(Ian McCrudden, Robbie Cavolina)

Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer, a zippy portrait of the high-spirited diva, finished mere weeks before her death in 2006, is a masterpiece of the medium. The documentary relates her extroadinary life story as a musician with no softened edges and plenty of extended musical passages. Anita O’Day survived alcoholism, rape, numerous abortions, a 20 year heroin addiction and jail time to become a true jazz icon. A swing era vocalist who wanted nothing more than to spend her life singing, O’Days career spanned seven decades and 82 albums.
With rare and never before seen vintage performances and includes interviews from vocalists Annie Ross and Margaret Whiting, Jazz Impresario George Wein, award winning arrangers Bill Holman, Johnny Mandel, Russel Garcia and Buddy Bregman, writer/actor producer John Cameron Mitchell, Joe Franklin and friends from different times in Anita’s life.
This fast paced trip with Anita integrates jazz album design and the graphic qualities of the 40’s 50’s and 60’s, including origanal ads, reviews, and numerous never before seen images, to present a definitive portrait of this extraordinary jazz legend.

• buy tickets now
• showing: Saturday, August 25 at 5:30 p.m. and Sunday, August 26 at 5:15 p.m.
• venue: the Ritz Theater
• website

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 at 11:50 pm and is filed under Aug 26, Aug 25, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.