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Talk:Billie Holiday/Archive 3

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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

Early Life parenthetical

Under early life, there appears the following statement: "(Holiday's autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, first published in 1956, was sketchy about details of her early life, but much was confirmed by Stuart Nicholson in his 1995 biography of the singer.)[citation needed]"

If the details were confirmed, then I don't think this is necessary here. Not having read either book, I can't speak to the need for critique of the autobiography. However, I think the appropriate place for it would be in the section discussing the book and album Lady Sings the Blues. I didn't want to just remove it without discussion. I will try to do some further research before revisiting the topic. —Zujine|talk 16:32, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

please fix this sentence

The album did not have any new material other than the title track, "Too Marvelous For Words", "Willow Weep for Me", and "I Thought About You", but had new recordings of Holiday's biggest hits.

there's some wrong with this, but i don't know enough to fix it. (How does four of 12 tracks constitute "not any"? or is only the title track new? ..) Doceddi (talk) 21:29, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you, so I reworded it. Coupdeforce (talk) 16:45, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Harris/Fagan discrepancy

The article says her birth name was Fagan, the infobox says Harris. Which is it? VenomousConcept (talk) 12:59, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Instead of simply saying that Holiday's birth name was xxx, the article should say that sources differ and cite both names to appropriate reliable sources. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 02:50, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
I agree with the basic idea of that, but we can't show one name in one place without qualification, and another name in another place also without qualification, and expect readers to know what the hell is going on. Before I touched the article:
  • the lede and the first para said her birth name was Fagan, but
  • the infobox said her birth name was Harris.
Both names were sourced to the same source. Both cannot possibly be correct. So, I fixed the inconsistency problem. Now I’m being told off, and we're back to speaking with a forked tongue.
What we need to do is have all places where her birth name is shown (a) show both names, and (b) point to the same footnote where the issue is explained in as much detail as appropriate. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 04:58, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
We say her unmarried mother's name was Sadie Fagan when Billie was born. Later the mother became Sadie Gough, but not before becoming Sadie Harris. We're not told how the name Harris got into the picture, when, or anything about it. Even with wildly conflicting sources, we should still be able to manage to tell the story more coherently than this. -- Jack of Oz [Talk] 05:04, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

The name Harris was Sadie's mother's surname and Fagan was Sadie's father's surname. Sadie was born illegitimate (born Sarah Harris) and, at some point, she took her father's surname. This was verified in Stuart Nicholson's 1995 biography of Billie Holiday.76.21.10.209 (talk) 08:12, 14 November 2013 (UTC)Danny Appel

"New Orleans"

The citation to this passage leads to the Nicholson biography, and is a complete and total distortion of what is stated there: "In September 1946, Holiday began work on what would be her only major film New Orleans. She starred opposite Louis Armstrong and Woody Herman. Plagued by racism and McCarthyism, producer Jules Levey and script writer Herbert Biberman were pressured to lessen Holiday and Armstrong's role in the film as to not give the impression that black people created jazz. Their attempts failed because in 1947 Biberman was listed as one of the Hollywood Ten and sent to jail.[62]"

Nicholson states "Although New Orleans started out with the best intentions when shooting started, to celebrate 'the music that rocked the world', its intentions were quickly subverted by the then rising tide of McCarthyism. Defining black people as creators of anything, let alone jazz, meant producer Jules Levey and writer Herbert Biberman came under increasing pressure because of their 'liberal' views to revert to the stereotypical way black people were treated in Hollywood."

Do you see the difference? The way the Wiki digests it, Biberman is complicit in steering his script towards racism and is rewarded through doing hard time as a member of the Hollywood Ten. This also indicates that the harm done to the film was undone somehow, which it certainly was not. That Biberman was sent to jail, in Nicholson's work, is part of a quote from Red Callendar; his conviction and sentencing as part of the Hollywood Ten has nothing to do with his role in making, or un-making, of New Orleans.

The whole passage devoted to New Orleans, consisting of two paragraphs, is too long and detailed for an encyclopedic article. The main significance of the film in Holiday's career -- other than it was her only feature film appearance -- is that she might have been able to parlay it into a movie career, owing to her vast popularity at the time. But Holiday's drug use on set and unreliability closed off any more opportunities in that area. Pinikadia 04:16, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

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