With Billie (40 page)
Authors: Julia Blackburn
McKay said that to protect Billie from becoming too nervous or jittery, he seldom left her alone for any great length of time and always arranged for someone to be with her when he needed to be absent for a while. Zaidins was sometimes given the task of keeping an eye on her. McKay went on to say that on the weekend of 2 and 3 June he returned home to discover ‘A number of my papers were gone. Earle was gone, and Billie was obviously under the influence of drugs … I knew she didn’t have any cash because with her consent I handled all the money. To her, money meant drugs. The doctor had told me the last time she had been through withdrawal from drugs that her health would not permit her to “kick the habit” again. Earle Zaidins knew very well that he should not give Billie Holiday sizeable sums of money. When he went behind my back he co-signed her death warrant.’
j
McKay said he realised that Billie was hooked again. He was so angry he resorted to violence. ‘The reason was that she confessed to me that this was not the first time she had been supplied with money for drugs by Zaidins … Moreover, she confessed that Zaidins had attempted to perform an act of sodomy upon her …
‘I blew my top, I don’t know which hurt most … I was almost crying. I grabbed the phone from her and threw it. I guess I didn’t care whether it hit her or not … All that I could think of was that for weeks she had been using again,
and she was so hooked by now that I could never go through what was necessary to get her off alive …
‘I confronted Zaidins and demanded to know why he had helped her back on drugs and why he had stolen my papers and why he had made sexual advances to a woman who could not resist because of her condition. He did not deny one thing.
‘I started after him and he ran out of the house and I ran after him. It’s a good thing I couldn’t catch him. Later Billie told me Earle called the police and she told him she didn’t want any police, that I was her husband and it was her fault.’
k
A few days after this incident McKay got in his car and headed for the West Coast. On the way, and after driving for many hours, he fell ill. He was admitted to hospital in Chicago, where he nearly died from perforated ulcers. He remained in hospital for several weeks. When he was discharged he said that he remained determined not to go back to New York until Billie Holiday was off drugs and had finished with Earle Zaidins.
‘I was without the physical strength to do anything with her until she made her mind up to help. I could never keep the pushers away from her. This was the first time there was anything like this, and I knew I couldn’t win … Except for a bitter telegram which I sent, we were never estranged. Nearly every day or so we spoke. She phoned me nearly every week and I phoned her usually twice or more a week. I was trying to get well … I can’t be sure whether Billie was on or off drugs … She told me Zaidins was keeping her happy. I stayed in the West Coast. Zaidins was in charge.’
l
McKay won his case in the Surrogates Court and the lawyer Florynce Kennedy continued to work on his behalf
for several years. When asked in 1994 for her assessment of the character of her client, she said, ‘I guess Lou was a kind of hustler, a gambler, and a lot of people said he had a string of whores. But this was not unusual; people in the black community did not have much money; this sort of thing happened. He lived off her earnings, but he was kind of compassionate and caring towards her, a “take charge” type. I think he made her feel he cared for her. He was knowledgeable in many ways, streetwise and a pimp. But it was a struggle with Billie Holiday and I don’t doubt he hit her, but she depended on him. When I dealt with her I found her a difficult person. I did not admire her.’
m
When the film version of
Lady Sings the Blues
was finally made in 1972, McKay was employed as the technical advisor, for which he received a percentage of the takings. He said later that he very much approved of the story that was told and the way his relationship with Billie was portrayed. ‘Billie and I were very much in love, although we had our problems … She was much, much more woman than most people realise who saw her only as a glamorous star, then as someone caught up in the narcotics thing.
n
She was a tender, loving woman, who liked nothing better than being at home with her man, cooking meals for me and doing little things around the house.’
o
There was one point on which McKay remained particularly firm. He said that in accordance with the law, as a narcotics user Billie was liable to a twenty- to thirty-year
prison sentence and ‘If people get the idea that the Feds harassed her, then that’s wrong … They could have made things really tough for her, if they had wanted to.’
*
He is referring to his arrest with Billie in Philadelphia, on drugs and firearms charges, in February 1956, a month before
Lady Sings the Blues
was due to be published. The trial was finally held in March 1958. A lot of what Louis McKay is saying seems to relate to its outcome. McKay had been previously arrested in Philadelphia on a firearms charge.
†
There is no way of knowing what kind of photographs he was referring to, or in what way they were compromising for Billie.
‡
The $700 keeps changing its function. At first it seems to be money that Billie owes to Louis, and then it is money he is going to use to pay someone to hurt her.
§
When William Dufty and Maely were getting divorced, he also accused Maely of sleeping with McKay.
‖
A prostitute.
a
I think this means double-crossing; to ‘skunk’ someone means to cheat them out of something.
b
Alice Vrbsky, who worked as Billie’s assistant and secretary for the last two years of her life.
c
William Dufty.
d
‘I acknowledge that Earle Warren Zaidins … has not been paid for any of his services. That in consideration thereof I agree as the surviving spouse of the decedent and as a logical administrator of the decedent’s estate, when appointed, to pay Mr Zaidins ten (10) per cent of all gross monies received.’ Contract signed 17 July 1959. Unattached file, Surrogates Court, County of New York. It is always possible that McKay suggested drawing up this contract.
