Diana Ross in 'Lady Sings the Blues"

What made her performance so good was that she didn't outright copy Holliday's vocal style, which could have been hit or miss. Instead she found a middle road between her own pop voice and Holliday's. The movie was more about the essence of who Holliday was and the trials she went through.

The people who criticize LSTB and Ross for not being realistic enough somehow find no fault with Funny Girl, where Streisand doesn't even attempt to sound like or emulate Fanny Brice.

What made Ross exceptional were her exposed raw nerves.

The best debut by an actress ever.

And the Oscar that year actually should have gone to... Cicely Tyson. Cicely Tyson. Sorry, OP.

R3 Bitch, Cicely was earnest, as always, but no dice.

I think Dave Marsh said that she did updated versions of the songs, sort of Motown meets Billie Holliday. Pauline Kael found fault with her vocal performances in that she thought her renditions were too similar to Hollidays and blurred their memory, which is totally bizarre logic, but hey, it's Kael. Ross was great, even in the early scenes as a young girl and very believable as a jaded diva, a role she knew well.

She was robbed of that Oscar.

Nobody knew what Fanny Brice sounded like, R1.

How stupid are you, R7?

Diana Ross was excellent in Lady Sings the Blues. But Liza was outstanding in Cabaret and deserved to win. The Oscar was awarded to the right person.

r7, there are tons and tons and tons of recordings of Fanny Brice singing. She was also in several films, including "The Great Ziegfeld," where she sings "My Man."

I've seen "Lady Sings The Blues." I've seen "Cabaret." I've seen "Sounder." Cicely Tyson should have won. She totally deserved it.

I mean the average suburbanite kid didn't know Brice from Pola Negri. I knew what she sounded like because I went out of my way - to the library in fact - to find her old records and listen to them. While I was cooking breakfast for the one I loved.

R12, my kind of guy.

R12 The average suburbanite kid has no idea what Billie Holliday sounded like either, (or has even heard of her.)

Ross would have won had Motown's Berry Gordy not over-lobbied Hollywood for her to win. It just went overboard.

Funny Girl was a musical based on the life of a performer. Lady Sings the Blues was a biography which featured the music of its protagonist. Apples and oranges.

You guys are kidding, right? She was laughably bad as an actress.

When you have two great performances competing, like Liza and Diana, they usually give the Oscar to the one that's in the better movie. Diana Ross was great, but Lady Sings the Blues was mostly mediocre, only worth it for Ross's performance. Cabaret, however, was an instant classic and has risen to iconic status. That's why Liza won.

I hate Liza and I hate Fosse.

Cabaret was trendy 70s auteur shit.

I wish they had made a movie of the Broadway musical.

Long Live Jill Haworth!

They always givit tuh tha white.

Kah-WEENS!

There's always that one, R19.

I'd have went with Cicely. Ross was good for a film debut but I always knew it was her playing dress up in the movie which ultimately made me realize she was unconvincing.

The Academy wasn't ready to give the Oscar to a black woman, that's why she loss to Liza Minnelli.

What an Oscar moment that would have been, Cicely Tyson winning the best actress Oscar, the first black woman to do so. And she would have been completely deserving, not like Halle Berry, whose performance in "Monster's Ball", was laughably bad.

[quote]I'd have went with Cicely.

Oh, dear.

LSTB was a better movie than Cabaret. Dianna was a B; Liza, a C. Both played dress up to anextent. Liza is always overblown, a ham , stretching too far. They shulda shared it. Cabaret isdumb and lacks a storyline. And I HATE Joel Grey...that is not acting, just him being the naturl queen he is. ugh yuck

Sounder was the story about a boy and his dog. The characters of the parents were secondary, so Tyson should have been placed in the supporting category and probably win. And Winfield's role was even smaller.

I agree R19

"Sounder was the story about a boy and his dog. The characters of the parents were secondary."

Not really. The parents in the story were very vivid characters. It was the story of a family, not "a boy and his dog."

Bump

Ross was good, even very good, but Liza was great. No contest there. Lady was a good film, Cabaret a classic.

