15. The Horrible Anslinger
Jazz musicians smoked weed, and their music sounded freakish to Anslinger. That proved to him that marijuana caused insanity, so he targeted jazz musicians. He ordered his agents to: “prepare all cases in your jurisdiction involving musicians in violation of the marijuana laws. We will have a great national round-up arrest of all such persons in a single day“. When congressmen questioned that, he reassured them that his crackdown focused not on: “the good musicians, but the jazz type“. Billie Holiday was one of his main targets. In real life, as in The United States vs Billie Holiday, Anslinger sent black undercover agent Jimmy Fletcher to target her. Fletcher is depicted as becoming romantically involved with Holiday. However, it is unclear whether that happened in real life. Whatever the relationship, Fletcher got close enough to Holiday to bust her on a drug possession charge in 1947.
That got Holiday a year in prison. It also got her a felony record that limited the venues in which she could perform. In 1949, Fletcher once again busted Holiday on a possession charge after she was set up. The movie shows a repentant Fletcher deliberately tank the case on the witness stand. There is no evidence that Fletcher threw the case, but Holiday was acquitted. In the movie, Fletcher then trails Holiday for years, and has a long affair with her. The historic record is silent as to whether such an affair occurred, but Fletcher was assigned to Holiday for years. It is also historic fact that, as depicted in the movie, Anslinger’s grudge against Holiday lasted until her final breath. In 1959, as she lay dying of cirrhosis, her hospital room was raided. She was kept under police guard until she died.
