Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things

Black musicians faced oppressive racism and segregation practices as they toured the country in the 1930s through the '70s, and were denied entrance to restaurants, bars, and hotels. Some Black performers, acclaimed by White audiences, would perform at a high-end venues, but then have to move to the Black part of town to stay in rooming houses, the only establishments that would accept them. The irony is that this Black singer and musician extraordinaire would in the end revive, reinterpret, and universalize what's known as the American Songbook, a collection of songs written mostly by White composers, many of the songs from musicals that Black people couldn't attend. The film highlights the difficulty of being a woman and having an active career as a performer. Maintaining a marriage wasn't possible and being an attentive mother was also difficult. Acclaimed bandleader and drummer Chick Webb is called a "dwarf hunchback." Friends recall Fitzgerald's discomfort with her weight and her stocky build, and she's described as looking less like a chanteuse and more like a "librarian" or "school teacher." Women are judged by their looks. Smokey Robinson recalls trying to integrate lunch counters. Fitzgerald owned a house in the all-White Los Angeles luxury neighborhood of Beverly Hills but, because of systemic racism, her White manager had to buy the house in his name in order for her to make the purchase.

Newsreel footage shows police hosing down Black protesters. Blacks are mistreated, excused by institutional racist policies. Fitzgerald was arrested by Houston police officers who seem to have harassed her and her entourage for no reason. When she arrived at the jail, many asked her for autographs. Fitzgerald ran away from home because her mother whipped her and gossip suggested she might have been "abused" by her stepfather. She was beaten by staff at her reform school. Fitzgerald suffered from congestive heart failure. She lost her legs to diabetes in 1993.

"F--k," "ass," and "spliff." Harlem is called the largest "colored" city in the world.

As per her anti-drug stance, Fitzgerald was described as hiding her head under her coat while traveling in a bus with other musicians who were smoking marijuana to avoid the smoke.