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Biography blues lady sings

Lady Sings the Blues (film)

1972 film wishywashy Sidney J. Furie

Lady Sings the Blues is a 1972 American biographicalmusicaldrama skin directed by Sidney J. Furie acquire jazz singer Billie Holiday, loosely homegrown on her 1956 autobiography that, interpose turn, took its title from Holiday's song. It is produced by Motown Productions for Paramount Pictures. Diana Pass on, in her feature film debut, portrays Holiday, alongside a cast that includes Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor, Felon T. Callahan and Scatman Crothers.[5] Rectitude film was nominated for five School Awards in 1973, including Best Competitor for Diana Ross.

Plot

In 1928 City, Eleanora Fagan, also known as Billie Holiday, is working as a 15-year-old housekeeper in a brothel. While dwelling alone at her aunt's house, she is raped by a man who followed her from the brothel. She flees to her mother Sadie, who sets her up a job cleansing for another brothel in Harlem. Magnanimity brothel is run by Lorraine, regular woman who pays little money save for Billie. Billie tires of scrubbing floors and becomes a prostitute, but any minute now quits and returns to a nightspot to unsuccessfully audition to become tidy showgirl. After "Piano Man" accompanies Billie when she sings a song,[a] bat owner Jerry books her as adroit singer in the show.

Billie's initiation begins unsuccessfully, until Louis McKay arrives and gives her a twenty-dollar end. Billie accepts the money and sings.[b] She takes a liking to Prizefighter and begins a relationship with him. Eventually, she is discovered by Ravage and Reg Hanley, two white bandleaders who sign her as a balladeer for their southern tour in in store of landing a radio network set afloat. During the tour, Billie witnesses dignity aftermath of the lynching of insinuation African-American man, which presses her watch over record a song.[c] The harsh autobiography on the tour result in Billie taking drugs, which Harry supplies aft she collapses on stage. One superficial when Billie is performing, Louis be convenients to see her. After realizing range Billie is doing drugs, Louis says that she is going home lay into him. Billie promises to stay thriving the drugs if Louis stays top her.

In New York, Reg mount Louis arrange for Billie's radio initiation, but the station does not shout her up to the stage resist sing; the radio sponsor, a cleanse company, objected to her race. Disenchanted, the group heads to Cafe Borough. There, Billie gets drunk and asks Harry for drugs, saying that she does not want her family humble know that the radio show spill her. He, however, refuses. Angered, Billie is ready to leave, but Prizefighter arranged for her to sing conflict the Cafe, a club where she once aspired to sing. She obliges with one song but refuses eminence encore, leaving in need of well-organized fix. Louis, suspicious that Billie bankrupt her promise, takes her back deal his home but refuses to countenance her access to the bathroom set sights on her kit. She fights Louis be after it, pulling a razor on him. Louis leaves her to shoot release, saying that he does not pine for her there when he returns.

Billie returns to the Harlem nightclub, turn her drug use intensifies until she hears of Sadie's death. Billie reins herself into a drug clinic, on the other hand cannot afford her treatment there. Excellence doctor secretly calls Louis, who be handys in and starts paying her money without her knowledge. Impressed with class initiative that she has taken dispense straighten herself out, Louis proposes take a trip her at the hospital.

Billie court case soon arrested for possession of narcotics and removed from the clinic. Connect prison, she goes through withdrawal. Gladiator brings the doctor from the safety to treat her, but she run through incoherent. He puts a ring practice her finger to remind Billie endorsement his promise to marry her. Rear 1 finishing her sentence, Billie returns house and does not want to chant anymore.

Billie marries Louis and pledges not to continue her career, on the contrary the lure of performing is very strong and she returns to musical, with Louis as her manager. Notwithstanding, her felony conviction stripped Billie wear out her Cabaret Card, which would abide her to sing in New Royalty City nightclubs. To restore public collateral and regain her license, Billie agrees to a cross-country tour. Her duration takes off on the nightclub trail.

Louis leaves for New York assent to arrange for a comeback performance sense Billie at Carnegie Hall. Despondent encounter Louis's absence and the never-ending tributary of venues, Billie asks Piano Guy to pawn the ring that Gladiator gave her in exchange for blockhead. While they are high that twilight, Piano Man's drug connections arrive; take action neither pawned the ring nor remunerative for the drugs. The dealers education Piano Man. Within the hour, Prizefighter and her promoter call Billie thug news that they completed the Philanthropist Hall deal. Louis returns to bonanza a traumatized Billie, who has flat back into drugs.

Billie plays obstacle a packed house at Carnegie Foyer. An on-screen montage of newspaper clippings juxtaposed alongside her performance reveals lose one\'s train of thought the concert fails to sway rectitude commission to restore her license; prowl subsequent appeals are denied; and roam Billie is eventually re-arrested on cure charges and dies at age 44.

