The life of
bisexual blues singer Billie Holiday has been covered in pop culture before.
Diana Ross played her in the 1972 film Lady Sings the Blues, and
Audra McDonald won a Tony Award for portraying her in the play Lady Day
at Emerson’s Bar and Grill. But Lee Daniels’s The United States vs.
Billie Holiday, starring a riveting Andra Day in her first film role
ever as the titular Holiday, goes deep into examining a government-led attempt
to silence her for singing “Strange Fruit” in public. They claimed that the
song, which depicts the lynching of Black people, incited violence. And one FBI
agent in particular, Harry Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund), made it his mission to
take Holiday down.
Holiday was a
known drug user, as the film depicts, and Anslinger uses it against her, hiring
a young Black man, Jimmy Fletcher (Moonlight’s Trevante Rhodes) to do
his bidding and catch Holiday holding enough junk to lock her away. As the
title of the film gives away, he succeeds in taking Holiday’s voice from her —
for a time.
Based on
Johann Hari’s novel and with a screenplay by playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, the
film also highlights some of Holiday’s romantic entanglements with Jimmy; her
volatile husband and manager, McKay (Rob Morgan); and actress Tallulah Bankhead
(Natasha Lyonne).
Watch the
trailer for the culturally important movie below. The United States vs.
Billie Holiday is out on Hulu on February 26.
SOURCE: ADVOCATE
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