They explained that the problem had been solved: they had taken her off the critical list. She stood before the court looking pale and stunned. But then the methadone was suddenly stopped, and she began to sicken again. It was just stuff like that makes the character to me. This young lady was gifted by her creator with tremendous talent . In his assessment, Rhodes believes that history had remembered Fletcher for his faults, but none of his circumstances or motivations. 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. But Rhodes, a student of shades and colors, knows that Fletchers truth is somewhere in the details often overlooked. She told the judge she didnt want any sympathy. 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. 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. 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. According to Holiday biographer Julia Blackburn, the singer was itching to record the song after seeing the audience reactions. accounts for 10 percent of the total population, but 60 percent of the addicts. He could wage the drug warhe could do what he didonly because he was responding to a fear in the American people. Well, spot the difference.. Fletcher shadowed Holiday for years, and became protective, eventually, it seems, writes Hari, fall [ing] in love with her. Southerners dont do snow. At the moment, Rhodes is best known for his starring role in Best Picture winner, I read a few books, the 31-year-old actor said. 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. Many agents in this position would shoot heroin with their clients, to prove they werent cops. The personality test given to all applicants on Anslingers orders found that he was a sadist. Declassified FBI files quote an agent inside the narcotics bureau (possibly Anslinger) as saying that 'because of the importance of Holiday, it has been the policy of 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. 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. [Its about a] Black American woman living in America whos been in love with her country her whole life. In The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Andra Days Holiday embarks upon a steamy romance with Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes), the agent Anslinger tasks with finding ways to imprison her on drug charges. 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. White had been a journalist in San Francisco in the 1930s until he applied to join the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Still, he stayed true to his job. Holiday arriving at a court hearing in 1947. That's our life. And then suddenly, Trevante was gone. To Anslinger, this was musical anarchy and evidence of a recurrence of the primitive impulses that lurk in black people, waiting to emerge. The headline was: Negro cocaine fiends new southern menace. It described a North Carolina police chief who was informed that a hitherto inoffensive negro, with whom he was well-acquainted, was running amuck in a cocaine frenzy [and] had attempted to stab a storekeeper . 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. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. Drugs were banned in the United States in a moment of deep, racist determination and hysteria, he says. Practically, he had to continue working for them, Rhodes says. 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. When I ask Rhodes about that, the tone of our conversation shifts, landing somewhere between exhaustion and frustration. Did Federal Agent Jimmy Fletcher Really Fall in Love With Billie 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. "And I had so many close conversations with her, about so many things," Fletcher had said in a rare interview. But did it really happen that way in real life? He might be the star, but some days, he was also the lighting guy. When Billie was busted again, she was put on trial. We dont know whether Jimmy joined in, but we do know he had no pity for addicts: I never knew a victim, he said. The audience cannot see his face. Another life. .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'. Since then, Holiday struggled to get better, though she continued to sing "Strange Fruit." She had written inside it: Most federal agents are nice people. He became a sensation as the first and only white man ever to infiltrate a Chinese drug gang, and he even learned to speak in Mandarin so he could chant their oaths with them. Barry is more Eastern philosophy, kind of a slow Zen person. And, as Hari told Esquire, she and the Pope drank something called Vin Mariani, which was wine laced with opium.. Yeah. Harry believed he could. The United States vs. Billie Holiday is now streaming on Hulu. Her label, Columbia, wouldn't allow it, but let her record with the Commodore label, pairing the record with the ballad "Fine and Mellow." 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. They sided with Billie against Anslinger and White, and found her not guilty. 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. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. As an artist, you're trying to make something truthful, so that you get everyone's attention. 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.. 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. 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. They took a mug shot of her on her hospital bed. All I want to say is will you search me and let me go? 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. I got enough to finish her off, he had pledged. Just to imagine what he felt like after that, you know what I mean? ", Singing "Strange Fruit," Primetimer writes, "drove Harry Anslinger nuts, and made her personal destruction a goal of his. "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. We come from a different tribe. But what pulled Rhodes attention most was the idea of stepping into the role of Jimmy Fletcher. 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. Then hed send the best ones to Daniels. For Rhodes to play part in it does as well. The Time Ray Liotta Eviscerated Bradley Cooper. 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. