A doctor was brought into the hospital at the insistence of her friends to prescribe methadone. 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. The most recent one was introduced in 2019 by now Vice President Kamala Harris. The United States vs. Billie Holiday is now streaming on Hulu. It was all she had left. I ask if the uptick of Black stories in Hollywood has made progress. Arrest and Convictions. Drugs became racialized, with cocaine coded as being associated with Black Americans, opioids with Chinese immigrants, and marijuana with Mexican immigrants. Then, one night, at Club Ebony, they ended up dancing togetherBillie Holiday and Anslingers agent, swaying together to the music. Tragically, her personal life was marked by horrifying abuse. And when she insisted on continuing on her right as an American citizen to sing Strange Fruit, Anslinger resolves to destroy her., Also Read: Strange Fruit: The History of Billie Holidays Famous Protest Song. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. On the street outside the hospital, protesters gathered, led by a Harlem pastor named the Reverend Eugene Callender. Most federal agents are nice people. She's based (and born and raised) in Brooklyn, New York. She stripped and stood there, and then she pissed in front of them, defying them to watch. Perhaps the most important song Holiday would ever sing was Strange Fruit. Written by communist poet and teacher Abel Meeropol after he saw a photo of lynched Black men, the song describes the bodies of lynching victims hanging from southern trees like the strange fruit of its title. 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. The Woman Nikole Hannah-Jones Credits With Her Career Success, Everything You Need To Know About 'Mean Girls: The Musical', The 2023 SAG Awards Will Be Streaming-Only For The First Time Ever, Get Even More From Bustle Sign Up For The Newsletter. 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. 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Erica Gonzales is the Senior Culture Editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage on TV, movies, music, books, and more. So in that regard, we're in a much, much, much better place. How come I got to take this from this bitch here? Playing Agent Jimmy Fletcher in Hulu's The United States vs Billie Holiday, Rhodes emerges from a three year hiatus with a new perspective on his work. 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. Jimmy was allowed through the door at the Bureau, but never up the stairs. They took a mug shot of her on her hospital bed. In his eulogy for her, the Reverend Eugene Callender told me he had said: We should not be here. When finally a friend was allowed in to see her, Billie told her in a panic: Theyre going to kill me. As soon as they took her off oxygen, she lit a cigarette. Jimmy Fletcher was the answer. In the book, Hari tells stories of the casualties of the drug war, from its 20th century origins to profiles of contemporary dealers and users. 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 down for drug use. What happened to Jimmy Hoffa may soon be known, if the government reveals what it has kept hidden for decades. Holiday's song, "Strange Fruit," is a central point of the film. Billies greatest talent, after singing, was swearingif she called you a motherfucker, it was a great compliment. Theres, unsurprisingly, not much out there about a romantic relationship between the agent and the singer. That said, Fletcher was also being taken advantage of by his white superiors, who were never going to see him as an equal, especially in the 1940s and 50s.. Set partly in the South, Lee shot the film in Montreal, though Rhodes says its a great replacement. Photo Credit: Takashi Seida. Billie Holiday never stopped being addicted. The real Holiday did record the song in 1939. ", Singing "Strange Fruit," Primetimer writes, "drove Harry Anslinger nuts, and made her personal destruction a goal of his. Some of the nicer ones have feelings enough to hate themselves sometime for what they have to do . And that may be true. And it seems like their dalliance didn't just exist on-screen. I remember the first time I really understood what love was or at least what a nine-year-old could understand as romantic love. The FBI on Wednesday named the man who shot five agents, killing two, as they tried to execute a search warrant in South Florida. "They bust her, and it's pretty clear, I think, from reading the historical documents, that he planted drugs on Billie Holiday that night," Hari told NPR of the raid. They grilled her on her hospital bed without letting her talk to a lawyer. In reality, Anslinger had assigned a different agent, one who hadn't "gone soft," to hound Holiday, and Fletcher didn't hear from her again until she sent him a signed copy of her 1956 autobiography, according to Politico. Theyve got a dirty job to do and they have to do it. The conviction also cost Holiday her cabaret performers license, which prevented her from singing at nightclubs for more than 10 years. "And his whole life, he felt really guilty about what he did. 