MAXINE SULLIVAN: LOVE TO BE IN LOVE

LOVE TO BE IN LOVE is a long-overdue film portrait of the once famous, 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. Film footage, vintage photographs, reminiscences by other jazz luminaries, and of course Sullivan's wonderfully seductive music are used to tell her story. Though largely absent from the jazz scene in the 1950s, she returned to perform in the late 1960s, and worked until her death in 1987, at one point turning out an album every three months.