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Poster for Lady Sings the Blues
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Released
1972 · FILM

Lady Sings the Blues

“Diana Ross is Billie Holiday. Diana Ross sings Billie Holiday. And a superstar is born.”

Directed by
Sidney J Furie
Written by
Chris Clark, Suzanne De Passe
Runtime
144 min
BiographyDramaMusic

Synopsis

The narrative follows blues singer Billie Holiday from her traumatic youth through her early attempts at a singing career, her rise to stardom, and her difficult relationship with boyfriend and manager Louis McKay. It also addresses Holiday’s severe drug addiction, which endangers both her career and her life.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

Related titles

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 26

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Argyle Nelson JrShot by John A AlonzoScored by Michel LegrandDesigned by Carl Anderson

Box Office

1972 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 9.9× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$19.7M

Budget$2.0M
Worldwide gross$19.7M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • La signora del bluesit

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