"New Orleans" Review

 

by Daniel White

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT

while she whispered a song along the keyboard

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

Those are the last lines in Frank O'Hara's plaintive poem, "The Day Lady Died". It's a beautifully written piece about the day Billie Holiday gave up the ghost, a striking tribute to a great artist.

United Artist's, New Orleans (1947) is not striking and it's certainly not great, but it's the only feature-length film Miss Holiday made, and for that it is worth seeing. In it she plays Endie, maid to Mrs. Rutledge Smith (the very chic Irene Rich), and girlfriend to Mr. Louis Armstrong. Thankfully, she spends most of the movie out of a maid's outfit, and in street clothes - not that there's anything wrong with being a maid, both my grandmothers were domestic workers. But Billie is a singer, and a diva, and it is fitting that her screen time is devoted to kickin' it with the band and not scrubbing floors.

The highest compliment that can be paid to this flick, which was ably directed by Arthur Lubin, is that it doesn't let its uninspired story line get in the way of some terrific music. Besides Holiday and Armstrong, Woody Herman shows up near the end and cuts loose with some boffo big band sounds. And the cats that accompany Satchmo are dynamite. Arturo de Cordova plays the male lead, Nick Duquesne, a New Orleans night club owner who is determined to legitimize the blues and introduce the music to a resistant public. Mr. de Cordova may have been a big star in Mexican cinema, but he barely registers here. And his love interest, Dorothy Patrick as Miralee Smith, daughter of the stylish Mrs. Smith (Rich), doesn't fare much better. Though she does get to lip sync a few pleasing operatic arias, Patrick fails to ignite, compared to the authentic Holiday.

Billie Holiday isn't much of an actress (unlike the charismatic Armstrong, who steals every scene he's in), but is assuredly in command when singing. Supposedly deep into her heroin addiction while filming, signs of the disease go largely unnoticed, except for in her final number, "The Blues Are Brewin'", where she looks a tad twisted. But it hardly matters; I'm just so grateful she managed to make this flick. It may be an unexceptionable B programmer, but Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong are anything but, and musical/movie history is made when the two perform together.

With a very effective Marjorie Lord as a dissipated society dame, who gets the best line in the movie: "You ruffled my feathers, you ruffian, but I liked it," and Richard Hageman as a classical pianist with a penchant for ragtime, New Orleans is available on YouTube.