I confess I haven't seen Sounder since it was on TV when I was a kid, but then who else has, either? There's a clue right there.

R7, few other than jazz devotees/people 45+ knew what Billie Holiday sounded like in 1972 either.

"Pauline Kael found fault with her vocal performances in that she thought her renditions were too similar to Hollidays..."

I remember reading her review again after I learned a lot about Billie Holiday, and I though that Kael (one of my favorites) was tone-deaf. Sort of like when Roger Ebert while reviewing that tripe bio-pic, Beyond the Sea, said that Kevin Spacey is a better singer than Bobby Darin.

"Cabaret" and :"Lady Sings The Blues" were flamboyant movies about flamboyant people "Sounder" was the story of a sharecropper family trying to survive. That's probably why people are more familiar with the former than the latter. But "Sounder" was just as good. And Cicely's Tyson's performance was definitely superior that that of Liza Minnelli and Diana Ross. She was perfect.

Any acclaim Ross garnered for "Lady Sings the Blues" was immediately erased by the laughably dreadful "Mahogany" and multiplied by the disastrously unsuccessful "The Wiz."

R35, you could say the same for Minnelli when she did the triple turkeys, "Lucky Lady", "A Matter of Time" and "NYNY."

Meh. The movie was very loosely based on Holiday's notoriously inaccurate ghost-written autobiography. Plus, her abusive last husband Louis McKay (a real scumbag) was a consultant on the film.

It has very little to do with the real life of Billie Holiday.

[R36] - I've always felt NYNY will be reappraised favorably at some point. At the time I thought it was a realistic Star is Born (far superior to that Esther Hoffman's!). Heightened production design, but realistic in the ups and downs of their lives and careers. You're SO right, though, about those other two unfortunates.

Yes, you could.

^^^^ reply to r36

[quote]"Cabaret" and :"Lady Sings The Blues" were flamboyant movies about flamboyant people "Sounder" was the story of a sharecropper family trying to survive.

And yet "Sounder" was the only one of the three to have a gay actor play one of the leading roles.

People who don't consider Ross brilliant here are deaf, dumb and blind.

The Academy was going to deny Judy Garland's and Vincent Minnelli's daughter the Oscar? No. But the best part was--Liza deserved it. She was the Best Actress that year. Diana Ross was great. It was a tough call, but Liza was the best.

Call her MISS Ross!

Diana was riveting in this. She should've been the first black actress to win the Oscar.

[quote]She should've been the first black actress to win the Oscar.

You're saying I didn't deserve mine, boy?

R46 You won Supporting, dear.

I agree that Cicely's performance was the best. LSTB was a wildly uneven film. That includes portions of Diana's performance. The direction and cinematography were atrocious. The real gem they ignored was Richard Pryor as Piano Man. He was brilliant.

R48 What portions of Ross' performance were uneven?

Some of her SceneKit with Billy Dee. I also found her unemotional and wooden in her non-druggie scenes with other actors.

Excuse me, some of her SCENES WITH....

R50 No.

R52 YES!!!

R53 You're too cute, lol.

"But the best part was--Liza deserved it. She was the Best Actress that year. "

No, she wasn't. She was just playing herself, her loony, nutty self. There was no acting involved.

R55 Exactly.

R55, she gave a stirring performance in "Sterile Cuckoo" but again, she was playing herself. The star of Cabaret and even Liza With a Z was Fosse, a fact proven by Liza being unable to replicate those artistic successes under any other director.

R47 -- R45 just says "black actress." And Hattie was the first black actress to win an Oscar.

Drone on about Diana all you'd like. She was wonderful especially for her first movie. However, Liza was the outstanding one that year. It was an iconic performance that has endured and was a milestone in the history of film.

Tyson was a supporting actress in Sounder. She didn't have many scenes. As much as I adore Cabaret, Sounder is probably a better movie.

Iconic.

You freaking linked the entire movie??

R62 You're the mirror....

Lmao.

Yes!

I do not like Diana Ross, but LSTB is a great film andshe is great in it. Cabaret seems tiresome to watch now, esp. overacting Joel Grey. Liza is kind of the same in all her movies.

