LADY SINGS THE BLUES: Blu-ray (Paramount/Motown Productions, 1972) Paramount Home Video
Diana Ross delivers a spellbinding performance in Lady
Sings the Blues (1972), master of Motown, Berry Gordy’s profligately appointed
attempt at homage for the late jazz diva, Billie Holiday. That the stature and
deportment of the real Ms. Holiday clashed with that of its infinitely more
slender and sexy reincarnation in Ms. Ross mattered not a hoot. Nor, that Suzanne
de Passe, Chris Clark and Terence McCloy’s screenplay took some rather
insincere artistic liberties to economize a turbulent life into just a little
under 2 ½ hours. No, the real problem here is the ambition to will an even
greater tragedy from that artistic milieu, arguably, in need of no help to
wring a few tears loose. The picture was a leap of faith for Gordy, whose drive
had literally willed a ‘new sound’ in the music industry, and whose heart must
have risen into his throat in the eleventh hour of production when, asked to
screen his ‘rough cut’ – executives at Paramount effectively cut off his purse
strings, declaring they were prepared to shelve the movie. Possessing the
courage, wherewithal, conviction and confidence of a maverick record producer,
Gordy instead cut Paramount a check for their financial outlay thus far, bought
back the movie, and then proceeded to complete it under his own likes, funding
the remainder himself. Gutsy move. Real gutsy, actually! Lady Sings the Blues was also a testament
to Ross’ resolve – as one of Gordy’s most iconic sound-makers, having only just
given her farewell concert as part of the legendary Motown act, The Supremes.
Looking for new opportunities, it seemed to Ross a natural progression from pop
diva to film star. Alas, and ironically,
given her stature, Ross was to appear in just two more pseudo-musicals; 1975’s Mahogany,
and 1978’s disastrously overproduced and under-performing, The Wiz. Interesting to consider Ross had no formal
training as an actress before marking her screen debut in Lady Sings the
Blues: no experience, and, virtually no desire either to emulate the real Billie
Holiday by studying her mannerisms or singing style. Indeed, in designing the
costumes for the production, fashionista, Bob Mackie took only certain trademarks
from Holiday’s style – gardenias in the hair being one such inspiration –
creating otherwise absurdly gorgeous creations, as much a part of that late 40’s
vintage as they remain firmly ensconced in the fashion pastiche of the early 1970’s.
And in departing from the ‘copycat’ quality to detrimentally afflict a great
many biopics, Diana Ross instead emerged as the de facto facsimile to
convincingly eclipse its source.
Lady Sings the Blues undeniably marked a turning point
in the artistic impressions afforded the making of a movie in which black
actors primarily drive the narrative. Steeped in an era of ‘blacksploitation’ –
movies driven by rough and questionable, counterculture black antiheroes, Lady
Sings the Blues is, instead, a stab to legitimize black actors as real/reel
people, who suffer, struggle, and rise above adversity in true-to-life
situations that humanize their plight. And in the embodiment of Eleanora Fagan –
better known to the world as Billie Holiday – Gordy and Ross had the ideal
vehicle on which to pin their dreams it all might work out in the end. The
Philadelphian-born Fagan, had a very difficult childhood, mostly glossed over
in the movie as working for the madam of a boarding house of ill repute while
still in her early teens. The real Holiday was raised largely by a surrogate,
Martha Miller, lonely and pining for her real mother’s influence, to come when
Sadie Fagan (Virginia Capers, in the movie) opened a restaurant, and Holiday,
age 11, dropped out of school to work at the establishment full time. A scene
in the movie, where a randy john (Harry Caesar) rapes
a barely 14-yr.-old Holiday is culled from a real-life incident where Sadie
returned home to discover her neighbor, Wilbur Rich, attacking her daughter. Holiday
was then removed from her mother’s home and placed under the protective custody
of the House of the Good Shepherd. Later, she ran errands for a brothel,
rejoining her mother, now a prostitute working for Florence Williams. Sadie,
alas, was hardly mother of the year and actually helped pimp her own daughter
out at $5 a client. But Lady Sings the Blues would have us believe ‘mama’
worked for a rich, white – but never seen – benefactress, quite unaware that
her daughter is turning tricks to pay, both the rent and for the new bonnet
purchased to adorn her head.
