Maxine Sullivan: Love to Be in Love (1990)

A long-overdue film portrait of the once famous, and now, largely forgotten jazz vocalist Maxine Sullivan. Sullivan won fame in the 1930s with swing renditions of traditional songs like "Loch Lomond" and "Annie Laurie." By the late 1930s she became the foremost black female vocalist in America, inspiring young musicians like Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee. Though largely absent from the jazz scene in the 1950s, she returned to perform in the late 1960s; at one point turning out an album every three months. She never retired and continued to work till her death in 1987. Gorgeous archive film footage of her performances, old Hollywood movie clips where she performs with Louis Armstrong, vintage photographs, reminiscences by other jazz luminaries including Marian McPartland and Scott Hamilton, as well as Sullivan's wonderfully seductive music are used to tell her story. This film is only available as part of a trilogy of films on women in jazz, featuring International Sweethearts of Rhythm.