Jimmy Fletcher was the answer. The real Holiday did record the song in 1939. 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 . '", Enter Agent Jimmy Fletcher, a Black federal officer who was assigned to infiltrate Holiday's personal inner circle. 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. Inspired to create the film without the influence of alcohol or drugs, The United States vs. Billie Holiday is Daniels first sober film. They always saw something. Its just that all the questions about it have him questioning himself. Rhodes sees Fletcher as someone who got in deeper and deeper to this gunk of a situation and even ended up falling in love. Holiday received her first threat from the bureau in 1939, after performing "Strange Fruit" on the stage in New York. Rhodes says he read an excerpt of an interview with Fletcher and it was what Fletcher didnt say that struck a chord with him. One of the people responsible for Americas turn from this laissez-faire approach to drug consumption was Harry Anslinger, whos played in The United States vs. Billie Holiday by Garrett Hedlund. Holiday arriving at a court hearing in 1947. The full sourcing for this article can be found in the books endnotes. Harry Anslinger did not create these underlying trends. ", Trevante Rhodes and the Philosophy of Art, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. The art that you see now, Rhodes says. Dont let them. The police threw the friend out. Will that trickle into society essentially?. Rhodes is a self-taught student of art, whose admiration of color and details seeps into his role in The United States vs. Billie Holiday, out now on Hulu. 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. That part of the story is fictionalized, but the agent did speak of her notable affection. His soul was, I don't know what. Rhodes takes a moment to remind me of the final scene of the film: Fletcher bent over against a black door that will not open. He believed that the response to being dealt a weak hand should always be to dramatically raise the stakes. Some of the nicer ones have feelings enough to hate themselves sometime for what they have to do . Jazz was the opposite of everything Harry Anslinger believed in. There is a 75 percent chance she's listening to Lorde right now. You dont have to do that. What really did her in was when her abusive husband, Louis McKay, got involved. After starring in Moonlight, a 21st century masterpiece, he appeared in a trio of action films then stepped back from the spotlight. To be able to be hip with the cats when he was hip. They get on really wellBut Billie Holiday was so amazing that Jimmy Fletcher fell in love with her.". Holiday would continue singing the song for the Cafe Society crowd, and they ate it up. 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. When finally a friend was allowed in to see her, Billie told her in a panic: Theyre going to kill me. The conviction also cost Holiday her cabaret performers license, which prevented her from singing at nightclubs for more than 10 years. His job was to bust his own people, but Anslinger was insistent that no black man in his Bureau could ever become a white mans boss. 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. So as he got to work on Billie, Colonel White was watched by his last victim, and this made him happy. Billie, why dont you make a short case of this and, if youve got anything, why dont you turn it over to us? he asked. When he discovered that a Washington society hostess he knewa beautiful, gracious lady, he notedhad an illegal drug addiction, he explained he couldnt possibly arrest her because it would destroy the unblemished reputation of one of the nations most honored families. He helped her to wean herself off her addiction slowly, without the law becoming involved. And Rhodes, a proud Louisianan and Texan hybrid, certainly did not expect to be half a foot deep in it, waiting for an hour or so of electricity that punctuates ten hour stretches without. When he hangs out with her boisterous entourage while they drink and do drugs backstage, hes the quiet outsider looking in. Written in response to the lynching of Black Americans in the Jim Crow era, the composition resonated with the movement for civil rights, and therefore threatened those in positions of power. Imagine if the government chased sick people with diabetes, put a tax on insulin and drove it into the black market, told doctors they couldnt treat them, she wrote in her memoir, then sent them to jail. "And I had so many close conversations with her, about so many things," Fletcher had said in a rare interview. It was the official reason why some police in the South increased the caliber of their guns. WebA day for an FBI special agent might entail surveilling a subject in the morning, tracking terrorists online social activity before lunch, testifying in court in the afternoon, and addressing a public forum on identity theft in the evening. As Hari tells NPR, "Jimmy Fletcher's brief was follow Billie Holiday everywhere she goes; befriend her; document her drug use, and get it ready for an indictment. But while the movie charts Holidays efforts to maintain her career while being hounded by law enforcement and struggling with substance abuse disorder, its not just a portrait of the life of one artist: The film also tells an important story about the origins of Americas war on drugs. He could do it because he was a bureaucratic geniusbut, even more crucially, because there was a deep strain in American culture that was waiting for a man like him, with a sure and certain answer to their questions about chemicals. But he remembered Moonlight and its colors. . You might read numbers as colors. Rhodes was immediately interested. Fletcher ultimately led a raid on Holiday, pretending to have a telegram to deliver. There's a wisdom in being a single Black mother, man., Their support helped Rhodes focus on his career. The more I talk to you guys, man, the more I feel bad about being able to sympathize and empathize with this, Rhodes says when asked about Fletchers motivations. Not long after, he ran into her in a bar and they talked for hours, with her pet Chihuahua, Moochy, by her side. So that's a double negative, you know what I mean? Rhodes explains. For years, American pharmacists sold a product called Mrs. Winslows Soothing Syrup, which contained morphine and alcohol. 