The real Holiday was to do time in a workhouse after
the brothel was busted, making the break into a singing career by changing her
name, borrowing on the success of ‘then’ reigning silent film star, Billie
Dove, and musician, Clarence Halliday, who likely was her real father. Teaming with a tenor saxophone player, Kenneth
Hollan (re-made in the movie as the ‘piano man’ played by Richard Pryor), Holiday
marked her official debut in 1929 and quickly found work, making the rounds at
all the popular nightclubs. As her reputation grew, Holiday traveled the
countryside, later to be reunited with her father while on tour. In the movie, Holiday’s
father is never even referenced, and neither is John Hammond, the producer who encountered
a ‘then’ 17-yr.-old, Holiday and instantly fell under the spell of her unique
singing talents, proving the Svengali to mold her career. In the movie, Hammond’s
influence is re-christened as Louis McKay (Billy Dee Williams), the uber-sexy
man of means, whose initial attempt at a pick-up is wholeheartedly shot down by
the crisp and already street-savvy Holiday. Interestingly, we never do get
Holiday’s recording years documented in Lady Sings the Blues, nor her
appearance as a specialty in 1935’s Symphony in Black. Instead, the de Passe/Clark/McCloy
screenplay is telescopically focused on Holiday as a live performer who,
despite raw talent, was never quite able to hang on to the big time. Presumably,
such concisions, alterations and glaring omissions help to buoy the ‘hard luck’
quality of our story, culminating in the real Holiday’s untimely and tragic
death, age 44 – the movie stopping just short of diving over that precipice
into pure melodrama.
Alas, what is here is actually pretty pulpy, tinged
with the irrefutable mark of Ross’ quality as singer and actress, with John A.
Alonzo’s plush cinematography and Carl Anderson’s impressive production design
working overtime to fill in the gaps, especially in the movie’s last half hour
when everything degenerates into an interminable series of montages, every once
in a long while, interpolated with a dramatic vignette to connect the dots. And
as good as Ross’ performance is, what really gets sacrificed here is the real
Holiday – that fearless youngster with a whisky-voice subtlety for interpreting
a lyric as arguably no jazz vocalist of her generation could. Working with Lester Young, Count Basie and
Artie Shaw certainly had its merits, each bringing out another layer of Holiday’s
musical mystique and finesse. We get none of this in Lady Sings the Blues,
nor the quiet competition between Holiday and that ‘other’ bluesy belle, Ella
Fitzgerald – the two, becoming great friends rather than rivals, with a hearty
respect for each other’s talents. As movie biopics function on a purely
mercenary level, eventually success gives way to heart-ache. Certainly, Holiday
in life had plenty to draw from; fired by Basie for being ‘unreliable’ and
begun a chronic and hellish addiction to heroin to ease her through the
anxieties of life. The movie documents Holiday as the first black songstress to
accompany an all-white band (a breakout for its time). Only now, she sings for Reg
Hanley (James Callahan) – not Artie Shaw – and is brought very low by an
increasing dependency on heroin, supplied by fellow band player, Harry (Paul
Hampton). Later, Holiday gets the piano man to pawn Louis McKay’s engagement
ring to get her fix. Instead, he promises his ‘connections’ to pay for the junk
later – keeping the ring – a decision that leads to his ruthless pummeling.
