Whether or not they actually had a physical relationship is hard to say, but it does seem that Fletcher and Holiday did have some sort of relationship, though it may have involved a sense of betrayal. He wanted to bring the full thump of the federal government down upon that scourge of modern society, his Public Enemy #1: Billie Holiday. But even if the film did embellish some aspects of their relationship, the screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks notes that it served an important purpose to the storyline. Its just that all the questions about it have him questioning himself. . Justin Kirkland is a Brooklyn-based writer who covers culture, food, and the South. 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. The singer had been given methadone to aid her recovery, but she was cut off after 10 days on Anslingers request. It was the last thing the Japanese man ever saw. Police were stationed at her door to stop her visitors from seeing her. 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.. When Jimmy was sent to raid her, he knocked at the door pretending he had a telegram to deliver. One of the people responsible for Americas turn from this laissez-faire approach to drug consumption was Harry Anslinger, whos played in The United States vs. Billie Holiday by Garrett Hedlund. Really, really small like that.. Billie Holiday Was Arrested Due to Jimmy Fletcher - Distractify And, as Hari told Esquire, she and the Pope drank something called Vin Mariani, which was wine laced with opium.. He had just been appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Narcoticsa tiny agency, buried in the gray bowels of the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C.and it seemed to be on the brink of being abolished. That is indeed a heroic story and everyone in that position should be really proud of themselves, but one of the things I really learned from this is, that is not the only heroic story about addiction. ", Trevante Rhodes and the Philosophy of Art, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. To be able to be hip with the cats when he was hip. She told people she would rather die than go back to prison, but she was terrified that she would burn in hell just as her mother had said she would all those years before, when she was a little girl lying on the brothel floor, listening to Louis Armstrongs music and letting it carry her out of Baltimore. In all her time behind bars, she did not sing a note. Barry is more Eastern philosophy, kind of a slow Zen person. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. The shots on his Instagram and his poetry that plays with white space and form. Really, really small like that., While theres some gray area when it comes to what we really know about Fletcher, something that was created for the film was Rhodes family background, which contrasts that of Holidays. According to Holiday biographer Julia Blackburn, the singer was itching to record the song after seeing the audience reactions. One night, in 1939, Billie Holiday stood on stage in New York City and sang a song that was unlike anything anyone had heard before. It was the story that Black people needed, that the culture needed at the time. However, it was originally written by poet, teacher, and activist Abel Meeropol, from New York. Billie had got used to turning up at gigs so badly beaten by her husband, manager and sometimes pimp, Louis McKay, they had to tape up her ribs before pushing her onstage. Another life. This was one of the few places she could still perform, and she badly needed the money. In 1994, Connolly gave Bulger advance warning that state and federal law enforcement officers were poised to arrest him. Its a lot to contend with, and Rhodes found a way to connect. 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. She was still a hero, no matter what they did to her, no matter how they persecuted her, she never stopped singing Strange Fruit. She never let them destroy her.. But how much of the film is true? 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. Holiday was busted again, arrested, and put on trial. She told the judge she didnt want any sympathy. Once it was all over, White told the authorities he strangled this Jap because he believed he was a spy. 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.. Its also true, as the end of the film states, that Fletcher always felt guilty for gaining Holidays trust and getting her arrested, which resulted in a year-long jail sentence and the loss of her cabaret card after she got out, preventing her from singing in any jazz club that served alcohol in the country. Harrys wave came in the form of a race panic. Hulus Oscar-nominated The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a fictionalized take on the life of the legendary jazz singer, played in the film by Rise Up singer and (now Academy Award nominated) actress Andra Day in a .css-umdwtv{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:.0625rem;text-decoration-color:#FF3A30;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:inherit;-webkit-transition:background 0.4s;transition:background 0.4s;background:linear-gradient(#ffffff, #ffffff 50%, #d5dbe3 50%, #d5dbe3);-webkit-background-size:100% 200%;background-size:100% 200%;}.css-umdwtv:hover{color:#000000;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;-webkit-background-position:100% 100%;background-position:100% 100%;}Golden Globe-nominated performance. 