First-ever feature documentary on the life of legendary jazz vocalist Anita O'Day.
The clips of Anita O'Day performing as a band singer for Gene Krupa and Stan Kenton come from "Soundies", three-minute music videos filmed during the 1940's for playback on a "Panoram", a video jukebox that projected the film onto a window-like screen. Many top musicians of the period, including Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Liberace (who made his film debut on one) made "Soundies".
The film depicts Anita O'Day's emergence as a solo artist and her signing with Bob Thiele's Signature label by showing a cardboard cut-out of her with the slogan, "Hey, ops! I'm on Signature now!" "Ops" meant jukebox operators, who were crucial to the success of a record in the 1930's and 1940's. Not only did they buy a lot of records themselves, they also promoted it by putting it on their jukeboxes.