A real-life incident where Holiday suffered racial slurs
during an engagement with Shaw’s band gets totally ignored in this movie, in favor
of purely contrived incidents. In the first of these, Holiday, having stopped
on the side of the road to relieve herself in the middle of nowhere while
driving through the backwoods of Alabama, suddenly stumbles upon the body of a
lynched black man with his family and mourners tearfully gathered around. In
the second fictionalized scene, Hanley can barely contain Holiday’s outrage at
witnessing a Ku Klux Klan rally, with its torch-bearing participants attacking
Hanley’s bus. The band narrowly escapes further violence from the mob. Lady Sings the Blues also flubs an
incident that occurred with Shaw’s orchestra. In the movie the onus is on
Hanley, who secures a radio spot, but on the understanding only ‘white’ singers
will participate in the broadcast, leaving Holiday, who has already prepared to
go on, utterly humiliated. The movie does allow for Ross to warble the haunting
ballad, ‘Strange Fruit’. In reality, this became a startling sensation -
a tale about a lynching, eloquently set to music. Despite the song’s
controversial subject matter, and its virtual lack of play time on the hit
parade, ‘Strange Fruit’ went on to become a top-twenty record seller and a main
staple in Holiday’s repertoire for the next 20 years.
While Lady Sings the Blues presents an amicable
portrait of mother and daughter, despite their initial separation, in reality Holiday's
mother Sadie, was a bit of a con, exploiting her daughter’s popularity to open her
restaurant, also housing some illegal gambling. Ma Fagan played hard and loose,
and, on both accounts - lost big, leaving Holiday destitute and desperate for work.
The saving grace this time was the painfully intimate, ‘God Bless the Child’
– an anthem of wounded resolve, reaching number 25 on the charts and third in
Billboard's songs of the year. Given it is Diana Ross up there on the big screen,
and Billie Holiday she is emulating, Lady Sings the Blues is remarkably
light on its musical program. Of the nearly 500 songs Holiday popularized in
her brief lifetime, only 4 are actually featured in the movie, with another
half-dozen snippets, sung by other, less gifted and seemingly inconsequential
performers. By 1946, Holiday’s honeymoon with drug addiction had reached its
apex. While appearing in her only feature-length movie, New Orleans (1946)
she became erratic and unmanageable, her condition exacerbated by the producer’s
decision to basically minimize her role and cut several numbers out to appease
censorship in the South. Although she
was earning more than a $1000 a week, Holiday blew most of it on heroin
supplied by her lover/pusher, Joe Guy (never seen in this movie). Lady Sings
the Blues briefly addresses the scandal that surrounded Holiday’s incarceration
for drug abuse. Dehydrated and hallucinating, Holiday pleaded guilty and asked
to be sent to a hospital. Instead, she was sentenced to Alderson Federal Prison
Camp in West Virginia. Stripped of her New York City Cabaret Card, Holiday could
no longer work anywhere that sold alcohol. Hence, from this moment on, she
became a concert hall entertainer.
In the movie, Holiday is reticent about appearing at
Carnegie Hall. She is briefly reunited with Louis McKay, who finally realizes
his love will never cure Billie of the demons that continue to haunt her soul.
He abandons her to the audience, and Holiday, without his moral compass to keep
her own centered, reverts back to that hellish need for heroin. Lady Sings the
Blues concludes with McKay in the wings, admiringly in observance as
Holiday belts out her final song at the famed New York venue, receiving a
standing ovation while a series of super-imposed newspaper headlines chart the final
disintegration of Holiday’s life and career. Another drug bust, another
scandal, and finally, premature death at age, 44. Ed Fishman (in the movie,
billed only as ‘the agent’ and played with caustic vigor by Ned Glass), is
responsible for getting Holiday to Carnegie Hall – the ‘sold out’ engagement in
which 2,700 tickets were sold in advance, a record then for the coveted venue,
made even more unique by the fact Holiday had no hit records in circulation at
the time. But the last act of Holiday’s life was actually tainted in far more
grim and messy scandals – an ugly divorce from trombonist, Jimmy Monroe, and an
affair with Guy, who continued to ply Holiday with hard drugs, leading to yet
another incarceration. As her records
went out of print, so too did her royalties dry up.