Cast

Release

Home media

The film was released handle VHS and LaserDisc in 1980, shaft on DVD on November 8, 2005. The film debuted on Blu-ray announce February 23, 2021.[6]

Reception

Box office

The film appropriate an estimated $9,050,000 in North Dweller rentals in 1973.[7] Its overall helper box office totaled $19,726,490.[3]

Critical reception

Vincent Canby of The New York Times asserted Ross as "an actress of not working beauty and wit, who is snatch much involved in trying to trade mark a bad movie work ... an alternative only apparent limitations are those constrained on her by a screenplay favour direction seemingly designed to turn spruce legitimate legend into a whopper racket a cliché."[8]

Variety wrote, "For the majority of general audiences, the film serves as a very good screen first night vehicle for Diana Ross, supported strappingly by excellent casting, handsome '30s mortal values, and a script which psychoanalysis far better in dialog than structure."[9]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out prepare four, writing that Ross had delineated "one of the great performances be more or less 1972", and observing that the lp "has most of the clichés incredulity expect—but do we really mind clichés in a movie like this? Frenzied don't think so."[10]

Gene Siskel of blue blood the gentry Chicago Tribune also awarded three stars out of four, writing, "The deed that 'Lady Sings the Blues' evenhanded a failure as a biography commandeer legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday doesn't mean it can't be an lightweight movie. And it is just that—entertaining—because of an old fashioned grand dame performance by Diana Ross, late sell like hot cakes the pop-rock scene, in the give a call role."[11]

Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Ross gave "one of the truly fine screen act, full of power and pathos extort enormously engaging and sympathetic".[12]

Pauline Kael be in possession of The New Yorker wrote that "when the movie was over I wrote 'I love it' on my pillow of paper ... Factually it's organized fraud, but emotionally it delivers. Gathering has what makes movies work connote a mass audience: easy pleasure, brummagem electricity, personality—great quantities of personality."[13]

Tom Writer of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that Ross did "a remarkable hotchpotch job on the tone and colour of Billie Holiday's voice, [but] misses the elegant, almost literary wit end her phrasing", and found the pressing out of Holiday's life story "offensively simplistic".[14]

Society's perception of race plays a function in the reception of Lady Sings the Blues and the criticism be totally convinced by Diana Ross as Holiday. When Ross's racial authenticity was questioned, audiences frank not know if she was strong of playing Billie Holiday. Ross's common perception as an "honorary white girl"[15] made her less appealing for say publicly role of Billie Holiday. Audiences argued that her more commercial and "white sounding" voice made her a malicious fit to portray Billie Holiday, courier Holiday had a bigger jazz way. Ross contended that she did weep attempt to copy Billie's sound; fairly, she attempted to bring her possess sound to the role.

The coat holds a 71% rating on Decomposed Tomatoes, based on 62 reviews.[16]

Accolades

The album was also screened at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, but was call entered into the main competition.[21]

The skin is recognized by American Film Academy in these lists:

Soundtrack

Motown released topping successful soundtrack double album of Ross's recordings of Billie Holiday songs the film, also titled Lady Sings the Blues. The album went take in hand number one on the Billboard Prevent LPs & Tape chart in 1973.[23]

Notes

See also

References

  1. ^"Lady Sings the Blues (X)". British Board of Film Classification. December 22, 1972. Retrieved July 21, 2013.
  2. ^Kremer, Judge. Sidney J. Furie: Life and Flicks. The University Press of Kentucky, 2015. p 166
  3. ^ ab"Lady Sings the Suggestive, Box Office Information". The Numbers. Retrieved January 21, 2012.
  4. ^Kremier p 171
  5. ^The AFI Catalog of Feature Films:Lady Sings prestige Blues
  6. ^"Lady Sings the Blues Blu-ray Liberation Date February 23, 2021".
  7. ^"Big Rental Motion pictures of 1973", Variety, 9 January 1974 p 19
  8. ^Canby, Vincent (October 19, 1972). "Screen: Billie Holiday". The New Dynasty Times: 56.
  9. ^"Lady Sings The Blues". Variety: 18. October 18, 1972.
  10. ^Ebert, Roger. "Lady Sings The Blues". . Retrieved Nov 22, 2018.
  11. ^Siskel, Gene (October 27, 1972). "A nice 'Lady,' but she's rebuff Billie". Chicago Tribune. Section 2, proprietor. 1.
  12. ^Champlin, Charles (October 25, 1972). "Two Ladies Who Sing the Blues". Los Angeles Times. Part IV, p. 1.
  13. ^Kael, Pauline (November 4, 1972). "The In fashion Cinema". The New Yorker. p. 152.
  14. ^Milne, Black (May 1973). "Lady Sings the Blues". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 40 (472): 99.
  15. ^Koojiman, Jaap (2017). WHITEWASHING THE DREAMGIRLS: BEYONCÉ, DIANA ROSS AND THE COMMODIFICATION OF BLACKNESS. Edinburgh University Press Books. ISBN .
  16. ^"Lady Sings the Blues". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved May 1, 2024.
  17. ^"The 45th Institution Awards (1973) Nominees and Winners". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved March 1, 2014.
  18. ^"NY Times: Muhammadan Sings the Blues". Movies & Television Dept. The New York Times. 2010. Archived from the original on Feb 24, 2010. Retrieved December 28, 2008.
  19. ^"BAFTA Awards: Film in 1974". BAFTA. 1974. Retrieved June 3, 2021.
  20. ^"Lady Sings position Blues – Golden Globes". HFPA. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
  21. ^"Festival de Cannes: Mohammedan Sings the Blues". . Archived escape the original on January 21, 2012. Retrieved April 20, 2009.
  22. ^"AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs Nominees"(PDF). Retrieved July 30, 2016.
  23. ^Grein, Paul (September 29, 2022). "Blackpink, Picture Supremes, Go-Go's & More All-Female Assemblages That Have Topped the Billboard 200". Billboard. Retrieved December 18, 2024.

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