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Podcast: Other Voices
Episode: David McDonald, using a sense of place to create a film — Feb. 28, 2019
Description: David McDonald, a filmmaker who lives in Hudson, has written a screenplay about Ella Fitzgerald’s early life. Her mother died when she was 15. The elegant Queen of Jazz, he says, was then abused by her mother’s boyfriend and ended up living on the streets of Harlem where she took a job as a lookout for a bordello. After her arrest, she suffered abuse at the Training School for Girls in Hudson and escaped back to Harlem, winning an Amateur Night competition at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, which launched her career. McDonald is drawing on local talent for a theatr...