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Feb 22, 2021 · The United States vs. Billie Holiday true story reveals that the song "Strange Fruit" was not written by Holiday. It originated from a 1937 poem written by Jewish-American songwriter and teacher Abel Meeropol, a member of the American Communist Party, a fact that manager Joe Glaser points out in the movie. The poem, originally titled "Bitter ...
Dec 3, 2020 · The film reaffirms some oft-told legends about Billie Holiday: She could curse up a storm; had affairs with men and women (according to some, Tallulah Bankhead among them); liked to get high from ...
- Elizabeth Blair
Feb 25, 2021 · Concentrating on the last dozen years of Holiday’s life — she was 44 when she died, of liver disease, in 1959 — the movie flashes back to her grim childhood and expands to include many ...
- “Strange Fruit”
- Café Society
- Harry Anslinger’s War on Drugs
- The United States vs. Billie Holiday
- Billie’s Comeback
- Holiday’s Death and Legacy
The movie starts with a graphic photo of white people attacking a Black victim, with overlay text noting that in 1937, an anti-lynching bill was considered in the Senate, though it ultimately didn’t pass. This is true: A bill was introduced in the chamber early that year but was filibustered out of further consideration, although a version of the b...
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). 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...
This newspaper does serve as an introduction to another major figure: Harry J. Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund), then head of the Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics and one of the primary leaders of the government’s effort to stifle Holiday. Despite President Harry Truman’s tepid steps toward advancing civil rights for Black Americans, ra...
According to Holiday herself, she really was forced off the stage after singing “Strange Fruit” at Philadelphia’s Earle Theater in May 1947, despite having received a rapturous welcome at first. The next scenes are somewhat fudged: The movie depicts Holiday at Joe Guy’s New York apartment the day after the performance, where she’s apprehended by a ...
Holiday serves about a year at the prison before being let out early, by March 1948, for good behavior. After her release, her new manager Ed Fishman (Alain Goulem) wants to get her headlining Carnegie Hall. The effort goes through and the prestigious venue sells out, priming the path for Holiday’s comeback. While at the hall, someone yells for her...
Billie Holiday comes down with cirrhosis of the liver and is hospitalized. As is seen in the movie, the feds tailed her even while she was in this condition, planting drugs in her room and attempting to get her to name her dealer. She was handcuffed to her bed, and law enforcement kept a tight watch over her quarters, even as fans gathered outside ...
- Nitish Pahwa
Feb 22, 2021 · Takashi Seida/HULU. Director Lee Daniels was in the midst of wrapping up his latest movie — The United States vs. Billie Holiday, which tells the story of the late, troubled jazz singer and how ...
Feb 18, 2021 · Published Feb. 18, 2021 Updated April 25, 2021. For the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, the story of Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz singer, came to her in dribs and drabs ...
When a movie is based on historical events, we can’t help but wonder: How much did they get right? Keep watching to learn the true story behind The United States vs. Billie Holiday. Did Billie Holiday have a drug problem? By the mid-1940s, Billie Holiday was spending about $500 a week on drugs (with inflation, over $9,000 in today’s money).
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