Anita O'Day "Jazz on a Summer's Day"

PLOT One of the pre-eminent women of jazz, captured through her music and her reflections on a turbulent, rigorously honest life.

CAST Anita O'Day, Johnny Mandel, Annie Ross
LENGTH 1:31
PLAYING AT Cinema Village, Manhattan

BOTTOM LINE Swinging, satisfying portrait of a woman who was among the best at what she did. And whom, after this film, you'd really like to have met.

The iconic image of Anita O'Day is from “Jazz on a Summer's Day," shot at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, where she showed up for her afternoon set in heels, an audacious bonnet and a slinky black dress, treating the crowd (some of whom looked somnambulistic) to a white-hot “Sweet Georgia Brown." O'Day was high as a kite - probably, she says, in one of the many interviews that punctuate “The Life of a Jazz Singer." Robbie Cavalina and Ian McCrudden's loving tribute to the great singer orchestrates archival footage, late-in-life interviews and some spectacular music into one of the better bio-pics of recent years.

Despite her substance abuse, there was an incredible strength to O'Day, who refused to compromise her art (while never calling it such) and lived a jazz life at a time when women didn't. The directors (Cavalina was an O'Day confidante up to her 2006 death) strike an elemental balance between performances, grillings she received from TV hosts (there's a delicious moment when she puts an unctuous Bryant Gumbel in his place) and an overview of what being a jazz musician meant during a certain time in America.