Film Forum

A special tribute to “The Divine One,” legendary jazz singer Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990), born this day 100 years ago. 

This unique program of rare film performances, compiled and presented by noted author, producer, and Wall Street Journal jazz critic Will Friedwald, covers Vaughan’s five-decade career, from her roots in Newark to the height of her international fame.  In footage dating from the early 1950s to the late 1980s, Vaughan is seen singing the Great American Songbook:  Gershwin, Arlen, Johnny Green, Rodgers & Hart, Bernstein, Lennon, Monk, Sondheim, and others. Also featured are some of Vaughan’s equally iconic co-stars, including Billy Eckstine, Tony Bennett, Michel Legrand, and Dizzy Gillespie.    

From the moment she won the Apollo Theater amateur contest at age 18, Sarah Vaughan immediately joined the pantheon of great jazz singers.  Says Friedwald, "While Ella was the voice of pure melody, Dinah the voice of the blues, and Billie the voice of the human condition, Sarah was the voice of The Angels. 'The Divine One,' or 'Sassy,' as she was nicknamed, was the closest jazz ever had to an artist with operatic chops.  Likewise, she took the pure power and passion of the great gospel singers and brought it to bear on earthly matters like love and the blues.  Hers was a voice that often seemed to be more than merely human, and yet her greatest strength was not the purely rapturous quality of the voice but her down-to-earth nature; not her divinity but her humanity. She was the very spirit of human playfulness, of spontaneous melodic invention, and of effortless swing."

Will Friedwald writes about jazz and nightlife for The Wall Street Journal, and is the author of ten books on music and popular culture, including the award-winning A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, Sinatra: The Song is You, Stardust Melodies, Tony Bennett: The Good Life, Jazz Singing, and Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole. He has written over 700 liner notes for compact discs, received ten Grammy nominations, and appears frequently on television and in documentaries.

The Sarah Vaughan tribute, produced by Film Forum Repertory Artistic Director Bruce Goldstein, follows sold-out tributes to Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday, presented by Friedwald at Film Forum in past years.  

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