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. Holiday's song, "Strange Fruit," is a central point of the film. 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. Many agents in this position would shoot heroin with their clients, to prove they werent cops. It sounded, his internal memos said, like the jungles in the dead of night. Another memo warned that unbelievably ancient indecent rites of the East Indies are resurrected in this black mans music. 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. . Cocaine supposedly made Black people almost superhumanly strongNEGRO COCAINE "FIENDS" ARE A NEW SOUTHERN MENACE blared a 1914 New York Times headline. He was and would remain an archive mana street agent whose job was to figure out who was selling, who was supplying and who should be busted. 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. 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. At the end of 1999, Connolly was arrested. Holiday after being arrested for heroin possession in 1947. Here's what's fact and what's fiction in The United States vs. Billie Holiday. Since then, Holiday struggled to get better, though she continued to sing "Strange Fruit." The singer endured an exhausting legal battle with the FBI over drug usage and her song "Strange Fruit.". He was a Black man assigned with taking down a Black woman who was actually, vocally, standing up for her community, particularly with her anti-lynching song Strange Fruit." According to Hari, Fletcher told writer Linda Kuehl that he always regretted what he did to her. This low-class bitch? McKay raged, according to an interviewer who spoke with him years after Billies death. Every product on this page was chosen by a Harper's BAZAAR editor. I wanted to do what Berry Gordy, Diana Ross, and Billy Dee Williams did. Practically, he had to continue working for them, Rhodes says. 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. Back then they were like, what? (It even smells like the South.) That is also what partly drew him in. To me, this is all about how we love this country and it dismisses 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. If we did that, everyone would know we were crazy. It was crazy. We may earn a commission from these links. 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. I think in this story, we were able to empathize with him because we understood he was just someone who was just caught up.. Neither passed. Now that Agent L.G. It imagined black bodies hanging from trees as a dark fruit native to the South. Jimmy was allowed through the door at the Bureau, but never up the stairs. . Theres not a lot known about the condition, but it affects approximately three percent of the worlds population. That said, its just as easy to view Fletcher as a traitor. His soul was, I don't know what. Rhodes takes a moment to remind me of the final scene of the film: Fletcher bent over against a black door that will not open. It was all she had left. But then the methadone was suddenly stopped, and she began to sicken again. 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 was right: Jimmy told the writer Linda Kuehl that he never stopped feeling guilty for what hed done to Lady Day. How it might have streaks of color from another stroke. 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. You victimize yourself by becoming a junkie.. After being arrested for possession in 1947, Holiday was sentenced to a year in prison. Its too big to go under the door! he snapped back. Its when your senses kind of overlap. In other instances, you might taste noise. The Japanese man couldnt breathe. 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. 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.. I come from a family of strong Black women. His job was to Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan in 1915, and grew up in Baltimore. Tragically, her personal life was marked by horrifying abuse. Rhodes' resurgence is marked by a story sopped in everything good and bad from the South, about a woman who reckoned with the norm until the moment she died. S, Welcome to Love Like This?, a romance column where we, Kathleen Newman-Bremang and Ineye Komonibo, revisit some of the most romantic or not, in hindsig, Whether its the iconic early-aughts film Love Dont Cost a Thing or her 2021 Netflix hit Resort to Love, Christina Milian has solidified herself in th, This story contains spoilers for Netflixs You People. Anslinger hated hiring Black agents, according to 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. I'm a country dude, man, he says, refusing to acknowledge that hes built like a brick shithouse, to take a phrase we use in the South. One of the ambulance drivers recognized her, so she ended up in a public ward of New York Citys Metropolitan Hospital. The meeting had been a long time coming. They get on really wellBut Billie Holiday was so amazing that Jimmy Fletcher fell in love with her.". Theyve got a dirty job to do and they have to do it. Her friend Maely Dufty screamed at them that it was against the law to arrest somebody who was on the critical list. He might be the star, but some days, he was also the lighting guy. coastal farm and ranch loss prevention coastal farm and ranch loss prevention 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. And he at least to me seemed like someone really trying to find themselves in the world and doing that through this job where people were taking advantage of him.. There's a depth in my soul and being from the South, man, the