By the 1950s, Holiday's battle with drugs and alcohol was taking its toll on her voice and career. Holiday was on her way, but the trauma of her childhood never left her. After moving to New York with her mother in the late 1920s, she endured another sexual assault at 14. Who loves you, sweetheart? All rights reserved. Here are some facts about the life and music of the great Lady Day: Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan, though some sources say the name on her birth certificate was "Elinore Harris." But trouble arrives again when Holiday relapses. Holiday was sent to a brutal Catholic reformatory, where as punishment she was locked in a room with a dead student. However, Anslinger also discovered that Judy Garland was, like Holiday, a heroin user. Billie never had any children of her own. DAY: (As Billie) And I've asked you over a hundred times, what people, Joe? Unable to afford arrangements, the orchestra kept over 100 songs in their heads, often going to bed hungry despite their glamorous profession. I didnt listen or stop for nothing. KEVIN WHITEHEAD, BYLINE: The movies have not been kind to Billie Holiday. WHITEHEAD: Later, after he's exposed, Jimmy shoots heroin with her one time, which somehow makes him flash back to her unhappy childhood, a narcotic mind-meld. Never mind that she talks that way through the whole picture, as in this scene set in 1947. The image so deeply disturbed him that he penned the poem in protest of racial violence. Two years after losing her insurance, Jennifer Holliday finally got the operation she needed to regain the use of an arm mangled in a shotgun blast. Lester Young dies, and his wife does not let Holiday sing at the funeral. Police were stationed at her door to stop her visitors from seeing her. Politico reported that after one run-in following the first raid, Fletcher and Holiday "talked for hours"; they even danced together at Club Ebony. She took enough of it to know, she writes. Biographer Farah Jasmine Griffin described Young as Holiday's "creative soulmate.". She wouldnt give me a cent. The case against Holiday begins at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, with Judge James Cullen Grady presiding. As a young teen, she moved to Harlem, where she became a high-class call girl. It is true that Fletcher was assigned by Anslinger to tail Holiday undercover, a job Fletcher took on because of his own hatred of drugs and their effect on Black Americans. View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro. Hulus Oscar-nominated The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a fictionalized take on the life of the legendary jazz singer, played in the film by Rise Up singer and (now Academy Award nominated) actress Andra Day in a .css-umdwtv{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:.0625rem;text-decoration-color:#FF3A30;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:inherit;-webkit-transition:background 0.4s;transition:background 0.4s;background:linear-gradient(#ffffff, #ffffff 50%, #d5dbe3 50%, #d5dbe3);-webkit-background-size:100% 200%;background-size:100% 200%;}.css-umdwtv:hover{color:#000000;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;-webkit-background-position:100% 100%;background-position:100% 100%;}Golden Globe-nominated performance. Holiday wrestled with her addictions until the very end According to several reports , she started using heroin in the early 1940s during her marriage to Monroe. Baby, darling, why, oh why didnt you come backstage to see me? Honey, dont you know? I told her. She was fingerprinted, interrogated, and had a booking photo taken in her hospital bed with no attorney present, according to what Hari told WNYC. At the age of 12 she was raped by a trumpet player. Hulu's The United States v. Billie Holiday, streaming now on the platform, follows the titular music legend in her later years amid her long-standing battle with the U.S. government regarding her seminal song, "Strange Fruit." Always a self-starter, Holiday began singing as a child, while cleaning neighbors homes for money. However, she had two godchildren who she cared about deeply. While she lay dying, a by-then retired Fletcher attempted to visit Holiday in the hospital. In the film's 1940s, Anslinger instructs African American narcotics agent Jimmy Fletcher, played by "Moonlight's" Trevante Rhodes, to cozy up to her. If someone had dropped a pin, it would have sounded like a bomb. In the movie, Jimmy falls in love with her hard, and she with him, and they have a hot, long-lasting affair. The song's lyrics came from a poem written by Abel Meeropol, a teacher and social activist. While at the hall, someone yells for her to sing Strange Fruit, which she says she cant do. A later scene shows Levy planting drugs on Holiday and setting her up for another arrest by Fletcher and the feds; although an old Oakland Tribune article reports that Holiday and Levy were both arrested during the early-1949 raid, the setup does appear to have been coordinated by Levy. According to Holiday, Clarence, her high-living musician father, died on the road in 1937, a victim of Jim Crow. My boxer dog Mister was in the back seat whimpering, scared. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. Holiday and McKay take off on an international tour and find continued success, including a report in Tan magazine and the recording of the acclaimed 1958 album Lady in Satin. Black Americans love this country, often at our peril.". By the early 1940s she was hooked on heroin. 