The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Has anyone heard of or seen the HBO TV movie "Bessie"?It's about the life of blues singer Bessie Smith.Bessie is portrayed by Queen Latifah.edisonplayer

Yep, definitely worth watching, limited authenticity, but music is first class:

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=21660

Technical authenticity is a problem (the recording scenes are a particular problem: that recording horn was beyond silly). However, I don't think that anyone could have performed better than Queen Latifah. It's a really good film. Just don't look too closely.

I'd have thought with the budget that they had, and with Miss Latifah's obvious passion for Bessie Smith's music (after all, she said that she dreamed of playing Smith in a interview shortly after her first Rap hit record) that the film would have had a better impression of the recording process. It is not too difficult. Hollywood did it well, to great effect in Two Sisters from Boston,mthoug it probably helped that the recording artist was played by Lauritz Melchior, who had recorded pretty extensively in the acoustic era. [YouTube]http://youtu.be/EA-aisw78ww[/YouTube]

It is very difficult to get any semblance of realism past a director, though, as I have found several times to my chagrin, most notably when designing productions of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" which takes place largely IN a recording studio. It is not what the directors don't know, it is the stuf that they "know" which just is not so.

I remember Jerry Donnell telling me that one time when he was a little boy he and his nurse,who was black went backstage where Bessie was appearing.This would've been in Jerry's hometown of Murfreesboro,TN.He told me that his nurse went backstage to talk to Bessie for some reason.Jerry told me he was sitting on Bessie Smith's lap while she and his nurse were talking.It must've been at either a theater or a tent show. Jerry,who was born in 1925,would've been a very little boy at the time.edisonplayer