Lady Sings the Blues

Every time a movie is made about real people and events there is caterwauling by those who are experts that the film didn't get it right. Most of the time I am annoyed by this, as making a narrative film is not the same as writing a scholarly text. You have to condense story lines and characters so a film can follow certain dictates. But when a film about a real person is so egregiously wrong, as Lady Sings the Blues is, then you just have to point it out.

For her centenary, I'm reading a biography of Billie Holiday and am about half way through. It was written by Donald Clarke, who is not above taking a shot at the movie, claiming it as "the worst movie ever made." It's not that bad, considering the flow of sewage that courses through theaters every year, but for a biographer of the main subject I can see his point. About the only thing factually correct about this film is that there was indeed a singer named Billie Holiday. The rest is fiction.

I knew I was in trouble when the opening title card: "New York, 1936," came up, and then showed Holiday, played gamely by Diana Ross, is arrested for heroin. Problem: she wasn't arrested until about ten years later. In 1936 the hardest stuff she had was marijuana. It also has her beau, Louis McKay, as her rock, her knight in shining armor. Problem: she didn't even know McKay until years later, she had two marriages before him, and he was a rotten egg. I guess that Billie Dee Williams played him made have to be the hero.

Ross, who was nominated for an Oscar for the role, does the drug stuff to the hilt, but does not sing like Holiday. To do an impersonation might have been awkward, but Ross appears to have no understanding of what made Holiday great. She was a jazz singer, who used her voice as an instrument, Ross was a pop singer.

What's more, almost everyone else is fictionalized. Perhaps fearing litigation, the screenplay makes no mention of Count Basie and Artie Shaw, whose bands Holiday sung for. Instead she tours with the "Reg Hanley" band. There is also no mention of John Hammond, who helped discover her, or her lifelong friend Lester Young, who gave her the nickname "Lady Day." Instead, we get Richard Pryor as "Piano Man," a composite of the many piano players who accompanied her.

I could go on about the inaccuracies of this film. Part of the problem is that it was based on her autobiography of the same name, which Clarke refers to as "unreliable." But beyond that, it is just isn't that good. Directed with no particular flair by Sidney J. Furie, Lady Sings the Blues is a typical show-biz biopic, with the drug arrests played up for maximum mileage. Holiday was a great artist, but to judge by this film she was nothing but a victim--of drugs, of racism (a scene is shown of her witnessing a lynching, which makes a viewer think she actually wrote the song "Strange Fruit"--she didn't) and of a girlhood growing up in brothels. But there is nothing in the film that shows us what makes her tick. The movie seems to have made it because it was convenient to do so, not because anyone involved had a burning passion to introduce her to millions.

So, my recommendation is never watch this movie and instead get yourself some Billie Holiday albums and bliss out. Or, check out a clip on YouTube. It's Holiday's last television performance and it's with Lester Young. Two (prematurely) old lions, who still got it.