Metro

Lena Horne legend lives on

Before there was Halle Berry, Cicely Tyson, Angela Bassett or even Dorothy Dandridge, there was Lena Horne.

As glamorous as a supermodel, but as righteous as a disciple, Horne used every ounce of her grace and beauty to stand up to an ugly world.

Horne, the actress and singer who died Sunday at the age of 92, was remembered yesterday at a packed funeral service at St. Ignatius Loyola Church on the Upper East Side.

They came to say goodbye to a true daughter of New York and an original Hollywood starlet who sacrificed much of her big-screen career in the fight against racism and injustice. Blacklisted for part of her career, Horne still managed to perform and inspire.

VIDEO: FINAL FAREWELL TO LENA HORNE

“She was our leader,” said actress Diahann Carroll, an entertainment pioneer. By the time Carroll made history in 1968 as the first black woman in a TV lead role in the sitcom “Julia,” Horne, one of the first blacks to sign with a major motion picture studio, was already an icon.

“I don’t remember anyone, really, before Lena Horne who took the steps, the chances,” Carroll said. “I think it was because she was so extraordinarily beautiful, I mean extraordinarily beautiful, and also gifted that she was able to kick down so many doors. She had a way about her that had to be dealt with.”

At the church, family and friends, including actresses Tyson, Vanessa Williams and Leslie Uggams, opera singer Jessye Norman, pop star Dionne Warwick, and Broadway legend Chita Rivera, listened to speakers who had as much to say about Horne’s political activism as her storied music career.

While singing “Stormy Weather,” the Brooklyn-born Horne was navigating through stormy times headlining venues like Harlem’s Cotton Club, which showcased black performers but wouldn’t let blacks watch a show.

“Lena was part of a generation that survived economic depression and world war,” said the Rev. Walter Modrys, the church’s former pastor. “But most of all she survived racial prejudice that tried to rob people of their human dignity.”

Among the mourners paying tribute were members of the Tuskegee Airmen, the famed African-American aviators of World War II. They called Horne a patriot, not only because of the pinups of her they kept in their footlockers, but because she refused to perform at USO shows if black soldiers were forced to the back.

“We will see her every time we hear a concert at the Apollo Theater,” said former Mayor David Dinkins.

“We will see her every time we pass by what was then the Cotton Club. We will feel her presence every time a voice is raised

in protest.”

Horne once said it like this: “I don’t have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, and I’m like nobody else.”

leonard.greene@nypost.com