e
I have only read the sections of the affidavit quoted by Stuart Nicholson in his biography, especially Chapters 12 and 13, pp. 211–15, 226–7. He uses the text as if it were an ordinary interview with Louis McKay. He also quotes the opinion of Florynce Kennedy that Earle Zaidins ‘was slimy. He was typical of the kind of sleazy people [Billie] seemed to surround herself with.’ In fact Zaidins later became one of America’s top show-business lawyers and then a judge. He did not try to contest the case, but in an interview with the documentary filmmaker John Jeremy in 1984, he dismissed McKay as a ‘pathological liar’. When I spoke to his widow, Alice Zaidins, she said that her husband was one of the most honest men in the United States. ‘He let it [the case with McKay] go, because those weren’t very nice people to be dealing with.’
f
No one else speaking about that time remembers McKay being around Billie. John Chilton, in his book
Billie’s Blues
, said that the two of them had a ‘casual acquaintanceship’ and probably met when Billie was singing at the Hot Cha.
g
Marie Bryant said of Billie’s relationships, ‘I have the feeling that Billie couldn’t tell the real from the put-on and there was always this
want
for her to have someone in her corner. If they could make it look like that, then she’d fall … Louis to me is a weak guy. I don’t think he dug her.’ John Levy the bass player said, ‘McKay was an idiot and a poor kind of pimp … compared to the rest of them he was a sweet cat up to a point … He was hanging on for dear life because that was all he had to hang on to: he was Billie Holiday’s husband.’
h
Downbeat
magazine, October 1951.
i
In the affidavit McKay said that Billie had so few assets when she died because she had been forced to sell everything she owned and to spend all the money she earnt to pay for her heroin addiction (Nicholson, p. 226).
j
According to Nicholson, Zaidins was aware that McKay would leave Billie if she went back on drugs and ‘This was a source of great torment for her. She loved McKay, but she loved to hate him for it. Her yearning for a fix was so strong it created an ambivalence that exasperated her and baffled those who knew her’ (p. 212). This, in spite of the fact that everyone (including Nicholson himself) agreed that Billie had replaced heroin with alcohol and was sometimes off drugs altogether or using them very sporadically.
k
Quoted in Nicholson, p. 213. This is obviously the same incident with the telephone that is described by Earle Zaidins (see p. 306), but in a very different way.
l
McKay did go and see Billie in hospital. She told William Dufty that when her husband walked into her room she half-closed her eyes so as not to be bothered by him. To her amazement Louis threw himself on his knees beside her bed and began to recite ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’. ‘I’ve always been a religious bitch,’ said Billie, ‘but if that bastard is a believer, I’m thinking it over!’
m
Quoted in Nicholson, p. 227.
n
On a TV show in August 1980, the singer Carmen McRae alleged that McKay ’caused Billie to become involved in drugs’. He filed a $2.5 million lawsuit against her, but the action lapsed with his death in March 1981.
o
Farah Jasmine Griffin describes the film as a ‘post-Black Power fantasy of a beautiful, talented, but weak and childish woman, who is rescued time and again by a strong, supportive, wealthy, handsome black man. When Diana Ross as Holiday is kicking her habit cold turkey in a padded cell, Billy Dee Williams’ McKay comes in with a doctor who injects her with something to make the going a little easier, and then her black knight slips an engagement ring on her finger. This is just the incentive she needs to pull her out of the nightmare. He pays for her time at a sanitarium, he arranges for her debut at a downtown club, he keeps her supplied with gardenias and he rescues her time and again. None of this ever happened’ (p. 60).
Endgame
I
n November 1958, Billie set out on a disastrously mismanaged European tour, which was supposed to earn her $10,000. In Milan she was ‘starring in a mixed company of pop singers, comedians, acrobats and impressionists and her uncommercial style failed to please an obviously commercial audience’.
*
In Paris, she was booked to sing at the Olympia, but again it was the wrong kind of atmosphere for her intimate style; she was obviously lacking in confidence and was booed off the stage.
The contract for the whole tour was abruptly cancelled, leaving her without even the money for the fare home. So she sang for her supper, as it were, taking a cut from the door fee at a little club called the Mars. There the atmosphere was right and the audience was enthusiastic and appreciative.
†
Not long after Billie returned to the States on 2 December
1958, she was accused of having contravened the 1956 Narcotics Control Act. This Act was Harry Anslinger’s most recent achievement in his battle against drug addicts. It made provision under federal law for making arrests without a warrant, on the belief that a drug offence had been committed, even if there was no proof of purchase or possession. It also stated that any US citizen who had spent more than a year in prison on narcotics charges must report themselves to Customs as a ‘violator’ before leaving the country and again on their return. The passing of the new Act had not been publicised and even lawyers were unaware of its existence and its implications.
On 14 January 1959, an Inspector McVeigh contacted Billie and demanded that she appear at Customs House in Manhattan the following afternoon for questioning. She was warned that, according to the regulations of the Act, her failure to register herself as a ‘violator’ could lead to a fine or imprisonment.
When Billie arrived with her lawyer Florynce Kennedy,
‡
she was told that the evidence against her had already been prepared and the matter would be referred to the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. The minutes of this first meeting are interesting. You can hear Billie speaking in her own voice, and you can hear how she was spoken to by the authorities.
These excerpts are taken from the statement of Mrs Eleanor Gough McKay, also known as Billie Holiday, made in the office of the Supervising Customs Agent, on 15 January 1959 at 3.40 p.m.
After the usual preliminaries, Billie took the oath and was asked for her name and occupation:
BILLIE
: My name is Billie Holiday. I am forty-one [sic]. I am a singer, that’s my occupation.
QUESTIONER
: Is your true name Mrs Eleanor Gough McKay?
BILLIE
: Yes.