Masters of American Music: Billie Holiday
This film invites viewers to see the many faces of this beautiful woman- this dark lady of the sonnets, as one poet called her -and to appreciate her undying art more deeply. Most presentations of Billie Holiday feature Billie as the sad victim of hard times and drugs. The single fact of her life that matters above all others is that she was a great artist who, with Louis Armstrong, invented modern jazz singing. Mining a treasure-trove of completely new information, the producers set the record straight - and beautifully. In a voice that is Billie-like in its rasping wiseness and its ring, stage and screen star, Ruby Dee, reads from Holiday's autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues.