Sadly Over-hyped

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

In continuing my reviews of African-Americans in film in chronological order for Black History Month, we're now at 1972 with the biographical depiction of Billie Holliday as portrayed by Diana Ross called Lady Sings the Blues. While the movie itself isn't very accurate in recounting Lady Day's life and career and Ms. Ross herself hardly resembles the legendary singer, it does move along nicely as a drama especially with two of her costars-Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor-providing many scene stealing moments. As Holiday's lover Louis McKay, Williams oozes great romantic chemistry with Ross as we see him trying to get her out of whatever addictions she keeps coming back to. Then there's Pryor as Piano Man as we see many of his humorous moments, with or without Diana, bring some needed levity whenever things get heavy though there's some good drama concerning him at the end. Other black performers I'd like to mention include: Isabel Sandford as the first madame that Holiday encounters as we see her tell Billie she can keep the record she keeps playing. She was already familiar to TV viewers as Louise Jefferson on "All in the Family" which would later spin her off into "The Jeffersons". Then there's Lynn Hamilton as the second madame Ross encounters. Ms. Hamilton would later that year or next become familiar as Fred Sandford's girlfriend Donna Harris on "Sandford and Son". Harry Caesar plays a really creepy man who forces himself on teenage Billie in perhaps the movie's most chilling scene. There's also Jester Hairston-later familiar to me as Rolly on "Amen"-as a butler and, in perhaps the most humorous scene, Scatman Crothers as Big Ben, a client that prostitute Billie quits on to go audition at a night club. Ms. Ross was the second (or third since Cicely Tyson was also nominated that year for Sounder) African-American to be nominated an Oscar for Best Actress after Dorothy Dandridge's previous nod some 18 years before. It was much deserved especially with the drug-induced depictions handled realistically by her. The songs Holiday made famous are handled by Diana in a way that brings you back to the period depicted here. When the score plays during the Ross-Williams dialogue, however, it brings me temporarily out of the period and into the obviously-made-in-'70s mode. Other than that I highly enjoyed Lady Sings the Blues and recommend it to anyone who loves a good drama with good music.

I have watched this movie a few times, the first time when it was first released in 1972 and I was barely 4 years old and it has left an indelible mark on me ever since. During this time, most of the films with a predominately Black cast were of the blaxploitation genre. You may think it strange or inappropriate for my parents to take a 4 year old to an "R" rated film but majority of the films with mostly Black casts of this era were rated "R", usually because of vulgarity and violence. My parents eagerly awaited this film and since they could not find a babysitter took me along. They did not expect me to fully understand the film and they probably assumed that I would probably sleep through it (they had me dressed in my pajamas). Even at this young age, I was impressed to see a film on this grand scale that elevated a historical Black icon like Billie Holliday; this was unprecedented and this was not lost on me then or now.This is an excellent movie and by the rating it has received here (7/10) and the five Academy Awards & three Golden Globe nominations it garnered (Diana Ross won the Golden Globe for Most Promising New Actress); my opinion is not in the minority. While this film may gloss over a lot of Billie's life, the script was based on her autobiography (this may be how Billie chose to remember her past) and the screenplay was also nominated for an Oscar.Diana Ross did not capture the look and sound of Billie Holliday nor did she attempt to. Diana Ross did not channel Billie Holliday the way that Angela Bassett did with Tina Turner or the way Val Kilmer did with Jim Morrison or how Jamie Foxx did with Ray Charles but she internalized Billie's triumphs, pain, struggles, and personal demons and depicted this exceptionally well and she interpreted Billie's voice by not trying to duplicate the inimitatable but maximized the range of her own voice using Billie's distinctive phrasing and capturing the essence of her spirit while coaxing out a myriad of emotions. The double album soundtrack topped the Billboard charts for two weeks, Diana Ross' only number one Pop album as a solo singer.This film made me a Billie Holliday fan at age 4. After this film, in addition to Billie, I listened to Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme, Nat King Cole, Ethel Waters, and Dinah Washington while my peers were just starting to rock to disco. This film and its music still stands the test of time as implied by the recent success of Diana Ross' CD, "Blue" (which was previously unreleased material originally recorded for Motown as a follow-up to this soundtrack) on the jazz and adult contemporary Billboard charts. Billie Holliday is without a doubt an icon but so is Diana Ross. Most people would have to admit that for a debut performance, Diana Ross did an outstanding job, no matter what you may think of her personally. In addition, for it to be the only screenplay that she has ever written, Suzanne DePasse (who was a Motown A&R executive at the time and was the first and remains the only Black woman to be nominated for an Oscar for writing) created a great story even if it presents a slightly less gritty portrayal of the troubled singer's life.

