A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : THE BLUES FILE : ‘Bessie’ Found a Home and Lost It

Rapper Queen Latifah’s brush with big screen stardom still eludes her.

Last week, she was set to play the lead in the period bio-pic “Bessie,” based upon the life of ‘20s and ‘30s-era blues great Bessie Smith. This week, the project’s been put into “turnaround” by MGM. That’s Hollywood lingo meaning the studio has passed on making the movie and the producers, Richard and Lili Zanuck (who won a best-picture Oscar for “Driving Miss Daisy”), are welcome to go elsewhere.

The question is: Where?

Written by Oscar-winner Horton Foote and scheduled to be directed by Bruce Beresford, “Bessie” has prestige written all over it. “Prestige” can also been synonymous with “money,” a precious commodity at MGM, which has been struggling to get back on its paws since the latest financial restructuring that followed the expulsion of former owner Giancarlo Parretti. MGM had no comment. The Zanucks were in Tokyo and unavailable to comment.

When “Bessie” was announced with some fanfare in the trades last April, its “ballpark” budget was $20 million, but insiders say that’s a stretch.

The movie would be shot on location throughout the South, Chicago and New York, tracing Smith’s rise from a poor childhood in Tennessee to her heyday as “The Empress of the Blues” and, ultimately, her mysterious death following an automobile accident in 1936.

From the time of her first recording, “Down-Hearted Blues” in 1923, she was quickly established as the most successful black performing artist of her time: “A low-down bluesy jazz-inflected soul singer,” as the Times’ pop music writer Dennis Hunt describes her.

In the decade that followed, however, her fortunes seesawed. Biographers said the effects of the Depression and alcoholism dragged her down.

The story is rich in dramatic and musical possibilities, not unlike “Lady Sings the Blues,” based upon the life of another blues great, Billie Holliday.

That’s why sources say the Zanucks are looking for a studio with deep pockets that can more easily indulge their creative vision. If the company has its own record label, that’s even better.

“This movie should be big. It should be like ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ with a (blues) soundtrack,” said a source.

“Bessie” was to start production this month, but has been pushed back to at least early 1993.

Queen Latifah was said to be disappointed.