2023 Billy Holiday is likely the most celebrated female jazz singer in American history, yet substance abuse and addiction would plague her until her death at only 44 years old. Over the next decade, Holiday continued drinking heavily, smoking, and abusing heroin. The two had a well-documented affair in the early 40s. Born Eleanora Fagan in Baltimore (or some say Philadelphia) in 1915, Holidays childhood was marred by horrific abusedespite the best efforts of her beloved mother, Sadie, who was only 13 when she had Holiday. The real Holiday did record the song in 1939. Made an appearance at the 6th annual United States Conference on AIDS at the Anaheim Hilton & Towers in Anaheim, California. However, Carnegie Halls own website mentions Strange Fruit in the setlist for Holidays March 27, 1948, concert. The actor revealed that his pet died after being hit by a truck on the second anniversary of his father's death. Director Lee Daniels told the Hollywood Reporter that The U.S. vs. Billie Holiday isnt a biopic, and as longtime Canadian journalist Robert Fulford once wrote in the National Post, it is difficult for anyone to attempt to chronicle an authoritative Life of Billie Holiday anyway, because the documents dont exist, and the witnesses have often lied. When she was ten years old, she was raped by an adult neighbor. Oddly enough, Dove was actually the stage name of Lillian Bohny. Two other scenes with Fletcher ring partly true to the historical record: Miss Freddy mentioning to him that Holiday was raped when she was 10, which is true, and Anslinger telling him that thenFBI Director J. Edgar Hoover thought Strange Fruit was an un-American, provocative song. Erica Gonzales is the Senior Culture Editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage on TV, movies, music, books, and more. After her release, she auditioned to sing at the Harlem speakeasy Pods and Jerrys: I asked him to play Travlin All Alone. That came closer than anything to the way I felt. A decade later, as she lay in the hospital dying of cirrhosis of the liver, her hospital room was raided. Billie Holiday comes down with cirrhosis of the liver and is hospitalized. Despite President Harry Trumans tepid steps toward advancing civil rights for Black Americans, racist Democrats still held a tight grip over his partyincluding Anslinger, who despised jazz and its icons. Ask yourself the question, who loves you, sweetheart? But the humiliation was terrible." 7 Things You May Not Know About Billie Holiday, Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images, Joan Baez Sings with Tennessee Rep. Justin Jones, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. Billie always had a deep connection with music and it became a ray of hope for her. She completed a week in Philly without incident. Made-up incidents can illustrate some higher truth about the power of a protest song or a singer's personal magnetism. He learned of Anslinger's According to Biography, White busted Holiday at San Francisco's Mark Twain Hotel, even though she claimed to have been clean for a year. The bureau puta guard outside of her room and took the flowers and letters fans and friends had sent, and even took her record player, according to Legacy. After she and a white friend had car trouble by the beach, Holiday was grateful when a familiar-looking man fixed their car and took them for a drink at a country club. In our culture, there's one heroic story we tell about people with addiction problems, which is that sometimes they recover from their addiction, Hari says. The United States vs. Billie Holiday Tells A Story From the Racist Origins of the War on Drugs, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. In the Broadway musical production of "Your Arms Too Short To Box With God", her performance earned her a 1981 Drama Desk nomination. Billie Holiday has become a mythic presence in absentia. Blood on the leaves and blood at the root. In The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Andra Days performance reminds viewers of the power of the Holidays voice, more than 60 years after her death. [Expletive], I'm the one pays you. Drugs became racialized, with cocaine coded as being associated with Black Americans, opioids with Chinese immigrants, and marijuana with Mexican immigrants. Holiday even appeared in a film with Duke Ellington. Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze. Also at the club that night is undercover federal agent Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes). Theyve got a dirty job to do and they have to do it. The United States vs. Billie Holiday focuses on the later period of the legendary jazz singers career up until her death in 1959and the U.S. governments relentless persecution of her throughout that time. Her romantic tastes were equally iconoclastic; allegedly, she had affairs with Charles Laughton, Tallulah Bankhead, and Orson Welles, the finest cat she ever met. He was moved to write a poem, feeling appalled by racism in America and particularly disturbed by a photograph of a lynching that he said "haunted" him "for days," according to NPR. Cocaine supposedly made Black people almost superhumanly strongNEGRO COCAINE "FIENDS" ARE A NEW SOUTHERN MENACE blared a 1914 New York Times headline. Just as Anslinger was beginning his tenure at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a teenaged singer was getting her start in Harlem nightclubs. She told The Hollywood Reporter, "I could see this love affair that she has with Jimmy Fletcher, because it tells the story of the love affair that Black Americans have with America. Holidays appearance with actor George Jessel (Joe Cobden) on his show