He believed that the response to being dealt a weak hand should always be to dramatically raise the stakes. So I was like, Yo, I have to work with Lee.. Not long after, he ran into her in a bar and they talked for hours, with her pet Chihuahua, Moochy, by her side. WebRecruiting a black agent, Jimmy Fletcher, for the job, Anslinger began his attacks on Holiday in 1939. Theyve got a dirty job to do and they have to do it. They summoned a grand jury to indict her, telling her that unless she disclosed her dealer, they would take her straight to prison. Yet we do practically the same thing every day in the week to sick people hooked on drugs., Still, some part of Billie Holiday believed she had done something evil, with her drug use, and with her life. I had been wanting to work with Lee because his sister Leah, Leah and Kim Coleman and Lindsay Graham, three casting directors who always brought me in since I moved to L.A., Rhodes explains. Convicted of racketeering, lying to an FBI agent and obstruction of justice in 2002, he was given a 10-year sentence. I remember the first time I really understood what love was or at least what a nine-year-old could understand as romantic love. To be able to do that, it's just such a uniqueit's energy. The two discussed a few different options for Rhodes in the early parts of 2019, but it was later in the year that Daniels landed squarely on the Holiday biopic. When Sawyer approaches Torres about the concerns he has with a deep cover assignment hes taken, Torrres is pulled into the op, which he initially refused to do for the FBI. [Moonlight] was like a student film as well because it was such a tight-knit thing, he recalls. Federal Bureau of Narcotics director Harry Anslinger, Fletcher follows Billie Holiday everywhere. They had orders to forbid any visitors from coming in without a written permit, and her friends were told there was no way to see her. He reassured congressmen that his crackdown would affect not the good musicians, but the jazz type. But when Harry came for them, the jazz world would have one weapon that saved them: its absolute solidarity. It follows its own rhythm. Chinese-Americans, racists warned, were luring white women into their opium dens for sex. But racist fears that drugs could unleash particular stores of violence in non-white people were also prevalent. The next time he saw her, it was in a brothel in Harlem, doing exactly the same. Jimmy Fletcher was the answer. I did not think much of Ms. Holidays performance, he told her manager sternly. Her voice was cracking.. After starring in Moonlight, a 21st century masterpiece, he appeared in a trio of action films then stepped back from the spotlight. Then to continue working for them. Declassified FBI files quote an agent inside the narcotics bureau (possibly Anslinger) as saying that 'because of the importance of Holiday, it has been the policy of Politico reported that after one run-in following the first raid, Fletcher and Holiday "talked for hours"; they even danced together at Club Ebony. Cause you can start working and just keep working and keep working, he says. She was the type who would make anyone sympathetic because she was the loving type., Also Read: 18th and GrandTraces L.A. History Through a Palace of Violence. Billie insisted the junk had been planted in her room by White, and she immediately offered to go into a clinic to be monitored: she would experience no withdrawal symptoms, she said, and that would prove she was clean and being framed. Some of the nicer ones have feelings enough to hate themselves sometime for what they have to do . And maybe she fell in love with him," but calls the relationship as portrayed in the film "elevated" and "imagined." Now that Agent L.G. But did it really happen that way in real life? Theyve got a dirty job to do and they have to do it. Now, after three years, he returns to play Jimmy Fletcher, a Black federal agent tasked by his white superiors with implanting himself in Holidays life to bring her She was the big lady wherever she went., When he came for her on a rainy day at the Mark Twain Hotel in San Francisco without a search warrant, Billie was sitting in white silk pajamas in her room. This is heartbreaking. I think in this story, we were able to empathize with him because we understood he was just someone who was just caught up.. So now, on top of the cirrhosis of the liver, Billie went into heroin withdrawal, alone. When he discovered that a Washington society hostess he knewa beautiful, gracious lady, he notedhad an illegal drug addiction, he explained he couldnt possibly arrest her because it would destroy the unblemished reputation of one of the nations most honored families. He helped her to wean herself off her