R66 I love you.

I like Audra McDonald's Billie Holiday better, to be honest. But LSTB has that 70s camp factor.

R68 You're insane.

I've been reading about Billie Holiday lately for some reason. The movie "Lady Sings The Blues" is pretty much fiction, as was the book of the same name. She hired a hack writer to whip up an autobiography because she needed the money. It started out with these lines 'Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was seventeen and I was three." Actually when Billie Holiday was born her mother was nineteen and her father was seventeen and they never married, never even lived together. That was just one of the fabrications in that book.

Billie Holiday had a weakness for alcohol, drugs and awful men. Her second husband, Louis McKay, was typical of her fondness for bad boys. He beat her up and spent her money; he wasn't even good looking. But he was portrayed in "Lady Sings The Blues" by the handsome Billie Dee Williams and is depicted as a good influence in her life who keeps trying to save her. Louis McKay was a "technical advisor" on that movie, so it stands to reason that he'd try to make himself look as appealing as possible.

I thought Diana Ross was an odd choice to play Holiday. She seems nothing like her, either musically or physically. I never bought skinny little Diana Ross as the buxom Billie Holiday; although big, Holiday was much more beautiful than Ross. And of course Ross sounds nothing like Holiday, either.

"Lady Sings The Blues" was an entertaining movie, but a very inaccurate depiction of Billie Holiday's life. A black writer named Farah Griffin describes the film as "a post-Black Power fantasy of a beautiful, talented, but weak and childish woman, who is rescued time and again by a strong, supportive, wealthy, handsome black man. When Diana Ross as Holiday is kicking her habit cold turkey in a padded cell Billy Dee William's McKay comes in with a doctor who injects her with something to make the going a little easier, and then her black knight slips and engagement ring on her finger. This is just the incentive she needs to pull her out of the nightmare. He pays for her time in a sanitarium, he arranges for her debut at a downtown club, he keeps her supplied with gardenias and he rescues her time and again. None of this ever happened."

R70 I don't think anyone who knew about Billie expected it to be a total accurate biopic. I did a little research on the movie when it came out with the help of my folks. Most biopics take many liberties for dramatic effect. I still think Diana was great in it and Mahogany. The Supremes were also a great girl group, and the Motown sound holds up. Love that stuff.

Nobody "knew" Billie.

Ross was perfection.

I thought Diana was very good in this role, especially considering that she wasn't a greatly skilled actress at that time.

I was a little Queenie boy from the Great Plains and I was so excited to see Diana in this. I loved her so. I did not know shit about Billie Holiday but because of the film I sought her music out and became a fan. They were smart to let her do her own style, I don't think it would have worked if she tried to do an imitation. Of course, I thought she was fabulous and probably saw it 3 or 4 times. Dragging someone new to witness the splendor of Diana. Even as a young teen I think I kind of recognized she was uneven. Great in some scenes, actually awful in others. When Mahogany came out I realized she was not a very good actress. But the story, rest of the cast (Pryor was awesome) and dazzle of the rest of the film still made it a good movie.

But if they actually placed AA winners it would have been Tyson 1st, Minelli 2nd and Ross 3rd.

Liza couldn't piss on Ross' shit.

It's the pills.

Another iconic turn.

It was a vehicle for Diana Ross and that's all it was. Here's a movie review of it from Slate and it's spot on:

