No scandal, no drama, Ella’s singing did the talking
The first time Ella Fitzgerald ever got up to sing, on amateur night at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, the audience didn’t expect much from this awkward teenager in a dirty dress. “They introduced this new girl,” recalled dancer Norma Miller, 100 years old but sharp as a tack. “And we booed her. Can you imagine? We booed Ella Fitzgerald!” Of course, the booing stopped when they heard that voice. It was the beginning of a brilliant career mapped out in Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things (BBC Two, Saturday), a satisfying biography of the First Lady of Jazz.
Biographers of Fitzgerald have a problem. Certainly she overcame tough beginnings – the death of her beloved mother, time spent at a brutal reform school – and faced the struggle of being a black performer at a time of segregation and discrimination. But there is no great scandal in her life, no Billie Holliday-style tragedy (while band members smoked marijuana on the tour bus, Fitzgerald would retreat to the back seat and put a coat over her head). The best thing to do then, as director Leslie Woodhead decided, is to let the music do the talking.
We were treated to performances from her early years with bandleader Chick Webb, her remarkable scat singing, and her reimagining of the Great American Songbook. According to one historian, it was Fitzgerald who defined the Songbook – before her, the songs were considered throwaway.
The talking heads included Tony Bennett and Smokey Robinson, plus Fitzgerald’s son, Ray Brown Jr, who spoke of her with fondness and was featured in wonderful archive footage of the family at home in California. It was amusing to learn that even the children of singing legends retreat to their bedrooms in teenage strops to play music at top volume: in Brown’s case, My Generation by The Who.
Even when she had reached superstar status, there were swathes of the US where Fitzgerald could not perform on account of her skin colour. An interview in which she addressed this, saying that segregation was an international embarrassment and pointing out the absurdity of it all – “Why can’t you have a concert? Music is music” – was never broadcast.
For jazz aficionados, there was nothing new here and perhaps some areas could have been explored in greater depth – her collaborations with Louis Armstrong, for example. But within the constraints of a 90-minute film, it did Fitzgerald justice. And it sounded gorgeous.
‘We were given three days to live but we kind of proved them wrong, as you can see.” Two Sisters, One Body (Channel 4, Sunday) was a film about conjoined twins Carmen and Lupita Andrade. Aged two, they were brought by a charity from Mexico to the US, in the hope that doctors could separate them. But that proved impossible, and so the girls adapted to life sharing one body.
I came to the documentary knowing nothing about the twins, and expected it to be an upsetting tale of gruelling operations and heartbroken parents. But it was nothing of the sort. Carmen and Lupita are, in many respects, typical teenagers: funny, opinionated and desperate to pass their driving test. It was life-affirming stuff.
There are health issues, but they were skimmed over. Instead, filmmaker Jack Macinnes framed the narrative around two things. The first was the girls leaving high school, where they appeared to have been treated with kindness and acceptance, and embarking on adulthood – an almost standard coming-of-age tale.
The second made things more interesting. The twins are Mexican immigrants living in Trump’s America, and their biggest challenge isn’t their physical predicament but the President. As Carmen put it: “That’s as big a deal as being joined to your sister.”
The girls’ story was intercut with footage of Trump’s speeches: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists…” In fact, Carmen and Lupita’s parents had sacrificed a great deal to remain in the US in order to give their girls access to the best medical care.
But the tone of the film never became too dark, buoyed by Carmen’s sparky voice-over. I winced when Macinnes insisted on asking questions that made them confront their mortality: “What would happen if one of you got really sick or died?” Jeez, Jack. They answered him briskly and moved on. When we left them, Carmen and Lupita were studying at college. As their schoolteacher put it: “As soon as you work out they’re just two girls sharing legs, you’re good.”
Just One of Those Things ★★★★
Two Sisters, One Body ★★★★