See 50th-anniversary screening of ‘Lady Sings the Blues’

Above : Diana Ross played Billie Holiday in “Lady Sings the Blues,” which is having a 50th-anniversary screening this coming week. (Photo/Fathom Events)

For those of us who were around when The Supremes were first performing, we knew Diana Ross as the trio’s lead singer.

She was the slender one with a big voice, standing there just in front of – in the original lineup – Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard (who was later replaced by Cindy Birdsong).

And she was great. They all were great. Singers, that is. Hit after Motown hit played on the radio and were broadcast on TV, 33 of which made the U.S. Billboard top 40 list .

So it was only natural that Ross would end up starring in the 1972 Billie Holiday biopic “Lady Sings the Blues,” directed by Sidney J. Furie and co-starring Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor.

The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Ross and Best Adapted Screenplay – not to mention Best Music. It didn’t win a one. (Liza Minnelli won Best Actress for “Cabaret.”)

Reviews for the films were all over the place. Some were pretty bad. But here are two that are fairly positive.

Douglas Pretty of the Hollywood Reporter wrote, “Ross conveys the vulnerability and determination of her character across a very believable arc of maturation.”

The late Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “The movie is filled with many of the great Billie Holiday songs, and Ross handles them in an interesting way. She doesn’t sing in her own style, and she never tries to imitate Holiday, but she sings somehow in the manner of Holiday.”

Those are what the critics thought. Now it’s your turn. A 50th-anniversary screenings of “Lady Sings the Blues” will play Sunday and Wednesday at the Regal Cinemas theaters at Northtown Mall and Coeur d’Alene’s Riverstone  Stadium.

Sunday’s screening will be at 3 p.m., Wednesday’s at 7 p.m.

Your turn again to play film critic.