Skip to footer

Queen Latifah will reportedly star as singer Bessie Smith in HBO film

Queen Latifah will play the blues singer in a movie titled 'Bessie' which will be based on the biography of the same name by Chris Albertson.

|
Dan Steinberg/Invision/AP
Queen Latifah will reportedly star in an adaptation of Chris Albertson's biography about Bessie Smith, titled 'Bessie.'
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

Actress Queen Latifah will reportedly star in an HBO adaptation of the biography “Bessie” by Chris Albertson that tells the story of the life of blues singer Bessie Smith.

According to Deadline writer Nellie Andreeva, the film, also titled “Bessie,”  “chronicles how Smith overcame her tempestuous personal life to become one of the most acclaimed performing and recording artists of the 1920s and ’30s, earning the nickname Empress of the Blues.”

HBO did well this past spring with another original movie focusing on a musician – the movie “Behind the Candelabra,” which premiered this past May, starred Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Douglas as his boyfriend Scott Thorson and Douglas won an Emmy for the role, with the movie itself also taking the Outstanding Miniseries or Movie prize and Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries or Movie award for helmer Steven Soderbergh.

The book “Bessie” was originally published in 1971.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Queen Latifah will reportedly star as singer Bessie Smith in HBO film
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2014/0507/Queen-Latifah-will-reportedly-star-as-singer-Bessie-Smith-in-HBO-film
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe