Maxine Sullivan: Love to Be in Love

Maxine Sullivan: Love to Be In Love is 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. Film footage, vintage photographs, reminiscences by other jazz luminaries, as well as Sullivan’s wonderfully seductive music are used to tell her story.

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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.

Maxine Sullivan: Love to Be In Love made its theatrical premiere at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, and the Film Forum, New York.

Selected Festivals, Awards, and TV Broadcasts

  • Melbourne Film Festival
  • Wellington International Film Festival
  • New York JVC Jazz Festival
  • American Film and Video Festival (Honorable Mention)
  • Toronto Jazz Film Festival
  • Sinking Creek Film Festival (Honorable Mention)
  • Broadcast in France, Britain, Germany and Yugoslavia

Featuring Scott Hamilton and Marion McPartland.  Produced and directed by Greta Schiller.  Produced in association with Channel Four UK and La Sept, France.

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