addiction slowly, without the law becoming involved. And Tims writing again! And I had so many close conversations with her, about so many things, he would remember years later. Holiday after being arrested for heroin possession in 1947. For Rhodes to play part in it does as well. I like to drive slow., Part of that journey included sitting down with Lee Daniels at the end of 2018 to discuss what an adaptation of Billie Holidays life might look like. He'd heard rumblings that the singer was using heroin and assigned Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes), a Black FBI agent, to follow her, journalist Johann Hari revealed in his book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, per Politico. But then the methadone was suddenly stopped, and she began to sicken again. They had a friendly chat, in which he advised her to take longer vacations between pictures, and he wrote to her studio, assuring them she didnt have a drug problem at all. In a piece for Politico, Hari writes that "Strange Fruit" was, "a musical lament against lynching. Immediately after, Billie Holiday received her first threat from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Cocaine supposedly made Black people almost superhumanly strongNEGRO COCAINE "FIENDS" ARE A NEW SOUTHERN MENACE blared a 1914 New York Times headline. Moonlight is magenta, in case you were curious. She told The Hollywood Reporter, "I could see this love affair that she has with Jimmy Fletcher, because it tells the story of the love affair that Black Americans have with America. She checked herself in at a cost of one thousand dollars, and according to Ken Vails book Lady Days Diary, she didnt so much as shiver. The United States Vs Billie Holiday True Story, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. Trevante Rhodes tells me that, to him, the color of The United States vs. Billie Holiday is maroon. Declassified FBI files quote an agent inside the narcotics bureau (possibly Anslinger) as saying that 'because of the importance of Holiday, it has been the policy of his bureau to discredit individuals of this caliber using narcotics. It was the last straw.. Directed by Lee Daniels and starring Andra Day in her debut film role, Lady Day's on-screen journey includes being pursued by the FBI in light of her involvement with the civil rights movement, her struggle with drug use, and her complicated romantic relationships. Another painting. It was called The United States of America versus Billie Holiday, she wrote in her memoir, and thats just the way it felt. She refused to weep on the stand. We come from a different tribe. But what pulled Rhodes attention most was the idea of stepping into the role of Jimmy Fletcher. From 2017 to 2018, Rhodes pivoted hard from indie prestige of Moonlight. The film is unnervingly relevant in 2021. I dont want you to lose your job, he said. Johann Hari is a London and New York-based journalist. That part of the story is fictionalized, but the agent did speak of her notable affection. She's based (and born and raised) in Brooklyn, New York. Billie paid her debt to society, one of Holidays friends wrote, but society never paid its debt to her.. The meeting had been a long time coming. Whenever I see that movie, theres a fire in me that continues to just burn. Rhodes sees Fletcher as someone who got in deeper and deeper to this gunk of a situation and even ended up falling in love. If he feels like weve really made progress in the way that we should. Set partly in the South, Lee shot the film in Montreal, though Rhodes says its a great replacement. The hounding and the pressure drove me, she wrote, to think of trying the final solution, death. Her best friend said it caused Billie enough anxieties to kill a horse. At the trial, a jury of twelve ordinary citizens heard all the evidence. But while the movie charts Holidays efforts to maintain her career while being hounded by law enforcement and struggling with substance abuse disorder, its not just a portrait of the life of one artist: The film also tells an important story about the origins of Americas war on drugs. ", Day adds: "I was obsessed with that movie and Diana Ross's performance, but the movie was done in the early '70s; [J. Edgar] Hoover and Harry J. Anslinger were still in power, [Holiday's abusive husband] Louis McKay was still alive, and the technical director on that film. Yeah. It was just like, I just felt better., Rhodes work, up to that point, was primarily in student filmsshoestring budgets with even smaller crews. That movie seeped into my soul. But when the details were looked at later, there seemed to be something odd: a wastepaper basket seems an improbable place to keep a stash, and the kit for shooting heroin was