Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth

Author:  John Szwed
Genre:  Biography


Hardcover; (Kindle, Audible)
ISBN #:  9780670014729
Viking
240 Pages
$21.11 Amazon; ($11.99; $20.95)
March 31, 2015

Four Stars

When Billie Holiday stepped into Columbia's studios in November 1933, it marked the beginning of what is arguably the most remarkable and influential career in twentieth-century popular music.  her voice weathered countless shifts in public tastes, and new reincarnations of her continue to arrive, most recently in the singers like Amy Winehouse and Adele.

Most of the writing on Holiday has focused on the tragic details of her life-her prostitution at the age of fourteen, her heroin addiction and alcoholism, her series of abusive relationships-or tried to correct hte many fabrications of her autobiography.  But now, Billie Holiday stays close to the music, to her performance style, and to the self she created and put into print, on record and on stage.

Drawing on a vast amount of new material that has surfaced in the last decade, critically acclaimed jazz writer John Szwed considers how her life inflected her art, her influences, her uncanny voice and rhythmic genius, a number of her signature songs, and her legacy.    

********

I first heard of Billie Holiday years ago, reading a rumor about her song Gloomy Sunday.  Then, listening to the song itself, I was hooked, and wanted to know more about this woman, who led such a sad and storied life.

John Szwed has written a comprehensive biography, but it is also not a biography per se:  While there is plenty of information about Lady Day, a great part of it is background about jazz/blues, the people who played it, loved it, wrote it.  We don't get a lot of information about Billie's early life growing up, but we do get the essentials.  We understand she is tough and meticulous, but most of the information we see is in regard to her performances; what she did and didn't do, the people she knew, the other performers' reactions to her.  While that may seem enough, it left me wanting somewhat more.

However, I knew going in, as they say, that this would be no ordinary biography on Billie Holiday.  I knew it would center on her voice, her performances, her songs, her influences - and I learned all this and how she created what she did.  How she had an uncanny ability to listen to the music and make it her own; how she knew exactly what to do and let the musicians follow her; how she needed no rehearsals to create what she created.

For these facts alone, it is worth reading the book.  What I already knew about her and what I learned meld nicely together, creating a package of the woman and her music that lives on in her voice.  Recommended.

http://www.amazon.com/Billie-Holiday-Musician-John-Szwed/dp/0670014729/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1322874351

It's the Pictures That Got Small: Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood's Golden Age

Author:  Anthony Slide
Genre:  Epistolary/Film/Culture

Four Stars

 

Golden Age Hollywood screenwriter Charles Brackett was an extremely observant and perceptive chronicler of the entertainment industry during its most exciting years. He is best remembered as the writing partner of director Billy Wilder, who once referred to the pair as "the happiest couple in Hollywood," collaborating on such classics as The Lost Weekend (1945) and Sunset Blvd (1950).

 

In this annotated collection of writings taken from dozens of Brackett's unpublished diaries, leading film historian Anthony Slide clarifies Brackett's critical contribution to Wilder's films and Hollywood history while enriching our knowledge of Wilder's achievements in writing, direction, and style. Brackett's diaries re-create the initial meetings of the talent responsible for Ninotchka (1939), Hold Back the Dawn (1941), Ball of Fire (1941), The Major and the Minor (1942), Five Graves to Cairo (1943), The Lost Weekend, and Sunset Blvd, recounting the breakthrough and breakdowns that ultimately forced these collaborators to part ways. Brackett was also a producer, served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Screen Writers Guild, was a drama critic for the New Yorker, and became a member of the exclusive literary club, the Algonquin Round Table. Slide gives readers a rare, front row seat to the Golden Age dealings of Paramount, Universal, MGM, and RKO and the innovations of legendary theater and literary figures, such as Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Edna Ferber, and Dorothy Parker. Through Brackett's witty, keen perspective, the political and creative intrigue at the heart of Hollywood's most significant films come alive, and readers will recognize their reach in the Hollywood industry today.

********

 

Loving the Golden Age of Hollywood as I do, this book was a must-read for me.  However, I don't believe it will be so for everyone.  Told in a series of diary entries by Charles Brackett, it can, at times, become tedious and uninteresting.  Thus the four stars instead of five.  What Mr. Brackett does reveal says a lot about himself.  He is putting his thoughts down on paper - thoughts about others in the entertainment history, more often than not unflattering to that person.  He doesn't come off as liking many people at all, and certainly not caring for many of the actors.  As an example, he thought Mrs. Miniver was fine, but didn't like the performances by Greer Garson nor Walter Pigeon.  You know, the performance that garnered her an Oscar? 