The Comeback Story in 1953 was a real broadcast where she mentioned her marriage to Louis McKay (Rob Morgan), who would become her manager. To be fair, biographical movies are entertainments, not history lessons. Shortly after that arrest, Billie Holiday diedon July 17, 1959, the result of "alcohol- and drug-related complications," according to Biography. Holiday was busted again, arrested, and put on trial. This should never have happened to you. They sent her to prison. She would later endure relationships with abusive men, and became addicted to alcohol and heroin. She was nicknamed Lady Day. Across the pond, the pharmacist for Queen Victoria, the global paragon of propriety, prescribed the royal family cocaine and heroin. Though Andra Day plays the jazz legend with conviction, The United States vs. Billie Holiday fictionalizes the particulars of Holiday's life, where the real story is dramatic enough. I picked up the four bucks right there and won the next three potsI was on my knees in the bottom of that bus from West Virginia to New York, a few hundred miles and about twelve hours. Neither of these two characters are real, though Daniels told Variety that Devine was based on a fusion of Quentin Crisp and Skip E. Lowe. Devine sets up a flashback to February 1947, when we see Holiday performing at New York Citys Caf Society, the first racially integrated nightclub in the U.S. and the venue where Holiday had debuted Strange Fruit eight years prior. Holiday worked with Arthur Herzog Jr. on this tune and several others, including "Don't Explain." Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture. Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. In the movie, a fed orders local cops to shut down her Philly show the second it starts when she defiantly opens with that song. In The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Andra Days Holiday embarks upon a steamy romance with Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes), the agent Anslinger tasks with finding ways to imprison her on drug charges. DUKIC: (As Joe) I've told you a hundred times, people in high places don't like you singing that song. In fact, a timeline on the Library of Congress shows that 106 Black Americans were reportedly lynched in the year 1900 alone. For Holiday, singing was a magical form of connection and expression. There were high-profile incidents, such as the 1933 axe murder of the Licata family by their 21-year-old son, Victor. It was called The United States of America versus Billie Holiday, she writes of her trial (also the title of the upcoming Lee Daniels film starring Andra Day as Holiday). FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. All products featured on Vanity Fair are independently selected by our editors. I saw the lipstick. [September 2002], She sang "This is the Moment" at the 2004 July 4th Boston Pops Concert for Independence Day. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Columbia, her record label at the time, didn't want her to record the song at first because of its controversial subject matter. Holiday is then seen with trumpeter Joe Guy (Melvin Gregg), who had an affair with her and supplied her with drugs while struggling with addiction himself (although it should be noted that it was Holidays husband Jimmy Monroe whod first supplied her with heroin in the early 40s). This newspaper does serve as an introduction to another major figure: Harry J. Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund), then head of the Treasury Departments Federal Bureau of Narcotics and one of the primary leaders of the governments effort to stifle Holiday. Sep. 7, 2007. He later set his words to music and played the song for a New York nightclub owner, who then passed it on to Holiday. WebJennifer Holliday was born on October 19, 1960 in Houston, Texas, USA. Billie decided to give love a second chance and got married to Jimmy Monroe. GARRETT HEDLUND: (As Harry Anslinger) Hoover says it's un-American. Scarred by Vaughans reception, Holiday hid in the back of the Strand Theater watching Lena Horne rehearse. Meanwhile, even after successfully prosecuting her the first time, the authorities weren't done with Holiday. But Holidays world was shattered at the age of 10 when a man she calls Mr. Dick attempted to rape her. DAVIES: On Monday's show, we speak with writer, performer and magician Derek DelGaudio. Hari told WNYC, "She's diagnosed with very advanced liver cancer and she starts to go into heroin withdrawal. But her dog, Mister, had other plans. Despite the fact that Sensational Lady and Billie assert that an adult man raped Holiday when she was 10, and that she began performing sex work with her mother when she was 13, few if any of the subjects interviewed appear to recognize how such experiences could perpetually reverberate through a persons life, or affect her In a tragically abbreviated singing career that lasted less than three decades, her evocative phrasing and poignant delivery profoundly influenced vocalists who But how much of the film is true? So she's given methadone and she starts to recover. Billie Holiday Play Similar Music New Release album The Ladies of Jazz Billie Holiday & Nina Simone, Oct 14, 2022 Releases The Ladies of Jazz Billie Holiday & Nina Simone Solitude: The Legendary Billie Holiday Billie Holiday Brussels, Belgium. When she arrived back at her hotel, cops were already swarming the lobby. I spent the rest of the war on 52nd Street and a few other streets. Please Note: Rulings and procedures reported in the IRB do not have the force and effect of Treasury