Lady Sings the Blues

Billie Holiday's life: childhood in Baltimore, the first stages, the relationship with Louis McKay, heroin, prison, the loss of her cabaret card, and Carnegie Hall. Sidney J. Furie directs. Diana Ross plays Holiday, Billy Dee Williams plays McKay, Richard Pryor plays Piano Man. Berry Gordy produced; it was Motown's entry into film. Ross had never acted, and the casting was widely attacked. The result reversed that: she was nominated for the best actress Oscar and the film took five further nominations. Its real problem is accuracy. Holiday's musical life is almost entirely compressed. The musicians who taught her, her relationship with Lester Young, the years with Count Basie and Artie Shaw, are absent or reduced to a line, while addiction and romance fill the centre. The source was Holiday's 1956 memoir, itself a contested book. Ross does not imitate. Rather than copying Holiday's voice she sings in her own, and that choice is the most defended thing in the film. The soundtrack album sold heavily. Who it is for: viewers curious about Diana Ross as an actress and about Motown's productions in the seventies. Who it is not for: anyone wanting Billie Holiday's music and her actual story. The film skips most of both.