Film

Lady Sings the Blues

Name: Lady Sings the Blues
Genre: Drama, Music
Released: 1972
Cast: Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor, James T. Callahan, Paul Hampton

Diana Ross, in her film debut, plays Billie Holiday in this lush, Motown-produced Hollywood biopic that trades documentary accuracy for full melodrama — glamorous nightclubs, a doomed romance with her manager-lover Louis McKay, and a slow descent into heroin addiction. It's less a history lesson than a star vehicle, gorgeously shot and unabashedly sentimental, best enjoyed as tragic old-Hollywood spectacle rather than biography.

TMDb rating

6.9

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A Star Is Born1954

Same engine as Lady Sings the Blues — a woman's talent is discovered, exploited and nearly destroyed by the man who loves her — but told two decades earlier through classic studio-era melodrama instead of a music biopic.

Judy Garland's performance is one of the great self-immolating turns in film history, and the film understands exactly how love and management can be the same trap dressed up as devotion.

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People

Cast

Directing

Sidney J. FurieDirector

Writing

Production

Eddie SaetaAssociate Producer
Joe ScullyCasting
Berry GordyExecutive Producer
Brad DexterProducer
James S. WhiteProducer
Jay WestonProducer
Eddie SaetaProduction Manager