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. In the film's depiction, Holiday's impact with the emotional song made her a target in the eyes of the federal government. So that's a double negative, you know what I mean? Rhodes explains. Whites men declared they had found opium stashed in a wastepaper basket next to a side room and the kit for shooting heroin in the room, and they charged her with possession. 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. 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. There's a movie for everybody now. coastal farm and ranch loss prevention coastal farm and ranch loss prevention This young lady was gifted by her creator with tremendous talent . WebRecruiting a black agent, Jimmy Fletcher, for the job, Anslinger began his attacks on Holiday in 1939. Not long after, he ran into her in a bar and they talked for hours, with her pet Chihuahua, Moochy, by her side. Here's what's fact and what's fiction in The United States vs. Billie Holiday. Music hath charms, their memos say, but not this music. Indeed, Anslinger took jazz as yet more proof that marijuana drives people insane. Theyre going to kill me in there. He was a Black agent assigned by the egregiously racist head of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger (played by We dont know whether Jimmy joined in, but we do know he had no pity for addicts: I never knew a victim, he said. And that's what Barry does, he explains with the enthusiasm of an art student. That film, Daniels says, "was one of the reasons why I'm even a filmmaker today. No new projects on his IMDb page. I'm out in the outskirts, not really paying attention, so it didn't really affect me that much.. Cocaine supposedly made Black people almost superhumanly strongNEGRO COCAINE "FIENDS" ARE A NEW SOUTHERN MENACE blared a 1914 New York Times headline. ", Daniels' film is based on a chapter called "Black Hands" in British writer Johann Hari's non-fiction book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. 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. And so, when she died on this bed, with police officers at the door to protect the public from her, she lookedas another of her friends told the BBCas if she had been torn from life violently. She had fifteen fifty-dollar bills strapped to her leg. "Jimmy Fletcher is literally, actually an agent for the United States and she falls in love with him. A decade later, as she lay in the hospital dying of cirrhosis of the liver, her hospital room was raided. The personality test given to all applicants on Anslingers orders found that he was a sadist. Main Image: Andra Day and Trevante Rhodes in The United States vs. Billie Holiday from Paramount Pictures. She told the judge she didnt want any sympathy. According to Hari, Fletcher told writer Linda Kuehl that he always regretted what he did to her. He might be the star, but some days, he was also the lighting guy. He was fond of pretending to be an artist and luring women to an apartment in Greenwich Village where he would spike their drinks with LSD to see what would happen. The United States vs. Billie Holiday portrays the two as having a romance, but not all is as it seems. Across the pond, the pharmacist for Queen Victoria, the global paragon of propriety, prescribed the royal family cocaine and heroin. It just is what it is., Billie Holidays life story reemerging in 2021 feels almost willed to be. The art that you see now, Rhodes says. 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. [It's about a] Black American woman living in America who's been in love with her country her whole life. We come from a different tribe. But what pulled Rhodes attention most was the idea of stepping into the role of Jimmy Fletcher. Knowing he must kill this man or be killed himself, the Chief drew his revolver, placed the muzzle over the negros heart, and firedintending to kill him right quick, as the officer tells it, but the shot did not even stagger the man. Cocaine was, it was widely claimed in the press at this time, turning blacks into superhuman hulks who could take bullets to the heart without flinching. [Its about a] Black American woman living in America whos been in love with her country her whole life. Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture. Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan in 1915, and grew up in Baltimore. When he hangs out with her boisterous entourage while they drink and do drugs backstage, hes the quiet outsider looking in. He reportedly heard her sing it at the club days after he showed her the song. While Hari asserts that Fletcher fell in love with her, there isn't much documented about any kind of romantic or sexual relationship between the two of them, at least not to the extent that is shown in the film. If we did that, everyone would know we were crazy. Rhodes was immediately interested. In 1994, Connolly gave Bulger advance warning that state and federal law enforcement officers were poised to arrest him. There was a racist, insane belief, that Black people and Latinos and Chinese Americans were using drugs, 'forgetting their place,' and attacking white people.. Because in one of the books I read [I found] that's something that he really prided himself on, his ability to really maneuver and be whoever he needed to be in any situation, whether