Abusive relationships with men who did not love her,
and, the inevitable fallout from recreational drug and alcohol abuse, conspired
to derail Holiday’s reputation with the public. Nevertheless, at this juncture
she was encouraged to write her memoir, appropriately titled, ‘Lady Sings
the Blues’, ghostwritten by William Dufty, and accompanied by an album
release that would re-invigorate her reputation as a singer. Two more sold out concerts
at Carnegie Hall and a hit album featuring 13 new songs, and Holiday seemed to
be clawing her way back to the top. This too proved a scruffy and insincere
illusion. Nearing the end of her life, Holiday met and married Louis McKay. Unlike
the Billy Dee Williams’ Ricco Suave reincarnation in this movie, who serves as Holiday’s
grounding force and firm, but tolerant and understanding man of decision, the
real McKay was a rough-hewn mob enforcer with a penchant for smacking Holiday
around. Diagnosed with cirrhosis, Holiday – already a wraith – lost an
additional 20 lbs., handcuffed to her hospital bed by the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics until she finally expired on July 17th, 1959 of a
pulmonary edema and heart failure, the final insult, with only seventy-cents
left in the bank. By then, she was virtually recognizable, even to friends –
the devastating rot of her hedonism to have eroded her handsome good looks.
In retrospect, Lady Sings the Blues is hardly a
fitting epitaph to Billie Holiday, as in all its manufactured crafting of a ‘tragedy’
in the making, it has quietly set aside the extraordinary highs and meteoric
lows that accompanied Holiday’s own, and, all too briefly mesmeric legend and
legacy in song. Diana Ross remains the movie’s singular saving grace. When all else
fails – and it frequently does – Ross’ performance is never anything less than
extraordinary. Even when given precious few lines to compliment her natural talent,
Ross manages to relate to Holiday on such a fundamentally intimate and undiluted
level, she ceases to be Diana Ross – pop diva - and, quite simply becomes a
most genuine facsimilia of the real McCoy. There has yet to be written enough
about Ross – as the ‘never-to-be’ movie star – despite an undeniably presence.
Ross manages, almost singularly on the strength of her convictions, to best the
contrived material here. Featured prominently in two more big-budgeted losers
that ultimately sank her chances at true screen immortality, mercifully, Ross
has endured as a singing sensation these past 76 years. After the disastrous
box office implosion of The Wiz (1978), Diana Ross virtually disappeared
from the picture-making biz. While she has done several TV movies since, and
has remained enviably active as a pop star, Ross – regrettably – would never again
be given the opportunity to exercise her talents for Tinsel Town – a formidable
loss to American movie culture indeed.
Lady Sings the Blues arrives on Blu-ray – finally
– from Paramount Home Video. The results are passable, but not impressive.
While the image is free of age-related dirt and debris, the overall appearance
here leans to the digitally processed ‘look’ rather than a film-like presentation.
A few edge effects intermittently crop up. And, while not distracting, they are
present. Occasionally, fine detail is also wanting, the image never snapping
together as it should to reveal minute aspects in skin, hair and faces. Film
grain has been inconsistently rendered, looking relatively true to its source
in some scenes, while turning heavy or digitally harsh in others. A handful of
shots throughout are soft and slightly out of focus. Color fidelity is anemic
at best with a slight fading in some scenes, leaving the overall impression
here as being flat and dull. One senses there was a lot more to be mined, had
an original camera negative been used for this 1080p scan. We get a 5.1 DTS reincarnation
of the soundtrack, thoroughly lacking the thrust and demarcation of a quality
remastering effort. While the songs and score yield excellent tonality,
dialogue scenes are tinny by comparison. Everything’s been remastered at a lower decibel
too, so crank up the volume. You’ll need to, to get the most out of this aural
experience. Extras include an audio
commentary from Berry Gordy, plus a fairly comprehensive ‘making of’ featurette
produced eons ago for the DVD release, and, at just under a ½ hour, featuring some
astute reflections by Ross and surviving cast and crew. There’s also an
original, and badly worn theatrical trailer. Bottom line: Lady Sings the
Blues is worth seeing for Diana Ross’ singularly compelling star turn. Just
be aware, this isn’t Billie Holiday’s life, but a fictionalized impression of
it, made with ample changes to satisfy the conventions of the traditional
Hollywood biopic. The Blu-ray is okay, but just. Judge and buy accordingly.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
3
VIDEO/AUDIO
3
EXTRAS
1
Comments