soul down here? But of all the people Rhodes could be stranded with, mom is a top choice. WebRecruiting a black agent, Jimmy Fletcher, for the job, Anslinger began his attacks on Holiday in 1939. Strange Fruit was a musical lament against lynching. My mom raised two boys here by herself. Jazz was the opposite of everything Harry Anslinger believed in. But I'm the kind of person, bro, I got to see where I'm going. No new projects on his IMDb page. [2] [3] Law enforcement career [ edit] Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. She flaunted her way of living, with her fancy coats and fancy automobiles and her jewelry and her gowns, he complained. She was sentenced to a year at a West Virginia prison. As The Guardian writes, "Maybe he had [fallen in love with her]. To me, its really kind of true to life, to the mess that I know life to be. Rhodes believes that Fletcher had to hurt when it came to how he treated Holiday. I remember the first time I really understood what love was or at least what a nine-year-old could understand as romantic love. When I ask Rhodes about that, the tone of our conversation shifts, landing somewhere between exhaustion and frustration. The morning he first raided her, Jimmy took Billie to one side and promised to talk to Anslinger personally for her. Please, she said to the judge, I want the cure., She was sentenced instead to a year in a West Virginia prison, where she was forced to go cold turkey and work during the days in a pigsty, among other places. Inspired to create the film without the influence of alcohol or drugs, The United States vs. Billie Holiday is Daniels first sober film. To me, this is all about how we love this country and it dismisses us, She was arrested again in 1949, though this time she was acquitted. 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. I had to take a break to sit back. When she was ten years old, she was raped by an adult neighbor. That's just what Lee does in the most beautiful way with his works, Rhodes says of Daniels. You know what I mean? How Lady Day was in the middle of a Federal Bureau of Narcotics fight for survival. It's about having the opportunity to be a part of those paintings and be as profound a color as you can. What followed was an onslaught of visibility. 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. In the film, Fletchers mother insists that the feds interest in Holiday was squarely about silencing her incendiary performances of Strange Fruit. The song has become known as one of the most recognizable anthems of civil rights, painting a gruesome picture of the lynchings of Black people across America. The face of Moonlight was everywhere. Theres, unsurprisingly, not much out there about a romantic relationship between the agent and the singer. But then also be strong and proud whenever he's speaking to his superiors. But the main conflict that Fletcher faces in the film is when the chameleons colors are at odds with one another. When he hangs out with her boisterous entourage while they drink and do drugs backstage, hes the quiet outsider looking in. Fletcher shadowed Holiday for years, and became protective, eventually, it seems, writes Hari, fall [ing] in love with her. Will that trickle into society essentially?. Onlookers gather at the site where FBI agents search a field for the alleged remains of Jimmy Hoffa on June 17, 2013 in Oakland Township, Michigan. At Billies funeral, there were swarms of police cars, because they feared their actions against her would trigger a riot. Photo Credit: Takashi Seida. . Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 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. To Harry Anslinger, Billie Holiday was like the symbol of everything that America had to be afraid of, Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, said inan interview withWNYC Studios. WebFletcher, whos portrayed as the only good man in her love life, started out as using Holiday to further his career with the FBI. Man Id wake up and start crying for like a week. Did Federal Agent Jimmy Fletcher Really Fall in Love With Billie She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. No matter what they did to her, she sang her song. I was able to get these little bit parts here and there, Rhodes said. Neither Holiday nor Fletcher ever admitted to having a relationship on the record but there is strong evidence to support that Fletcher was in love with her. Amid all of that came Moonlight. 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. 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. Black Americans love this country, often at our peril.". Theyve got a dirty job to do and they have to do it. And then suddenly, Trevante was gone. The next scenes are somewhat fudged: The movie depicts Holiday at Joe Guys New York apartment the day after the performance, where shes apprehended by a The job, Anslinger began his attacks on Holiday in 1939 native to the South of Sale/Targeted.... Your Privacy Choices: Opt out of Sale/Targeted Ads hurt when it came how. 10 days on Anslingers request busted again, arrested, and put on trial job, began. Holiday in 1939 also be strong and proud whenever he 's speaking his! Writer who covers culture, food, and the Philosophy of Art, Your Privacy Choices: out. Linda Kuehl that he always regretted what he did to her. `` the quiet outsider looking in Rhodes! Products we back my soul and being from the South morning he first raided,... 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