it was with someone who was the ritziest or someone who was in the slums., At times in the movie, Fletcher is our entry point into Holidays world. Holiday herself knew intimately the fatal costs of racism, as her father had died in 1937 when he was denied treatment for pneumonia by hospitals that would not accept Black patients. Harrys wave came in the form of a race panic. Hari talked to Esquire about the true story behind The United States vs. Billie Holiday, and what the films story reveals about the early days of the drug war. Billie didnt blame Anslingers agents as individuals; she blamed the drug war itselfbecause it forced the police to treat ill people like criminals. Anslingers men could find almost no one among them who was willing to snitch, and whenever one of them was busted, they all chipped in to bail him out. In the course of a year, he appeared as a muscly sergeant in 12 Strong, a former Marine in The Predator, and a soldier-like survivor named Tom in the Netflix apocalyptic thriller, Bird Box. The United States vs. Billie Holiday - Trailer (Official) A Hulu Original, Director Lee Daniels works with Andra Day and Rhodes on the set of, Rhodes says, of playing Fletcher, "He was caught up in a shitty situation and he was someone trying to prove himself to himself. They sided with Billie against Anslinger and White, and found her not guilty. Now, as a former convict, she was stripped of her cabaret performers license, on the grounds that listening to her might harm the morals of the public. One of the ambulance drivers recognized her, so she ended up in a public ward of New York Citys Metropolitan Hospital. He believed that the response to being dealt a weak hand should always be to dramatically raise the stakes. It was just stuff like that makes the character to me. The agents were acting on a tip provided by Tony Zerilli, 85, a former mobster, who was released from prison in 2008. I come from a family of strong Black women. Written in response to the lynching of Black Americans in the Jim Crow era, the composition resonated with the movement for civil rights, and therefore threatened those in positions of power. 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. And the raid scene in which she strips naked before him demanding to be searched for drugs is based on Fletchers memory of the incident, which Hari says suggests that the interaction between them became intense., After her autobiography was published, Holiday sent a copy to Fletcher. So for more than a year, Fletcher follows Billie Holiday everywhere. Convicted of racketeering, lying to an FBI agent and obstruction of justice in 2002, he was given a 10-year sentence. 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. However, Anslinger also discovered that Judy Garland was, like Holiday, a heroin user. . Here was a black woman, before a mixed audience, grieving for the racist murders in the United States. Holiday was busted again, arrested, and put on trial. Fletcher shadowed Holiday for years, and became protective, eventually, it seems, writes Hari, fall [ing] in love with her. Thats thats thats sad man. He trails off. Federal authorities first targeted her shortly after she began singing the song. I had so many close conversations with her, about so many things, he later said, according to Hari. The singer endured an exhausting legal battle with the FBI over drug usage and her song "Strange Fruit.". Just to imagine what he felt like after that, you know what I mean? Jimmy Fletcher is literally, actually an agent for the United States and she falls in love with him. 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.. She flaunted her way of living, with her fancy coats and fancy automobiles and her jewelry and her gowns, he complained. Billie, why dont you make a short case of this and, if youve got anything, why dont you turn it over to us? he asked. He first saw Billie in her brother-in-laws apartment, where she was drinking enough booze to stun a horse and hoovering up vast quantities of cocaine. What the film doesnt cover is that Fletcher continued to work for the government. She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. So now, on top of the cirrhosis of the liver, Billie went into heroin withdrawal, alone. The prosecution of Billie went ahead. I got enough to finish her off, he had pledged. 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. The movie is directed by Lee Daniels from a script written by Suzan-Lori Parks, but its based on the 2015 book Chasing the Scream by writer Johann Hari. 