Commentary

HBO Movie About Singer Bessie Smith Is Off-Key

Unless I missed it somehow, the one recording for which blues singer Bessie Smith is most famous is not included in the HBO movie called “Bessie” about the singer's life.

The song was “St. Louis Blues,” and Smith’s 1925 recording, featuring Louis Armstrong on cornet, is widely viewed as a seminal moment in the history of 20th-century popular music -- in this case, the moment when a recording by an African-American woman singing a song drawn from the black-American experience crossed over to become a hit among white audiences.

Since I know nothing else about Bessie Smith's life and times, I expected “St. Louis Blues” to be a centerpiece of this TV movie, which stars Queen Latifah in the title role. It premieres this coming Saturday (May 16) at 8 p.m. Eastern on HBO.

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While “St. Louis Blues” is omitted -- along with any mention of Louis Armstrong -- there's plenty of music in “Bessie.” The movie tells the story of Smith's adult life from 1913 to the 1930s, with Latifah mimicking Smith in performances from her beginnings through her rise to apparent wealth and fame in the 1920s, then a fall with the spread of the Depression, and then a comeback in the 1930s as the white-dominated recording industry “rediscovers” her and gives her music the respect she was denied previously.

Or that’s what I think happened. This movie has a disjointed quality about it that makes it a challenge to follow. For example, the movie has Bessie experiencing a sudden financial catastrophe in which she’s seen moving into a rundown apartment from a posh Philadelphia mansion she owned in the 1920s, and pawning jewelry for cash.

But the reasons for her financial downfall are unclear. This movie tends to jump over, if not ignore, these kinds of details. Instead, you’re just supposed to assume, based on a montage of images of breadlines and such from the Great Depression, that somehow, the Depression caused Bessie to lose her money.

However, you’re not really told how this happened, so you’re left to speculate: Did Bessie lose her money in the stock market? Did her performance bookings dry up because her audience of mostly working-class black people were feeling the pinch of the Depression and could no longer afford tickets? Who knows.

These are intelligent guesses, I suppose, but a guess is not a fact, and a TV movie about someone’s life should not be a guessing game. 

Throughout the movie, Bessie is shown succeeding in show business, while making a mess of her private life. In the movie, she’s portrayed as a libertine who had affairs with both men and women, while she was single and while she was married, and she drank copious quantities of Prohibition Era gin.

In one scene, her drinking apparently leads to her then-husband, a man named Jack Gee (played by Michael Kenneth Williams), taking their adopted son away from Bessie. He tells her she is unfit to be a mother because she’s drunk and high -- the first and only time that a suggestion is made that Bessie abused substances other than alcohol. However, the movie doesn’t delve into this, nor do we ever see Bessie using drugs.

The movie suggests, via gauzy flashbacks to Bessie’s childhood, that Bessie was the victim of unspecified abuse, possibly at the hands of her older sister, Viola (Khandi Alexander), who is even seen in one flashback chasing the child Bessie around a kitchen with a knife as if in the process of trying to murder her. And yet later in life, Viola comes to live with Bessie and her family in the Philadelphia mansion and becomes a part of her entourage.

Latifah reportedly did her own singing for the role of Bessie, and as one of the movie’s executive producers, she apparently felt strongly about telling the story of the singer’s life. But despite her passion and her diligence, Latifah falls short of creating a memorable performance.

“Bessie” premieres Saturday night (May 16) at 8 Eastern on HBO.

1 comment about "HBO Movie About Singer Bessie Smith Is Off-Key".
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  1. Archie Cogollos from Actor at self, May 12, 2015 at 4:29 p.m.

    It's unfortunate that these significant parts were left out...people have a tendency to take what they see as the facts and won't investigate further and speculate...the main reason the story is so importants...however some will reseach it hopefully...I curious now...I was introduced to her by Patsy Gilliam. Who was a dancer on b'eway in the 20/30/40's....a memorable character herself...miss her...she taught me much.....look fwd to the film  

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