I wonder what Diana Ross thought when her lover and mentor Berry Gordy told her that as part of his plan to launch her post-Supremes solo career in entertainment, her debut film role would be playing the life story of the troubled blues singer Billie Holiday. Remembering the cushy fashion drama in which he placed her to follow up this role (in a reportedly vapid film called "Mahogany") you could be forgiven for thinking that Berry had got his master plan back to front. But no, here was the erstwhile lead singer of the most popular girl group of the day, late of the Copacabana and other swish night clubs stepping into the shoes of the drug-addicted, died-too-soon Holiday. You have to at least admire their moxy.
More than that, whilst the film I doubt follows Billie's life too slavishly and Ross certainly doesn't much look or sound like her, t'was often the way with Hollywood biopics. Sure there's some airbrushing here but the film does show her troubled upbringing (and certainly one thing Ross could convey was waif-like as these early scenes demand) born to a single mother and forced to live apart from her, being raped at age 14 and then being put to work as a prostitute, indeed the film starts jarringly with the traumatic depiction of Ross being forcibly straitjacketed in a solitary confinement sanatorium padded cell, which must have come as a shock to her Motown fans used to seeing her in posh frocks and diamanté earrings.
Of course the realism doesn't stop there as she later encounters racism out on the road in the South, having to sit outside a 'whites-only" diner while her band mates eat within, has a run-in with the Ku Klux Klan and witnesses a hanged fellow -black, the "Strange Fruit" which charged the famous song Holiday so chillingly evoked. Most of all though, the eye-opening scenes are the vein-opening scenes as Billie finds that the only way to keep going out on the road is with narcotic stimuli.
People might argue that the ending is too upbeat as she knocks them dead at her entertainment Holy Grail, the Carnegie Hall, but even then the screen insets tell us in reality Holiday ended up back on the drugs and was dead at only 44.
While it's easy to see where the narrative is sanitised and takes short cuts, I consider the film well directed by the veteran Sidney J Furie. Whilst in truth a better player of the Billie role on the Motown roster would surely have been Gladys Knight, still I'm happy to give kudos to Ross for obviously giving her all in the part of a lifetime for her. She was never a truly great singer in the first place and blues could hardly be considered her natural musical idiom but while she neither looks or sounds like the real Holiday, you can see her feeling the songs and I think she does well in the traumatic scenes when she's at the mercy of the demon drugs. In support Billy Dee Williams is fine as her initially aloof but later supportive husband and Richard Pryor puts in a scene-stealing shift as the singer's faithful piano accompanist.
It's a bit of a cliche to say that I hope at least some viewers looked past Ross's interpretations of Holiday classics like "My Man", "Good Morning Heartache", "God Bless The Child" and her self-penned "Don't Explain" to the original versions. On the whole though I'd say this was a brave and partially successful portrayal of a difficult lady living her difficult life the hard way.
More than that, whilst the film I doubt follows Billie's life too slavishly and Ross certainly doesn't much look or sound like her, t'was often the way with Hollywood biopics. Sure there's some airbrushing here but the film does show her troubled upbringing (and certainly one thing Ross could convey was waif-like as these early scenes demand) born to a single mother and forced to live apart from her, being raped at age 14 and then being put to work as a prostitute, indeed the film starts jarringly with the traumatic depiction of Ross being forcibly straitjacketed in a solitary confinement sanatorium padded cell, which must have come as a shock to her Motown fans used to seeing her in posh frocks and diamanté earrings.
Of course the realism doesn't stop there as she later encounters racism out on the road in the South, having to sit outside a 'whites-only" diner while her band mates eat within, has a run-in with the Ku Klux Klan and witnesses a hanged fellow -black, the "Strange Fruit" which charged the famous song Holiday so chillingly evoked. Most of all though, the eye-opening scenes are the vein-opening scenes as Billie finds that the only way to keep going out on the road is with narcotic stimuli.
People might argue that the ending is too upbeat as she knocks them dead at her entertainment Holy Grail, the Carnegie Hall, but even then the screen insets tell us in reality Holiday ended up back on the drugs and was dead at only 44.
While it's easy to see where the narrative is sanitised and takes short cuts, I consider the film well directed by the veteran Sidney J Furie. Whilst in truth a better player of the Billie role on the Motown roster would surely have been Gladys Knight, still I'm happy to give kudos to Ross for obviously giving her all in the part of a lifetime for her. She was never a truly great singer in the first place and blues could hardly be considered her natural musical idiom but while she neither looks or sounds like the real Holiday, you can see her feeling the songs and I think she does well in the traumatic scenes when she's at the mercy of the demon drugs. In support Billy Dee Williams is fine as her initially aloof but later supportive husband and Richard Pryor puts in a scene-stealing shift as the singer's faithful piano accompanist.
It's a bit of a cliche to say that I hope at least some viewers looked past Ross's interpretations of Holiday classics like "My Man", "Good Morning Heartache", "God Bless The Child" and her self-penned "Don't Explain" to the original versions. On the whole though I'd say this was a brave and partially successful portrayal of a difficult lady living her difficult life the hard way.