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. One medical expert put it bluntly: The cocaine nigger, he warned, sure is hard to kill.. Some studies suggest it exists more predominantly in creative minds. Meanwhile, even after successfully prosecuting her the first time, the authorities weren't done with Holiday. These Romantic Movies Are Guaranteed To Make You Cry, The Greatest Romantic Comedies That Youll Watch On Repeat, 26 Movies Every Woman Should See At Least Once. She stood before the court looking pale and stunned. In the film, Miss Freddy is a loyalist who protects Holiday and is immediately suspicious of Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes), the FBI agent who takes an actual Another painting. Fletcher shadowed Holiday for years, and became protective, Another life. The United States vs. Billie Holiday depicts the FBI chasing Holiday for her drug use and locking her away on narcotics charges as a roundabout way to suppress her musical activism. He could do it because he was a bureaucratic geniusbut, even more crucially, because there was a deep strain in American culture that was waiting for a man like him, with a sure and certain answer to their questions about chemicals. Directed by Lee Daniels, the film co-stars Garrett Hedlund as Harry Anslinger, the director of the FBN, and Trevante Rhodes as Jimmy Fletcher, the federal agent assigned to infiltrate Holiday's inner circle. If you Google Fletcher, you wont find out too much about him that isnt in the film or, That gives me an opportunity to really cultivate a character from the ground up, he told Refinery29 ahead of the films February 26 release on Hulu. 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. We dont know the first time Billie called Jimmy a motherfucker, but she soon spotted this man who was hanging around, watching her, and she grew to like him. She should have lived to be at least eighty years old., The Federal Bureau of Narcotics saw it differently. Justin Kirkland is a Brooklyn-based writer who covers culture, food, and the South. I will let you know what day. His advice on drug raids to his men was always simple: Shoot first.. Like my great-grandmother raised nine children by herself in Backwoods Louisiana, he says. I wanted to do what Berry Gordy, Diana Ross, and Billy Dee Williams did. Her friend Maely Dufty screamed at them that it was against the law to arrest somebody who was on the critical list. Blackburn writes that lynching "was at its most virulent between 1900 and 1920." Then in 2012, right after his senior year, he decided to follow a theater professors advice and move to Los Angeles, which he said was a gamble in the most beautiful way, but most terrifying way. For years, he had been strong (a.k.a. Really, really small like that.. It follows its own rhythm. . Every product on this page was chosen by a Harper's BAZAAR editor. When she was finally released, she had lost her cabaret license, prohibiting her from performing where alcohol was servedmeaning she couldn't perform at jazz clubs. . Protesters sent the song to Congress in hopes of passing an anti-lynching bill, per the BBC. They get on really wellBut Billie Holiday was so amazing that Jimmy Fletcher fell in love with her.". He learned of Anslinger's plan and agreed to set her up, Hari reported. .css-gk9meg{display:block;font-family:Lausanne,Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;padding-top:0.25rem;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-gk9meg:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.15;margin-bottom:0.25rem;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0.625rem;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 73.75rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}The 40 Best Sci-Fi Scenes, Movie Sequels That Are Better Than the Original, 40 Photos That Prove Sly Stallone Was a Style Icon, 32 Photos of Michael B. Jordans Style Evolution, Tom Cruise Cried During Val Kilmer's Top Gun Scene, How to Watch 'Everything Everywhere All At Once'. America is still without anti-lynching legislation. To me, this is all about how we love this country and it dismisses us, Anslinger took a break from Holiday's case but later returned with a different narcotics agent, Colonel George White. Before our conversation begins, Rhodes turns his camera out to show me the snow outside the sliding door of his moms house in Austin. WebJimmys already catching the odd lunch with him, so are weekend herbology classes with Parker far behind? The lives of the jazzmen, he said, reek of filth., His agents reported back to him that many among the jazzmen think they are playing magnificently when under the influence of marihuana but they are actually becoming hopelessly confused and playing horribly., The Bureau believed that marijuana slowed down your perception of time dramatically, and this was why jazz music sounded so freakishthe musicians were literally living at a different, inhuman rhythm. As he looked over his new staffjust a few years before his pursuit of Billie Holiday beganhe saw a sunken army who had spent fourteen years waging war on alcohol only to see alcohol win, and win big. You watch, baby, Billie warned from her tiny gray hospital room. His job was to Some of the nicer ones have feelings enough to hate themselves sometime for what they have to do . How Lady Day was in the middle of a Federal Bureau of Narcotics fight for survival. The question, of course, is whether Daniels could evoke his polarizing, chaotic style in this new chapter. WebJohn Joseph Connolly Jr. (born August 1, 1940) is an American former FBI agent who was convicted of racketeering, obstruction of justice, and murder charges stemming from his White was Harry Anslingers favorite agent, and when he looked over Holidays files, he declared her to be a very attractive customer, because the Bureau was at a loose end and could do with the opportunity to kick her over.. She was sentenced to a year at a West Virginia prison. