips off this remarkable talent . . .