Reel Classics: Lady Sings the Blues

Billie Holiday is one of my favorite jazz singers; in my opin­ion, she was the best. 

But she was a trou­bled soul.  She wrote an auto­bi­og­ra­phy in 1956, Lady Sings the Blues. The title was tak­en from one of her well-known songs. The Reel Classic we look at today is loose­ly based on that auto­bi­og­ra­phy and shares the same name.  It was pro­duced by Motown Productions (Berry Gordy).  Gordy want­ed one of his top Motown per­form­ers, Diana Ross, for the role of Billie Holiday even though she had very lit­tle act­ing experience. 

The choice of Ross to por­tray Holiday was con­tro­ver­sial to some degree as many feared she would be “too pop” to por­tray a jazz diva.  There were even con­cerns of “nepo­tism” as she was seen as his “pro­tégé” and, as it was lat­er divulged by Ross, they had had an affair and a child togeth­er.  Regardless, Diana Ross por­trayed Billie Holiday and was nom­i­nat­ed for an Academy Award for her efforts. 

For those who are famil­iar with Billie Holiday you may know that she suf­fered some ter­ri­ble expe­ri­ences in her life.  These includ­ed rape, racism, phys­i­cal abuse, and drug addic­tion.  She expe­ri­enced the heights of fame (includ­ing a famous con­cert at Carnegie Hall) and the depths of despair (being jailed for drug use).  These expe­ri­ences are depict­ed in the film.

We meet the young Eleanora Fagan as a fif­teen-year-old girl work­ing as a maid in a Baltimore broth­el.  She loves to play blues records and sing along with the tunes.  After expe­ri­enc­ing rape by a drunk­en cus­tomer, she flees Baltimore and heads to New York where her moth­er lives and works as a house­keep­er for a rich fam­i­ly.  Her mom can’t take her in and sends her to a friend, Ms. Edsen, who agrees to let her stay in her “board­ing house,” which in actu­al­i­ty is a broth­el.  She pros­ti­tutes her­self to earn mon­ey for clothes and gifts for her moth­er.  Eventually she goes to a local night club to answer an adver­tise­ment for dancers.  Though her dance moves are not what the own­er wants, her singing of “All of Me” leads to her being hired.  The piano man (Richard Pryor) takes her under his wing, and she adopts the name Billie Holiday.  Another attendee of the club, a hand­some well-to-do Louis McKay (Billy Dee Williams), takes a lik­ing to the young Billie Holiday. 

Billie’s singing gives rise to her rep­u­ta­tion in the city and she is invit­ed to join an all-white band and go on tour.  On this tour while trav­el­ing through the South she sees the body of a black man hang­ing from a tree.  This was the inspi­ra­tion for her dis­turb­ing and pow­er­ful song “Strange Fruit.” It is also on this tour that she expe­ri­ences the impact of “Jim Crow” and is intro­duced to hero­in.  She strug­gles with addic­tion the rest of her life.  We see her rise in fame and attempt to get off the drugs.  We see her become famous and record many records.  We also see her thrown into jail on drug charges and suf­fer the pains of with­draw­al.  She actu­al­ly spent a year in reha­bil­i­ta­tion and lost her cabaret license in New York City.

After the pub­li­ca­tion of her auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Hollywood pro­duc­ers want­ed to bring her sto­ry to the screen.  Several attempts were made by var­i­ous pro­duc­ers to make this dream become a real­i­ty.  During this time sev­er­al dif­fer­ent actress­es were con­sid­ered for the lead role includ­ing Dorothy Dandridge, Abbey Lincoln, Diahann Carroll, and Cicely Tyson.  However, Berry Gordy joined the pro­duc­tion effort and as men­tioned above, insist­ed on Diana Ross for the role of Billie Holiday. 

Some jazz purists were upset at just how “loose­ly” the career was por­trayed.  Billie Holiday’s mul­ti­ple mar­riages were com­bined into one char­ac­ter, and many of her famous musi­cal asso­ciates (includ­ing Artie Shaw, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and Teddy Wilson) are not men­tioned.  The Turner Classic Movies (TCM) review describes the work of the screen­writ­ers as an effort to “cap­ture the spir­it of Holiday’s career rather than exact details.” 