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (This racist belief was behind the removal of the drug from Coca-Cola.) Billie Holiday Lover Explained, Over the decades, popular culture has created dominant narratives of the Dominican Republic that are most often synonymous with poverty, crime, or state vi, This story contains spoilers for Ant-Man: Quantumania. No media appearances. That's something that [director] Lee [Daniels] wanted to embellish a little bit to show that aspect of a rich Black family during that era, because we don't see too many depictions of that, Rhodes explains. He wrote to all the agents he had sent to follow them and instructed: Please prepare all cases in your jurisdiction involving musicians in violation of the marijuana laws. She was exhausted, one of her friends told me. Nothing works as fast as you would like. Rhodes sees Fletcher as someone who got in deeper and deeper to this gunk of a situation and even ended up falling in love. Jimmy Fletcher is literally, actually an agent for the United States and she falls in love with him. Billies greatest talent, after singing, was swearingif she called you a motherfucker, it was a great compliment. Billie paid her debt to society, one of her friends wrote, but society never paid its debt to her.. After Holidays 1956 autobiography Lady Sings the Blues was published, Hari writes that Holiday sent Fletcher a signed copy with the following note inside: Most federal agents are nice people. To finish her off, he called for his toughest agenta man who was at no risk of falling in love with her, or anyone else. So that to me was so necessary and portraying him in that way.. It was just like, I just felt better., Rhodes work, up to that point, was primarily in student filmsshoestring budgets with even smaller crews. In the years after Billies trial, many other singers were too afraid of being harassed by the authorities to perform Strange Fruit. But Billie Holiday refused to stop. It was the last thing the Japanese man ever saw. 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. The 1967 film Guess Whos Coming to Dinner starred Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton as a ne, As the open-hearted matriarch Hattie Mae in Tyler Perrys 2022 film A Jazzmans Blues, Amirah Vann demonstrates a great tenderness and fierce love to b, This story includes spoilers for Saint Omer. For her, Harry wrote with satisfaction, there would be no more Good Morning Heartache., This article is an adapted excerpt from Johann Haris book Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, published by Bloomsbury. Harry hated to hire black agents, but if he sent white guys into Harlem and Baltimore, they stood out straight away. They are going to arrest me in this damn bed.. No new projects on his IMDb page. Narcotics agents were sent to her hospital bed and said they had found less than one-eighth of an ounce of heroin in a tinfoil envelope. Set partly in the South, Lee shot the film in Montreal, though Rhodes says its a great replacement. The real Holiday did record the song in 1939. This meant she wasnt allowed to sing anywhere that alcohol was servedwhich included all the jazz clubs in the United States. 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. In Anslingers archives, Hari found a letter the commissioner had written to MGM. 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. Not until much later did Fletcher realize how damning his role in Holidays life was. Jimmy Fletcher was the answer. I did not think much of Ms. Holidays performance, he told her manager sternly. But meanwhile, decades before the protest songs of the 1960s, Holiday shouldered massive personal risks by performing Strange Fruit. Even though some white audience members left her shows when she performed the song, Holiday wrote it into her contracts that she would sing it each night. 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. It's not your fault. Some artists got killed for it.. 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. As the film notes, an anti-lynching bill was introduced to Congress in the 30s. The full sourcing for this article can be found in the books endnotes. He is bent in such a way that his body is contorted, as if hes carrying something we cannot see. Talk is cheap at the end of the day, Rhodes says plainly. 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 Most federal agents are nice people. 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 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. 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. With the subject matter of the film being so heavy, Rhodes describes the experience of making, The thing that I get from watching the film aside from the emotions and just being there is her courage, and her resilience, and the story about this person who they were trying to bring down because she was doing the right thing for her people, Rhodes says. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. You dont have to do that. Trevante Rhodes tells me that, to him, the color of The United States vs. Billie Holiday is maroon. ", 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. 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 He was supporting the adoption of a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence for first-time offender drug dealers. Its when your senses kind of overlap. The film is unnervingly relevant in 2021. When she reunited with her mother, Sadie Gough, in Harlem, where Gough was doing sex work, Billie was forced into prostitution. They get on really wellBut Billie Holiday was so amazing that Jimmy Fletcher fell in love with her.". 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. 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. 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved. 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. He believed that the response to being dealt a weak hand should always be to dramatically raise the stakes. CNN . Something some of us cannot know. Some studies suggest it exists more predominantly in creative minds. Holiday after being arrested for heroin possession in 1947. Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor I had so many things, '' had! The jazz clubs in the books endnotes knows that Fletchers truth is somewhere in the endnotes... Of a situation and even ended up falling in love only recommend products we back for. Finish her off the critical list perform Strange Fruit. for this can... Is now streaming on Hulu Anslingers orders found that he was also the lighting guy American woman in! 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