Billie Holiday

[Orson&Jazz]

I posted this on another message board, and I didn't notice it on this site yet, so I don't know if any body else has read this.

It is a blurb taken from the book Lady Sings The Blues, by Billie Holiday and William Dufty. It tells of her encounter with Orson Welles. I think it is interesting because it is a first-hand experience with Orson

It was another big night at the joint in the valley the night I met Orson Welles. Orson was in Hollywood for the first time, like me. I liked him and he liked me, and jazz. We started hanging around together.

So when I’d finished at the joint in the valley, we’d head for Central Avenue, and the Negro ghetto of Los Angeles, and I’d take him around all the joints and dives. I was bored with all this stuff; I’d grown up in it, there was nothing anybody in California could show me, anything there was doing out there, I’d seen before and sideways. I was bored, but he loved it.

There wasn’t a damn thing or person he wasn’t interested in. He wanted to see everything and find out who and why it ticked. I guess that’s part of what made him such a great artist.

Orson was up to his ears then making his first picture, Citizen Kane, was writing, directing, and acting all over the place. He might be out balling, but his head seemed to going all the time, thinking about what was going to happen at the studio the next morning at 6 A.M. Citizen Kane was a great picture. I’ll bet I saw it nine times before it played in any theaters. He was such a hell of an actor, I never missed the scenery or the costumes.

After we’d been seen together a few times I started getting phone calls at my hotel telling me I was ruining Orson’s career by being seen with him. People used to bug me, saying the studio would get after me, that I’d never get to work in pictures, and God knows what, if I didn’t leave him alone. The hotel used to get the same kind of calls from people trying to make trouble for me or for him.

A lot of creeps have been dogging Orson Welles ever since but they can’t touch him. He’s a fine cat – probably the finest I ever met. And a talented cat. But more than that, he’s fine people.

I'd like to read more about Orson from first-hand experiences. They seem more intriuging. To read about people that actually knew him; fascinating.

[Glenn Anders]

What a fine tribute, by one fine artist of another. Does Billie Holiday say anything about her only feature film, NEW ORLEANS? The notion for the picture, a history of Jazz, is thought to have started with one of the tendrils which was to have fed a segment into IT'S ALL TRUE. Four years later, it finally became a full length picture, greatly debased but with players like Louie Armstrong and Billie.

Glenn

[Orson&Jazz]

Yes, I thought it was great for some talented like Billie to praise Orson. I loved her before, and after reading what she said about Orson just made me appreciate her even more. Great lady.

Yes, her book does cover a bit about that film. She really doesn't go too much into it.

She was pissed that she was to play a maid. She really did not want to play a maid. She wanted to back out, but they gave her that 'she'd never work in Hollywood again' type crap if she did.

She also mentioned that the 'star' of the film, the female lead I guess, started some nonsense that Billie was intentionally stealing scenes from her. So the 'star' tried her best to make Billie's time on the set a living Hell.

Eventually when Billie finished the film, and saw it later(much later), she noticed that they cut out tonnes of the music footage. She guesses that the 'star' of the film got her way, and they cut out much of Billie's scenes. She mentioned that becasue of that experience, she was never in a hurry to make another film again.


Spoiled actress any way. I would have watched the film if there was to be a lot of Billie and Louis. It would have been great. Incredible talent with them together.

Some of those Hollywood 'big shots' sure knew how to wreck a movie.

:angry:

[Glenn Anders]

Orson & Jazz: The actress Billie Holiday refers to would have been Dorothy Patrick, not exactly one of the great leading ladies of Hollywood. [Shelly Winters does a small bit, but she would not have been the culprit.] Well, the year of NEW ORLEAN's release was 1947, and looking at the picture's very troubled history, it's a wonder it got made at all, at the time.

When Welles and Louis Armstrong first discussed the idea around 1940, I gather that the action of the segment was to have centered on Armstrong's life, a kind of early day biopic along the lines of RAY, and Black Jazz diaspora after the closing of Storyville. As you suggest, the picture which was actually made id very different. A whole white story structure, involving classical music and snobbery about Jazz, was moved to the center of the film. At the end Woody Herman comes along with his Big Band, and pretty much pushes the black artists off the screen.

Your observation of Billie Holiday's distaste for being cast as a stereotype is almost palpable on the screen, and at times she appears to be separated entirely from what's going on, which may have been Dorothy Patrick's doing. Ms. Holliday disappears after the march out of Storyville, when the action shifts to Chicago and New York. Still, she is shown in a dramatic context and appears to have the makings of an actress. And Louis Armstrong, for the first half of the film, is charismatic and dominates his scenes. A fair number of Dixieland Greats perform and act with him.

Here is a review of NEW ORLEANS, which goes into the picture's history and its connections to Welles:

http://www.epinions.com/content_91456573060

Glenn

[Orson&Jazz]

I did not know that Orson had connections to the film New Orleans. Oh what a wonderful movie it would have been if it was made the way he imagined it. Louis Armstrong as the main character! It would have been great, and I definitely would have watched it! It would have been a great Jazz movie, and I have no doubt that it would be considered one of the greatest today. It would have legitimized Jazz music and it's artistic value and put it in the fore front. It would have brought respect for performers like Louis, Billie, Ellington, Basie, etc. and their craft much earlier. I don't think it would have been as terrible as what this movie is. I think it would have been greater. I hate that this is what became of their dream.

I checked out the link. I like how the movie cover has just Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong. Where is the stuck up actress who made Billie's life Hell? Too funny! It's great that Billie sort of got her 'revenge' in the end.

I also like that the movie review mainly mentions just Billie, Louis, and their crew as the only redeeming aspects of the film. I would too. I do not doubt for a second that they are the only talent worth watching in the film. This goes for the snobby actress, who probably stunk up every scene she was in.

[Glenn Anders]

Yes, Orson & Jazz, it is interesting and ironic to see Holiday and Armstrong featured on that DVD cover for NEW ORLEANS, when the stock plot featuring another group of players dominates much of the action. What pull Dorothy Patrick would have had on that set is hard to figure. She was, after all, a former Goldwyn Girl, who starred in only a few pictures, most of them less distinguished than this one. Patrick might very well, in her own way, considering the time, have been as embarrassed by her role as Holiday was by hers. NEW ORLEANS was really make or break for Miss Patrick, but the picture didn't work for her, any more than it did for Billie Holiday.

The difference, of course, was that Holiday was a superb talent, doing a bit of slumming in this picture.

Speaking of ironies, in tooling around looking for references to Dorothy Patrick (finding few), I did notice that she was grouped in several pictures with an actress who figured more directly in the life of Orson Welles -- Joi Lansing, most notably in SINGING IN THE RAIN, though I can't remember either her or Dorothy Patrick in that happy picture. The comely Miss Lansing starred in the pilot for Welles' best shot at an American TV series.

Glenn

[Knowles Noel Shane]

Joi Lansing has a "ticking noise" in her head in Touch of Evil.

[Glenn Anders]

Just so, Knowles. I was fatigued when I wrote the above. I couldn't even remember the TV episode title, "Fountain of Youth." Joi Lansing's roles for Welles take on some irony when one considers how young she was when she died.

Thank you.

Glenn

[Knowles Noel Shane]

Don't feel badly or alone. I'm certainly only too familiar with fatigue and a foggy memory.

[Orson&Jazz]

Me too. I'm lucky if I remember what I did last week.

???

[Orson&Jazz]