Regulations, but they may be used as precedents. There was a racist, insane belief, that Black people and Latinos and Chinese Americans were using drugs, 'forgetting their place,' and attacking white people.. But meanwhile, decades before the protest songs of the 1960s, Holiday shouldered massive personal risks by performing Strange Fruit. Even though some white audience members left her shows when she performed the song, Holiday wrote it into her contracts that she would sing it each night. It's pure poppycock, but Andra Day and Trevante Rhodes have good sexual chemistry onscreen, bringing some charm and romance to a mostly dreary narrative. [July 2004]. Photos by Bettmann/Contributor and Takashi Seida/Hulu. It wasnt the pneumonia that killed him, it was Dallas, Texas. Shortly after she left West Virginia, a friend took her backstage after Vaughans show: The people hanging around there were wonderful, the air was full of Hi, baby and oo-papa-da and everybody telling me how great I looked. But that didnt matter. Blackburn writes that lynching "was at its most virulent between 1900 and 1920." Jazz legend .css-47aoac{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:inherit;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#A00000;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-47aoac:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}Billie Holiday poured her heart into each song, making each one her own with her distinct style. During her childhood, she also used her stepfather's last name, Gough, after her mother married longshoreman Phil Gough for a time. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Get her off that stage. And some part of it must have come across. Though the movies timeline jumps between different points of Holidays career and glimpses at the wider war on drugs (as well as the early war on jazz music), it focuses on how much Holiday was exploited by the predatory people and systems around her. Maybe they would have been kinder to me if theyd been nasty; then I wouldnt have trusted them enough to believe what they told me.. In the 1972 biopic "Lady Sings The Blues," she was played by Diana Ross, who looked and sounded nothing like her. All I expected was a little helloafter all, she was working. Copyright 2021 NPR. As the Treasury agent came towards us, I stepped on the gas. ", Screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks said that when she was approached for the film, she could see the story "right away." WHITEHEAD: Yeah, that didn't happen. 5 spot on the R&B charts the following year and made it into the top 20 of the pop charts as well. I try to improvise What comes out is what I feel.". "And his whole life, he felt really guilty about what he did. Buy Lady Sings the Blues on Amazon or Bookshop. And the raid scene in which she strips naked before him demanding to be searched for drugs is based on Fletchers memory of the incident, which Hari says suggests that the interaction between them became intense., After her autobiography was published, Holiday sent a copy to Fletcher. 'Never Have I Ever' Season 4 Arrives in June. She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. She was the daughter of Sarah Julia Sadie (Fagan) and Clarence Holiday, who was a jazz banjo player and guitarist. While the singer had initially stopped drinking on her doctor's orders, it was not long before she relapsed. However, she gets a hookup at the citys Ebony Club, run by John Levy (Tone Bell), whose relationship with the police gets them off his back (and who is, incidentally, not the same John Levy who would accompany Holiday on bass at Carnegie Hall). You don't have to take three guesses. ", Hari also told NPR that the agent apparently "had no sympathy for people with addiction problems," but Holiday was "was so amazing that Jimmy Fletcher fell in love with her." Photo illustration by Slate. A damn woman let out a scream. Feeling ill, she went into a New York hospital in May 1959 where she was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. However, it was originally written by poet, teacher, and activist Abel Meeropol, from New York. McKay batters Billie so badly that sometimes she has to tape up her ribs before performingnot to mention, he attempts to wrest control of her estate and works with Anslinger to arrest Holiday for her drug use yet again. "Billie Holiday's styling fulfilled the bitterness and the shocking quality I had hoped the song would have," Meeropol said, according to The Guardian. Based on a poem written by Lewis Allen, the private, painful meaning of the song never left her. Newspapers reported that he committed the gory killings while in the grip of a marijuana-induced nightmare. When she was ten years old, she was raped by an adult neighbor. She was previously married to Rev. She was handcuffed to her bed, and law enforcement kept a tight watch over her quarters, even as fans gathered outside the hospital to wish her well. The text reads that Anslinger remained Narcotics Bureau chief until his retirement in 1962; historical footage shows President John F. Kennedy officially commending him for his government service. While touring, Fletcher tails her on assignment and also takes up with her; Johann Hari wrote that the two did indeed become closer despite his betrayal, with Fletcher even falling in love with her. Oh, who just longs for your caresses? One of the people responsible for Americas turn from this laissez-faire approach to drug consumption was Harry Anslinger, whos played in The United States vs. Billie Holiday by Garrett Hedlund. DAY: (As Billie, singing) Southern trees. She made her first attempt to get clean in 1946but news of her stay in a sanitarium was leaked, and she began to be tailed in earnest by the feds, who were hoping to nail her for possession. Still, Anslingers team arrested her on her hospital bed, Hari revealed. Billie Holiday (Andra Day), accompanied by her stylist Miss Freddy (Miss Lawrence), sits down for an interview with radio journalist Reginald Lord Devine (Leslie Jordan). And thats just the way it felt. Holiday did her time at the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia, where she received none of the drug addiction treatment He was inspired to write it after seeing a photograph of a lynching. Anslinger, who once faced calls for his resignation after using the n-word in an internal memo, was not a fan of jazz music. A previous headline misspelled Billie Holiday's last name as Holliday. The man was arrestedbut Holiday was sent to a reformatory. Meeropol later set the poem to music, and the resulting song found its way to Holiday. It is unclear what led to their split. According to Holidays autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, she was arraigned there on drug charges stemming from the hotel raid and sentenced to serve at least a year at the all-woman Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia. I cut him off, just like that. WHITEHEAD: In some ways, "The United States Vs. Billie Holiday" offers a corrective to "Lady Sings The Blues." As the final text slides of the film say, Holiday died in the hospital on July 17, 1959, while still under watch by the narcs. WebHas Influenced Billie Holiday ("Lady Day") is considered by many to be the greatest of all jazz singers. In prison, Holiday spent her time knitting, making whiskey from potato peelings, and taking care of a herd of damn dirty squealing pigs. One thing she didnt do was sing. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Perhaps the most important song Holiday would ever sing was Strange Fruit. Written by communist poet and teacher Abel Meeropol after he saw a photo of lynched Black men, the song describes the bodies of lynching victims hanging from southern trees like the strange fruit of its title. Billie Holiday was an American jazz musician, singer, and songwriter. The best of movies, TV, books, music, and more, delivered to your inbox three times a week. And then Anslinger's men cut it off.". After being arrested for possession in 1947, Holiday was sentenced to a year in prison. The name "Billie" came from silent movie star Billie Dove, whom Holiday adored. You go out there and sing, he told Holiday. However, after her death, it was Louis who made all the arrangements for the funeral. I hope you can join us. It sold more than a million copies and rose to number 16 on the charts. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Federal authorities first targeted her shortly after she began singing the song. The two went their separate ways. Billie Holiday never stopped being addicted. She died on July 17th, 1959, at the age of 44. In the book, Hari tells stories of the casualties of the drug war, from its 20th century origins to profiles of contemporary dealers and users. Born Eleanora Fagan, the American jazz and swing music singer died on July 17, 1959, at the young age of 44. The Ebony magazine cover displayed that shows a portrait of Billie with the cover line Im Cured for Good Now was from the actual July 1949 issue, her declaration of her effort to stay away from heroin. She's based (and born and raised) in Brooklyn, New York. Well, spot the difference.. Per Legacy, Holiday was arrested in her hospital bed by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who said they found heroin in her room. Later, he harasses her in the hospital as she's dying. One scene in which Fletcher shoots up with Holiday and the band (undercover agents would often shoot up with their targets to demonstrate that they werent narcs) takes him into a view of Billies horrible childhood: We see her as a girl being referred to as Eleanora (her real name) and being dismissed by her mother, who indeed was often absent and later became a prostitute who forced young Holiday to also engage in sex work. It was widely rumored she and Holiday shared an intimate relationship, though it's understandably difficult to confirm these due to the danger associated with When she reunited with her mother, Sadie Gough, in Harlem, where Gough was doing sex work, Billie was forced into prostitution. In another scene at the caf, we see Holiday with Monroe, Glaser, and legendary saxophonist Lester Young (Tyler James Williams), who in real life played with Holiday for years, earning from her the affectionate nickname Prez and giving her the lasting alias Lady Day. As jazz writer Steve Provizer points out, however, the films overall depiction of Youngs playing style and personality is inaccurate. Try to improvise what comes out is what I feel. `` 's dying let... Jimmy Monroe addicted to alcohol and heroin Harlem, where as punishment she was working Billie, singing a! New York times headline an appearance at the 6th annual United States Conference on at... 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Hooked on heroin 's show, we May earn an affiliate commission our editors Dick attempted visit!: the movies have not been kind to Billie Holiday comes down with cirrhosis the! [ September 2002 ], I 'm the one pays you TV, books, music and... While the singer had initially stopped drinking on her doctor 's orders, it was Dallas Texas!
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