Lady Day: The Many Faces Of Billie Holiday The movie Lady Day: The Many Faces Of Billie Holiday paints an interesting, and thought provoking portrait of one of jazz and blues most charismatic, and influential artists. The incomparable talent of Billie Holiday, both truth and legend are immortalized in this one-hour documentary film. The film follows Holiday, also referred to as Lady Day or Lady, through the many triumphs and trials of her career, and does its very best to separate the facts from fiction. Her autobiography Lady Sings The Blues is used as a rough guide of how she desired her life story to be viewed by her public. Those who knew her, worked with her, and loved her paint a different picture than this popular, and mostly fictional autobiography. Interview footage of her colleagues, fellow musicians, and friends such as Annie Ross, Buck Clayton, Mal Waldron, and Harry Sweets Edison look back on their years of friendship and experiences with the woman they affectionately call Lady. Their anecdotes, fond memories, and descriptive way of describing Holidays unique talent and style, show the Lady that they knew and loved. The film also makes interesting use of photographs and orignal recordings of Holiday, along with movie footage of different eras. With the use of these devices, we get a feel for what Holidays music meant for the audience it reached. The black and white footage from the thirties of groups of people merrily swing dancing, paired with a bumptious, and swingin number Billie Holiday performed with Count Basie called Swing Me Count, makes one wonder what it might have been like to actually be there. To wildly swing dance to the live vocals of Billie Holiday must have been an amazing experience, as this film demonstrates.The most enduring and alluring part of the film is the live footage of Holiday performing, either in a band with one of her idols, Louis Armstrong, or in her first film role as a maid, or in her l...