Berry Gordy’s gift to Diana Ross—his very favorite, very personal piece of Motown property—was this lavish, bloated Billie Holiday biopic, surely the recipient of the most degrading Pauline Kael review to nonetheless include the phrase “I loved it.” Lady Sings the Blues is almost two-and-a-half hours of Call-Her-Miss Lady Day in close-up, with half that running time devoted to Ross’s irreverent interpretations of Holiday standards and the other half occupied by what Roger Ebert then proclaimed “this is acting!” (In other words, read his eruption as a quantitative statement, not qualitative.) It’s an amateur star performance-as-Stanislavski mail order catalog: a powerhouse of Method-ology (born more from a lack of acting experience than pop singers’ already refined sense of emotive abandon), complete with ingénue tics, a self-conscious display of age range, tentative ad-libs, flailing limbs, leaky eyes, precariously receding eyelids. Diana Ross’s performance manages to simultaneously call to mind Dancer in the Dark‘s Björk, for self-immolative martyrdom, and pre-Being Bobby Brown‘s Whitney Houston for that sleight-of-vocal trick, trying to pass off her lack of vocal soulfulness with a fizzy, grunting stream of jazz-babble. So while Ross’s fairly maligned renditions of “Strange Fruit” and “God Bless The Child” (in which she manages to mistake interpretation for doggedly remaining an entire phrase behind the orchestra) are one-note, her performance is practically in 12-tone. Unfortunately, director Sidney J. Furie’s film is a flabby soap opera with a chiffon (or should that be The Chiffons?) music score by Michel Legrand, which Kael rightly discerned was the sort of loveable loser take on Holiday’s life story that would skew audience sympathies her way. Hence, her heroin addiction both emerges as a reasonable reaction to a rough tour through KKK Southern states and also winds up indirectly causing the tragic, violent death of her loyal Piano Man (Richard Pryor) at the hands of mafia hit men. Still, it’s near impossible to actually feel sorry for Holiday as Ross and her 72 teeth portray her. Her triumphant concert at the stodgy, classical-snooty Carnegie Hall isn’t dedicated to Piano Man, nor to her long-suffering sensitive-gangster husband (Billy Dee Williams as the only guy who didn’t make her pick up dollar bills from tabletops with her thighs in her early cabaret days), nor even to that young black man she spots hanging like strange fruit from the Southern tree she meant to pee behind. As those un-Holiday raised arms attest, it’s all Ross up in there, her ego couched in a superimposed series of depressing headlines leading up to Holiday’s death at 44.

I completely agree: Diana Ross should have won. I was astounded that, as a first time actress, she had such great chops. The transformation from a young girl to a woman was just so fantastic. I liked Tyson too, she's been acting for a long time.

R79 Right? Only basic plebs disagree.

Look people Ms. Ross picked up a 20 dollar bill in her cotchie in that movie. ! Liza's cotchie although talented in its own way was no match for Diane's!!!!

Cicely Tyson should have won that year, no doubt about it. LIza Minnelli was just playing herself. Diana Ross was simply being Diana Ross in a star vehicle. Maggie Smith and Liv Ullman were good, but the best performance that year was definitely Tyson's. A shame she didn't win. She truly deserved it.

"Diana Ross was simply being Diana Ross in a star vehicle."

One of the dumber comments I've read here in a long time.

I guess the Academy voters felt otherwise ........

R84 Yeah. She was black. They'd have to wait to give it to a black woman getting fucked by a white man.

Gotta get that white in there - pun ontended - somehow!

"One of the dumber comments I've read here in a long time."

You're one of the dumber fangurls I've seen here in a long time. She was TERRIBLE as Lady Day. I get the impression you have no idea who Billie Holiday ever was. Maybe that's why you think Diana Ross was so wonderful in that shitty movie that in no way the life of Billie Holiday.

Ross was perfection.

Loved the LSTB soundtrack. I wore that thing out! That being said Liza was the right choice for the Oscar.

R88 No.

Let's remake it! Trace E. Ross and Sherri Hepherd as Lady! LeBron as her lover! Whoopi as her all knowing grandmother! Obama as the nightclub owner! and Jayden and Willow Smith as the Katzenjammer kids!

Rewatching this. Diana Ross is dynamite.

there was z-e-r-o chance anyone besides Liza May would win that year. In addition to putting in a spectacular performance, her family connection to tinseltown made for a story that couldn't be beat. Diana was great in Lady ( and she should really act more), but Liza's Sally Bowles was more deserving.

Richard Pryor was the best thing in the movie.

I never appreciated Liza but I saw both Cabaret and LSTB and Liza deserved her Oscar. Diana Ross was good but her performance was NOT Oscar worthy, no matter how much you big fans want to think so.

Ross wipes the floor with Liza.