I only wanted to see this documentary for one reason: to watch Ms. Holiday perform the title song. The song's extremely sad, bitter lyrics are legendary, but I'd heard for years that it had been given something of a dramatic, almost eccentric, interpretation by Ms. Holiday herself. I'd assumed that if there was a surviving recording of it, it was in some B-level motion picture or newsreel. And here's the big surprise of the documentary: when we finally see Holiday, it is not on film, but on live television. A surviving b/w reel-to-reel videotape of a 1958 (or 1959) BBC broadcast shows Ms. Holiday- beautiful, regal, but somewhat melancholy (with hair severely pulled back and in a glittering dress)- stylishly reciting with piano accompaniment for 3 minutes of what must be the earliest surviving videotape ever recorded-- and just a scant 5 months before her death. It's like two phenomena were jelled into one performance: modern television technology and an artist very much at the end of her own life. Blew me out of the water!!
Review of Strange Fruit
