![]() ![]() ![]() There's so much straining beneath the surface of this moment: the stark indignity and mortal risk faced by even the elite African American entertainers of the day the fraught prospect of a white protector, with all the attendant imbalances of power the notion of a mask, and what it means to vent freely without one the sporting interest of a community, or at least a constituency, taking their bets as the pressure builds. "But the first thing I thought," he says, " all them Black c********** in Harlem who'd say: I knew he would blow his top someday." " 'But when I get out on that f***** stage with that horn and get in trouble, you can't save me.' " When Collins retorts by invoking the N-word, Armstrong fights the urge to break a wine bottle over his head, in order to kill him. You might be my manager, and you might be the biggest s***, and book me in the biggest places in the world,' " he says. The exploitative tilt of their working relationship was never a matter of public record - but the film, drawing extensively from Armstrong's private recordings, shares audio of Armstrong recalling a furious confrontation on the ship, with language that's jarring to hear in his iconic gravel-drawl. His manager at the time was a potbellied white gangster named Johnny Collins, who wasted little on social niceties. ![]()
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