Billie Holliday
By 1959, jazz diamond Billie Holiday was used and mishandled, her earnings had been stolen, and her looks had faded. She drank to ease the pain and was dying of cirrhosis of the liver. Heart disease also invaded Holiday’s body. Still, it was the drug and alcohol abuse that fed the sickness.
In perhaps the most degrading final act of her tragic life, Holiday was arrested for drug possession and handcuffed to her hospital bed as she lay dying. Holiday died from pulmonary edema and heart failure caused by cirrhosis of the liver on July 17, 1959, at the age of 45. She had only 70 cents in her bank account when she died.