never entered into evidence by the copsthey said they left it at the scene. They said she was unlikely to survive for longbut Harry wasnt done with her yet. He will be talking about his book at lunchtime at Politics and Prose in Washington DC on the 29th of January, at lunchtime at the 92nd Street Y in New York City on the 30th January, and in the evening at Red Emma's in Baltimore on the 4th February. Here's what's fact and what's fiction in The United States vs. Billie Holiday. The question, of course, is whether Daniels could evoke his polarizing, chaotic style in this new chapter. Holiday has died. Worst of all, it is a mongrel music made up of European, Caribbean and African echoes, all mating on American shores. We do know that George White had a long history of planting drugs on women. Theyve got a dirty job to do and they have to do it. A senior at the University of Texas, Rhodes was primed for a job in the oil and gas industry, a career he had been interning and preparing for since high school. 01:19. In fact, after Fletcher assisted in getting Holiday arrested and sent to jail for a year, she didn't really see him much after her release, whereas in the film it's after her release where their involvement gets heavy. Maybe they would have been kinder to me if theyd been nasty; then I wouldnt have trusted them enough to believe what they told me.. Fletcher met Holiday after he was hired by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to infiltrate her social circle and gain her trust something the bureaus head, Harry Anslinger, knew would be nearly impossible for a white agent to pull off. I had very high hopes that she would be able to come out of it alive, another friend, Alice Vrbsky, told the BBC, until all this happened. If we did that, everyone would know we were crazy. However, it was originally written by poet, teacher, and activist Abel Meeropol, from New York. Holiday was busted again, arrested, and put on trial. Their relationship was a complex one. We talked to Chasing the Scream author Johann Hari about the role jazz legend Billie Holiday played in the early days of the drug war. Other than the exaggerated love story, The United States vs. Billie Holiday offers up an unpolished look at Holiday's hard upbringing and the trauma she experienced before becoming a huge star. When finally a friend was allowed in to see her, Billie told her in a panic: Theyre going to kill me. Laugh? The art that you see now, Rhodes says. These men were notoriously corrupt and crookedbut now Harry was supposed to whip them into a force capable of wiping drugs from the United States forever. She was the type who would make anyone sympathetic because she was the loving type. The man Anslinger sent to track and bust Billie Holiday had, it seems, fallen in love with her. According to Hari, after Fletcher first raided her apartment for drugs, he took Holiday aside and offered to talk to Ansliger for her in an attempt to lighten her punishment, saying, I dont want you to lose your job. Soon after, they ran into each other at a bar and talked for hours, Hari said. We may earn a commission from these links. In his assessment, Rhodes believes that history had remembered Fletcher for his faults, but none of his circumstances or motivations. Anslinger hated hiring Black agents, according to Just as Anslinger was beginning his tenure at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a teenaged singer was getting her start in Harlem nightclubs. Magenta is not a naturally occurring color, so much as its an amalgamation of red and violet, which is an amalgamation of red and blue. F rom his first day in office in 1930, Harry Anslinger had a problem, and everybody knew it. I had to take a break to sit back. The story explores the roots of Holiday's song "Strange Fruit" and the extensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to stop her from singing the song in public. At the moment, Rhodes is best known for his starring role in Best Picture winner, I read a few books, the 31-year-old actor said. Protesters sent the song to Congress in hopes of passing an anti-lynching bill, per the BBC. Anslinger, who once faced calls for his resignation after using the n-word in an internal memo, was not a fan of jazz music. The more I talk to you guys, man, the more I feel bad about being able to sympathize and empathize with this, Rhodes says when asked about Fletchers motivations. Holiday arriving at a court hearing in 1947. How Lady Day was in the middle of a Federal Bureau of Narcotics fight for survival. You might read numbers as colors. Blackburn writes that lynching "was at its most virulent between 1900 and 1920." Jimmy felt uncomfortable. 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