Andra Day makes an impressive debut as Billie Holiday in United States vs. Billie Holiday now out on Hulu.
This is the real life story of the extensive legal battle the singer had with the FBI primarily over drugs as well as the song “Strange Fruit”. The song is a central point of the film that she released in 1939. It was actually written by a poet and activist from New York who was moved by extensive racism and especially a photograph of a lynching. Her Columbia label did not want her to record it but she was allowed to record with Commodore and sold over a million recordings.
The song drove an anti lynching movement and Congress received a copy of the song with supporters hoping it would help pass a bill.
The movie has th FBI chasing Holiday for what they emphasise as drugs charges while they were just as motivated to prevent her activism in music. Harry Anslinger was the lead FBI agent continually on Holidays back. He heard Holiday was using Cocaine and he used black agent Jimmy Fletcher to track her movements.
It was ultimately her husband, the abusive Louis McKay who caused the most damage, he worked with the FBI to set her up and she was put on trial. She received a one year sentence and without a license she couldn’t perform where alcohol was served.
She was busted again in San Francisco but it seemed pretty clear she was set up claiming opium and heroin usage. She was arrested again on her hospital bed in 1959, and she was ordered to stop the methadone that was being used to help her recovery. She subsequently died in 1959.
Fletcher and Holiday are shown to have a romance in the movie. He is reported to have a severe dislike of people with addiction but still can’t help falling in love with her. Even so, he sticks to his job and she is really hurt by this choice that he makes. For the rest of his life he felt guilty about the choices that he made.