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. Now that Agent L.G. 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 his bureau to discredit individuals of this caliber using narcotics. His genius wasnt for invention: it was for presenting his agents as the hand that would steady all these cultural tremblings. It sold more than a million copies and rose to number 16 on the charts. Her voice was cracking.. So for more than a year, Fletcher follows Billie Holiday everywhere. S, Welcome to Love Like This?, a romance column where we, Kathleen Newman-Bremang and Ineye Komonibo, revisit some of the most romantic or not, in hindsig, Whether its the iconic early-aughts film Love Dont Cost a Thing or her 2021 Netflix hit Resort to Love, Christina Milian has solidified herself in th, This story contains spoilers for Netflixs You People. This content is imported from youTube. It was just stuff like that makes the character to me. 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 His job was to I'm out in the outskirts, not really paying attention, so it didn't really affect me that much.. When you look at a Rockwell painting, it's a feeling. She told people she would rather die than go back to prison, but she was terrified that she would burn in hell just as her mother had said she would all those years before, when she was a little girl lying on the brothel floor, listening to Louis Armstrongs music and letting it carry her out of Baltimore. She was given it for ten days and began to recover: she put on weight and looked better. He wasnt allowed inside her room, but Holiday was reportedly happy to learn that he'd tried to see her. Police were stationed at her door to stop her visitors from seeing her. I will let you know what day. His advice on drug raids to his men was always simple: Shoot first.. We may earn a commission from these links. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. It's easy to say you want to do something, but walking to do it is very, very difficult. [Moonlight] was like a student film as well because it was such a tight-knit thing, he recalls. Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan in 1915, and grew up in Baltimore. His accuser was the longtime girlfriend of a mafia hitman named Greg "the Grim Reaper" Scarpa. While its widely known that Coca-Cola used to contain actual cocaine, that wasnt the only place you could find now-illegal drugs. We do know that George White had a long history of planting drugs on women. Jimmy Fletcher was the answer. Another life. Before our conversation begins, Rhodes turns his camera out to show me the snow outside the sliding door of his moms house in Austin. He was a Black agent assigned by the egregiously racist head of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger (played by Johann Hari is a London and New York-based journalist. Anslinger sent Fletcher, one of the FBIs few Black agents at the time, to follow Holiday, because he knew a white agent tailing her into Jazz clubs would raise Thats thats thats sad man. He trails off. So, just keep fighting, man. Painted in history as the Black man who betrayed Holiday, Rhodes devoured books on Holiday and Fletcher and their relationship. You know what I mean? One medical expert put it bluntly: The cocaine nigger, he warned, sure is hard to kill.. [Its about a] Black American woman living in America whos been in love with her country her whole life. How it might have streaks of color from another stroke. She was the type who would make anyone sympathetic because she was the loving type, Fletcher remembered of Holiday in an interview. She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. This meant she wasnt allowed to sing anywhere that alcohol was servedwhich included all the jazz clubs in the United States. 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. He learned of Anslinger's plan and agreed to set her up, Hari reported. what happened to jimmy fletcher fbi agent Narcotics agents came to her hospital bed and said they had found less than one-eighth of an ounce of heroin in a And also, she was resisting white supremacy. In the run-up to the passing of the Harrison Act in 1914the law that first criminalized drugs in the United Statesthe New York Timesran a story typical of the time. She had written inside it: Most federal agents are nice people. Via wire-tapping, undercover agents and even assassination, King, Hampton and Holiday were followed and harassed by government agencies, especially the FBI In the course of a year, he appeared as a muscly sergeant in 12 Strong, a former Marine in The Predator, and a soldier-like survivor named Tom in the Netflix apocalyptic thriller, Bird Box. A doctor was brought into the hospital at the insistence of her friends to prescribe methadone. 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. Then in 2012, right after his senior year, he decided to follow a theater professors advice and move to Los Angeles, which he said was a gamble in the most beautiful way, but most terrifying way. For years, he had been strong (a.k.a. Her cabaret performers license, which contained morphine and alcohol to hate themselves for... '', Enter Agent Jimmy Fletcher fell in love with her. `` her... They get on really wellBut Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan in 1915 and..., Colonel White was watched by his last victim, and this made him happy to gunk. 'S personal inner circle of Art, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted.... Eleanora Fagan in 1915, and grew up in Baltimore opposite of Harry! 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