Reportedly Diana Ross worked very hard on this project.  She stud­ied Holiday’s life, includ­ing the auto­bi­og­ra­phy, to give her insight into the woman she was to por­tray.  She also worked with an act­ing coach.  One of the things most peo­ple were con­cerned about was how Ross’ singing style would come across.  Her style famil­iar to fans of “The Supremes” was not Billie Holiday’s style.  She worked at mod­i­fy­ing her own sound to uti­lize Holiday’s phras­ings.  She also worked at try­ing to bring Holiday’s emo­tion­al deliv­ery to the sound.  The sound­track was released as an album and was a hit — mak­ing #1 on the Billboard album chart in 1973.

Lady Sings the Blues was nom­i­nat­ed for five Academy Awards includ­ing Best Actress (Diana Ross).  Ross lost out to Liza Minelli for her role in Cabaret.  It was also the first African American biopic to be nom­i­nat­ed for an Academy Award.  With the nom­i­na­tion for Best Original Screenplay, Suzanne De Passé became the first African American to be nom­i­nat­ed for that cat­e­go­ry.  She recent­ly received a nom­i­na­tion for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2017 for her work on the film Mudbound. 

Though many of the movie crit­ics at the time found the sto­ry a “bit of a cliché” they were gen­er­al­ly in agree­ment that Diana Ross put forth an excel­lent per­for­mance.  Roger Ebert wrote that Ross had giv­en “one of the great per­for­mances of 1972” and that the film “has most of the clich­es we expect — but do we real­ly mind clich­es in a movie like this?  I don’t think so.” 

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune acknowl­edged that though the film may not have been an accu­rate por­tray­al of the life of Holiday, it can be “an enter­tain­ing movie.  And it is just that — enter­tain­ing — because of an old-fash­ioned grand dame per­for­mance by Diana Ross.” 

The crit­ic for the Los Angeles Times wrote Ross gave “one of the tru­ly fine screen per­for­mances, full of pow­er and pathos and enor­mous­ly engag­ing and sympathetic.” 

In addi­tion to Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, and Richard Pryor, there are oth­er famil­iar faces to be found in the cast.  James Callahan plays Reg Hanley, Sid Melton is Jerry, and Isabel Sanford (who was men­tioned in our pre­vi­ous Reel Classic review of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) plays “The Madame.” Scatman Crothers has a small role as Big Ben.

An inter­est­ing note — Richard Pryor’s role was expand­ed when he impressed every­one in the ear­ly scenes at Jerry’s club as the “Piano Man.”  It was also Pryor who taught Diana Ross how to act when using and under the influ­ence of drugs.

Even though Lady Sings the Blues is “loose­ly based” on Billie Holiday’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy, it does give the view­er a glimpse into the tor­ment and the joy that was her life.  The film begins with her being locked away, alone and in pain and in des­per­ate need of “a fix.” We see the impact of “Jim Crow” and racism, and the body of a Black man hang­ing — ”Strange Fruit.”  We also see the strug­gles that peo­ple make to over­come these obsta­cles, and the pow­er of music to help heal.  We see the val­ue of sup­port in times of need, and the ben­e­fit of hav­ing some­one who cares. 

This film is filled with the music of Billie Holiday, and I encour­age you to seek out Holiday’s per­for­mances.  She is pow­er­ful and full of emo­tion.  As I men­tioned ear­li­er, she is my favorite and I think she is the best. 

The Internet Movie Database rates Lady Sings The Blues at 7 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a crit­ics’ rat­ing of 68% and an Audience rat­ing of 86%.  I searched my Roku device for free stream­ing sites but was not able to find any.  Unfortunately, the Clark County Public Library does not have a copy for loan (but I feel sure they will obtain one if you ask).

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia.

In addi­tion to the usu­al trail­er, I am includ­ing a video that has Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit” in 1939. The video also includes the lyrics and a bit of his­to­ry about the song.  The sub­ject mat­ter is a part of our his­to­ry, and we need to acknowl­edge it. 

I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies, please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon.  Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page, as well as WinCity Voices Facebook page.