The recent death of Richard Pryor prompted me to look at the 2005 DVD package of 1972's "Lady Sings the Blues", which proves the then-young comedian to be a fine actor in the meaty supporting role of Piano Man. Even though he was a master stand-up comic, it's still too bad he never pursued roles of a similar dramatic caliber since he obviously had the talent. Similarly, Diana Ross never fulfilled the promise of her big screen debut in the title role as legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915-59).Bearing no physical and little vocal resemblance to Holiday, Ross somehow gets under her true-life character's skin much like Joaquin Phoenix does in "Walk the Line" or Jamie Foxx in "Ray". Thirty-three years have elapsed since I first saw this movie, and it is with a certain amount of regret that I report that Ross as an actress has not been anywhere near this good since then. Granted she only has three features under her belt, 1975's "Mahogany" reflected an ego run amok, and she was disturbingly miscast in 1978's "The Wiz". From the opening scene where she is suffering through heroin withdrawal in raw, harrowing detail to her sultrier nightclub performances, she manages to be incendiary by her sheer will. She is even convincing in the early scenes where she is barely a teenager. Her vocal performances really don't evoke Holiday's earthier style, though to Ross's credit, her vivid renditions of standards such as "Mean to Me", "Fine and Mellow" and "Gimme a Pigfoot (and a Bottle of Beer)" don't sound like Supremes redux either.This achievement is all the more impressive since director Sidney J. Furie, a journeyman filmmaker at best, has surrounded Ross with an unwieldy rags-to-riches biopic that should have been edited down from its 144-minute running time. The screenplay - credited to Chris Clark, Suzanne De Passe and Terence McCloy (none of whom wrote a movie script before or since) based in part on Holiday's autobiography - plays fast and loose with the facts and piles on the clichés in true Oscar-baiting fashion. The drug-related scenes are powerful, though they eventually start to feel like condescending plot devices to make the viewer sympathize with Holiday for the persecution she experienced at the hands of abusive men and a bigoted society. Moreover, as Furie discloses on the accompanying audio commentary, the dialogue for several scenes is improvised by the actors, for example, the unnecessarily lengthy Club Manhattan sequence, where the lack of discipline becomes wearing.Contrary to the fact that Holiday's true life story has been well documented and interest in her legacy increased, the filmmakers altered events and people in order to maintain interest from what they thought were mainstream audiences at the time. Consequently, the character of Louis McKay, Holiday's love interest and eventual husband, played with toothsome charm by Billy Dee Williams, synthesizes a lot of men who came into her life and helped shape her career. The dramatized results leave out key figures of the jazz world like saxophonist Lester Young, trombonist Jimmy Monroe to whom Holiday was married, and record producer John Hammond, as well as Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Artie Shaw and Teddy Wilson--all important colleagues and mentors during the period covered in the film. Instead, we are given Holiday's story as filtered through Ross's own story, an observation confirmed by Ross herself on the accompanying 2005 making-of featurette.When the music is true to the period, it's quite wonderful, but composer Michel Legrand composed some gauzy, anachronistic interludes that sound like symphonic outtakes from his work on "Brian's Song". The costumes also have a Vegas revue feel, no surprise since designer Bob Mackie's flamboyant, early 1970's style is on full display here. For such an overlong movie, the ending feels quite truncated as newspaper clips are used to telegraph her eventual fate as Ross triumphantly sings her signature song, "God Bless the Child", in Carnegie Hall. Credit Motown mogul and Ross's Svengali, Berry Gordy, for having the fortitude, foresight and tenacity to oversee the project, and the DVD hammers that point in not only the overemphatic, only partially insightful commentary by Furie, Gordy and artists' manager Shelly Berger but also the making-of featurette which features Ross looking strangely youthful and Williams at least looking his age. There are several deleted scenes included in the DVD with no additional commentary from Furie, none refurbished and all understandably excised from the final cut.

I never quite understood the backlash this movie has received over the years. It amazes me when people always seek perfection. This movie is not perfect. But lets applaud what it does provide. A dynamic debut performance by Diana Ross, a memorable supporting performance by a young Richard Pryor. Great music and score by Michel Legrand. Great wardrobe worn by Ross in this movie.Any good film is made up of a few really good scenes. I can easily count 5 or 6 excellent scenes in this movie. #1-opening scene where they put a straight jacket on Ross and through her in a padded cell. #2-When she first lays eyes on Billy Dee and is carried out of the nightclub. #3- The "Good morning Heartache" scene at her birthday party at the club #4-The scene where she attacks Billy Dee in the bathroom, because he won't give her her dope #5- When Piano man is beaten to death #6-When she gets the call that her mother died,while she was in the middle of getting a fix..I COULD go on. People who dismiss this film for being standard Hollywood fare are really not doing this film justice. There is really nothing standard about it. It depicted several stages of the life of Lady Day..And as we know her life was anything but standard fare...