 

There are many things I could say about this book, but I am afraid that those many things would be my own opinion of movies and actors against his.  Although I will have to give Mr. Brackett the upper hand, his having known everyone personally; even though I believe that some of his original choices for films (who didn't get the part) would have, in my opinion, been completely wrong for the role.

 

But it was his stormy relationship with Billy Wilder that gives us an insight into his patience and enduring talent.  Having worked so closely with an "artistic temperament" of Mr. Wilder's persona, Mr. Brackett was still able to turn out some of the best known screenplays ever filmed, the greatest of these being Sunset Boulevard.   I did find it interesting that regarding the two men, Billy Wilder was much a family man, and fights with his wife disturbed him; while Charles Brackett lived much of the time away from his wife and children (one gets the impression that she lived on the East Coast and he on the West, and there were visits from time to time.)

I recommend this book for anyone who wants a personal insight into Hollywood before, during and after the war years.  But be forewarned:  Again, these are entries of Charles Brackett's personal diaries, and read as such.  This means that you are getting his personal opinions on everything and everyone he comes into contact with.  This also means that at times you will find the information uninteresting, and, unfortunately, uncomfortable to read (there were derogatory remarks about people that some might find offensive.)  Good for the student of film and those interested in the Golden Age of Hollywood.

http://www.amazon.com/Its-Pictures-That-Got-Small/dp/0231167083/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1087579642



Music in the Shadows

Author:  Sheri Chinen Biesen
Genre:  Performing Arts/Film/Criticism

Hardcover; Softcover; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9781421408378; 9781421408385
Johns Hopkins University Press
224 Pages
$60.46; $32.95; $16.17
May 1, 2014

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Smoke. Shadows. Moody strains of jazz. Welcome to the world of "noir musical" films, where tormented antiheroes and hard-boiled musicians battle obsession and struggle with their music and ill-fated love triangles. Sultry divas dance and sing the blues in shrouded nightclubs. Romantic intrigue clashes with backstage careers.

In her pioneering study, Music in the Shadows, film noir expert Sheri Chinen Biesen explores musical films that use film noir style and bluesy strains of jazz to inhabit a disturbing underworld and reveal the dark side of fame and the American Dream. While noir musical films like A Star Is Born include musical performances, their bleak tone and expressionistic aesthetic more closely resemble the visual style of film noir. Their narratives unfold behind a stark noir lens: distorted, erratic angles and imbalanced hand-held shots allow the audience to experience a tortured, disillusioned perspective.
While many musicals glamorize the quest for the spotlight in Hollywood's star factory, brooding noir musical films such as Blues in the Night, Gilda, The Red Shoes, West Side Story, and Round Midnight stretch the boundaries of film noir and the musical as film genres collide. Deep shadows, dim lighting, and visual composition evoke moodiness, cynicism, pessimism, and subjective psychological points of view.

As in her earlier study of film noir, Blackout: World War II and the Origins of Film Noir, Biesen draws on extensive primary research in studio archives to situate her examination within a historical, industrial, and cultural context.

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

Since I am a huge classic film - especially noir - lover; I couldn't wait to read this book.  Ms. Biesen has written an outstanding book on the use of music in film noir, and the impact it makes.  Drawing upon such films as Gilda, Young Man with a Horn, Blues in the Night, Double Indemnity, and even The Major and the Minor - a film which uses the song "A Woman's a Two Face" sung by a cadet to Ginger Rogers (masquerading as a teenager, believe it or not) and is quite hilarious in the context it was sung - she has written a comprehensive and extensive work that is well-written and fascinating to read.

It details why these films are better with the music that has been chosen, and how it enhances them.  Can anyone imagine Laura without the haunting title music?  It's one of my favorite films, and the title song is partly the reason why.

Anyone who is interested in film noir would find this indispensable as a reference - after all, who can forget Dooley Wilson in Casablanca crooning 'As Time Goes By?'  She covers both well-known and not so well-known films - Christmas Holiday being one of my favorites - Gene Kelly and Deanna Durbin in a dark noir film, both playing against character  (I suggest you try to find a copy; it will definitely be worth your while) - and offers a description of the Musician's Strike of 1942, which has long since passed into history, yet spawned some of the greater singers of the century (Frank Sinatra among them).

A highly recommended book for both film fans and music lovers alike; after all, who can go wrong with a book that has the sultry Rita Hayworth as Gilda on the cover?

http://www.amazon.com/Music-Shadows-Noir-Musical-Films/dp/1421408376/