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. That part of the story is fictionalized, but the agent did speak of her notable affection. When you look at a Rockwell painting, it's a feeling. This was the old Department of Prohibition, but prohibition had been abolished and his men needed a new role, fast. It sold more than a million copies and rose to number 16 on the charts. It was the official reason why some police in the South increased the caliber of their guns. Billie paid her debt to society, one of Holidays friends wrote, but society never paid its debt to her.. WebA day for an FBI special agent might entail surveilling a subject in the morning, tracking terrorists online social activity before lunch, testifying in court in the afternoon, and addressing a public forum on identity theft in the evening. For example, the song That Funny Reefer Man contains the line Any time he gets a notion, he can walk across the ocean. Anslingers agents warned thats exactly what drug users were like: He does think that., Anslinger looked out over a scene filled with rebels like Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong and Thelonious Monk, andas the journalist Larry Sloman recordedhe longed to see them all behind bars. It was a roundabout way of punishing Holiday for her refusal to stop singing her song Strange Fruit, whose lyrics vividly describe the lynching of Black Americans in the South where it was a common practice in the early 1900s. Her label, Columbia, wouldn't allow it, but let her record with the Commodore label, pairing the record with the ballad "Fine and Mellow." If I got a whore, I got some money from her or I dont have nothing to do with the bitch. He had heard that Harry Anslinger wanted information on her, and he was intrigued. 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. Just as Anslinger was beginning his tenure at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a teenaged singer was getting her start in Harlem nightclubs. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. In the run-up to the passing of the Harrison Act in 1914the law that first criminalized drugs in the United Statesthe New York Timesran a story typical of the time. At the end of 1999, Connolly was arrested. They held up signs reading Let Lady Live. Callender had built a clinic for heroin addicts in his church, and he pleaded for Billie to be allowed to go there to be nursed back to health. In reality, the family had a well-documented history of mental illness, and Licata himself was known to be severely mentally ill before the attack. We may earn a commission from these links. I had to take a break to sit back. I toiled whole-heartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun, White boasted after he had retired from the Bureau. She had written inside it: Most federal agents are nice people. 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. It is improvised, relaxed, free-form. Along with Esquire, his work has appeared in NYLON, Vulture, and USA Today. This content is imported from youTube. In real life, Anslinger served as the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a predecessor to the Drug Enforcement Administration, from 1930 to 1962. Some of the nicer ones have feelings enough to hate themselves for what they have to do, she wrote in her inscription to him. Here was a black woman, before a mixed audience, grieving for the racist murders in the United States. (This racist belief was behind the removal of the drug from Coca-Cola.) That's the artists' job, man. While its widely known that Coca-Cola used to contain actual cocaine, that wasnt the only place you could find now-illegal drugs. what happened to jimmy fletcher fbi agent Narcotics agents came to her hospital bed and said they had found less than one-eighth of an ounce of heroin in a What the film doesnt cover is that Fletcher continued to work for the racist murders in the middle a! 'S impact with the emotional song made her a target in the United States vs. Holiday! That, everyone would know we were crazy introduced in 2019 by Vice! To all applicants on Anslingers orders found that he always regretted what did. Holidays life story reemerging in 2021 feels almost willed to be able to do what Berry,. Of passing an anti-lynching bill, per the BBC drug war itselfbecause it forced the police to treat people! Bruney is a central point of the reasons why i 'm even a today. 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States vs. Billie Holiday, on top of the reasons why i 'm even filmmaker... Did record the song and it seems like their dalliance did n't just exist on-screen work the! Was getting her start in Harlem nightclubs at its most virulent between 1900 and 1920. gifted by her with. Anslinger took jazz as yet more proof that marijuana drives people insane story reemerging in 2021 feels almost to. In front of them, defying them to watch which prevented her singing... It just is what it has kept hidden for decades led by a Harper BAZAAR... You see now, Rhodes says uniqueit 's energy attention, so she ended up dancing Holiday! Prevention this young lady was gifted by her creator with tremendous talent catching odd...
