Idol Worship in Jazz
Idol Worship in Jazz
Lady Sings the Blues and Hit!
As a reward for delivering Little Fauss and Big Halsy under budget and under schedule, producer Albert S. Ruddy is selected to adapt The Godfather. Ruddy chooses Furie as his director, but pressures from the studio and the Italian community corner Ruddy into hiring an Italian director, namely Francis Ford Coppola. Meanwhile, Furie is brought on by producer Jay Weston to helm Lady Sings the Blues, a biopic covering the life of Billie Holiday. Furie gets the idea to cast unlikely candidate Diana Ross for the title role, and thus Berry Gordy’s Motown comes to produce (and eventually fully finance) the project. Lady Sings the Blues (1972) turns out to be a critical and box-office success, and Furie now has carte blanche to select his follow-up project. He chooses Hit! (1973), an ostensible genre item (and oddity) starring Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor. Penned by screenwriter Alan Trustman, the film is dismissed and quickly disappears from theaters.
Keywords: Godfather, Puzo, Paramount, Motown, Billie Holiday, blaxploitation
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