by Berry Gordy
The artists were not the only ones changing. I, too, was going in a new direction—the movies. The crazy part was instead of me having to look for them, they came to me.
SUNDAY, JUNE 5, 1988—LATE AFTERNOON, SPAGO RESTAURANT, LOS ANGELES
I was standing in the middle of a noisy party, a fund-raiser for Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign, my mind far, far away—caught up in details of the ongoing poker hand with MCA, wracking my brain for loose ends. So far so good on some major concessions—obtaining assurances that the Motown body of music be kept intact and that there be an established percentage of minority ownership. I also had some thoughts on what to do about the master recordings of Dr. King’s speeches.
I knew people looked at Motown as something belonging to them, and at me as just the caretaker. That had always made me feel good in the past. But not now. How can I say to the world: I don’t want to be the caretaker anymore—Let me let go.
Public perception had me locked in. “You—in financial trouble?” “You want to do what?”
“Berry Gordy…” I heard a voice and looked up to see Jesse making his way toward me. “My office has been getting calls about you…” he began.
“No kiddin’,” I said. Changing the subject, I asked him how the campaign was going, but he seemed much more interested in talking about the sale of my company.
Articulate as ever, Jesse hadn’t changed much since the first time I met him back in the early sixties when I had squeezed him in for a fifteen-minute meeting that lasted three hours.
For the first two hours we discussed many things, but mostly he told me about how important I was to the black community, and the phenomenal impact we were having around the world. The next hour was spent asking me for money.
He wanted it for Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
I asked questions. Exactly what was the money for? Exactly what were their plans? And exactly what did they stand for?
Jesse was irritated, but too smart to lose his cool. He not only answered all my questions, but gave me a history lesson on the whole civil rights movement.
“Not only am I goin’ to give you the money,” I told him, “but I’d like to do more.” I went on to tell him I wanted to memorialize Dr. King’s speeches on record for future generations.
“Wonderful,” he said, “but how about the cash first?”
“Okay.”
That was many years ago and now here I was at a different kind of fund-raiser—this same black man was running for President of the United States. Going through all parts of the country, including the South, with his Rainbow Coalition had moved Jesse out front in many of the primary polls.
“Selling Motown,” he said, “would be a blow to black people all over the world.”
“I know, but Jesse,” I said, “allow me to use a Jesse-ism of my own. I have three choices—sell out, bail out or fall out. Which do you suggest I do?”
He laughed. I could see he loved my Jesse-ism. “Just think about it,” he said, as someone was pulling him away to make a speech.
I stood there recalling other confusing times in my career. Back in 1971 I decided to have a Rock ’n’ Roll singer, who had never acted in a movie before, star in the life story of Billie Holiday.
The word was out. “He’s crazy. Berry Gordy has really screwed up this time.”
11
NEW HORIZONS
1971–1975
LADY
The story behind the making of Lady Sings the Blues began many years ago. When I was a teenager my friends and I looked up to the cool, hip people, most of whom were Jazz enthusiasts, and Billie Holiday was their queen.
The songs she sang all seemed to be about life—her life. I felt her pain was greater than any I had known. She was involved in a way of life I had not experienced and she told us about it.
“Good Morning Heartache,” “Don’t Explain,” “God Bless The Child,” Billie had a song for every emotion. Through her songs I knew her and loved her. And then one night I met her.
It was at the Flame Show Bar. I was in my early twenties and had come to the club with my brother Robert and our friends, Cecil Alleyne and Mable John, to see the great Lady Day. We walked in. Lo and behold there SHE was on stage singing. Her tone, melody and feeling were so much like her records, yet so much more. I was mesmerized.
She was into the song, deep into herself. Expressions occasionally moved across her face, showing her serenity and sometimes her pain. Other times, serenity within her pain. Her eyes were closed. It didn’t seem like she was singing for us at all It seemed as though she was singing for herself and we just happened to be around.
I appreciated her, felt sorry for her, and loved her all at the same time. I wanted to hold her, but I knew that was out of the question. I’d be lucky if I could just meet her.
Thanks to Gwen, I was lucky. She somehow arranged it. I will always hear Billie’s voice when I asked her if she would take a picture with me.
Slurring, soft, she said, “Sure honey, I’d love to. Where would you like to do it?”
“Right here at the bar would be fine,” I said. Everybody was pushing, trying to get to her and she was taking time out for a picture with me. I knew there was only time for one. “Would you mind if my brother and friends got in the picture?” I asked.
“Just anybody you want is okay with me,” she said in the kindest way.
When she died just a few years later, even though I had just that one brief encounter with her, I felt like I had lost someone very precious to me. I went looking for that photograph. It was only then that I realized I had lost it—my only tangible connection to the great Lady Day.
That was the back story. The actual story began in early 1971 when Joe Schoenfeld, an agent at the William Morris Agency, told me about a project in the works at Cinema Center Films about the life of Billie Holiday.
Joe set up a meeting for me with Sidney Furie, the director, and Jay Weston, the producer. They told me how great they thought Diana was and how she would be perfect for the role. Sidney had seen our TV special, Diana! in which she had done some brilliant comedic sketches of Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields and Harpo Marx. With instincts like that, he said, he knew she could do drama. His every other word was, “Magic. She’s magic.”
He asked if Diana had ever acted before.
“Of course she has,” I said. “She’s been acting all her life—as most black people have to do just to survive.”
We spent several exciting hours together, exchanging ideas and getting to know each other, and at the end of the day we shook hands. We had a deal. They flew out to New York that night and I sped over to Diana’s to give her the triumphant news.
Three of my wishes were coming true: 1) To honor Billie Holiday; 2) To continue to move Diana Ross to unparalleled heights; and 3) To make movies.
Making movies had long been a dream. To me it was total artistic expression.
I had always wanted to see up on that screen what I knew to be true of the black experience and the real beauty of the people I grew up with—the tough, proud, nurturing mothers, the wisdom and wit of the old men I’d listened to in the barber shops, the glamorous, shapely ladies, the handsome, smooth-talking cats, the street hustlers and the Jazz musicians lost in their own world.
Three days after I told a thrilled Diana about our great luck, I got a call from Sidney.
“They don’t want Diana Ross.”
When he’d gotten back to the company in New York they scoffed at his choice of a “Rock ’n’ Roll” singer with no acting experience. I was so disappointed but hid my feelings when I went back to Diana and told her she didn’t have the part. “This will give us more time to prepare for the next opportunity,” I told her.
She took it a lot better than I did.
About a week later I got another call from Sidney. The deal with Cinema Center Films had fallen through.
“We took the film to Paramount,” he said, “and they wil
l accept Diana Ross.”
“Great!” I screamed.
“Wait a minute,” he said, “there’s just one thing.”
“Oh?”
“You’ve got to guarantee the deficit financing.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said, “if it goes over two million dollars you have to pay the rest.”
I called in Jim White, whom I had hired as vice president of Business Affairs for Motown Productions, and discussed the feasibility of that budget. Jim came back with a reassuring “No problem.” Based on the script, he told me we could do it.
That turned out to be one of the most well-intentioned miscalculations I ever heard. Jim, not having worked on a creative project with me before, had no idea what he or the budget were in for. Neither did I.
By the end of the summer the major players were all lined up: a Paramount Pictures film, a Motown-Weston-Furie Production, Jim White and Jay Weston, producers, Sidney Furie, director, Diana Ross the star. I was not only executive producer, but the on-screen opening credits were to read: Berry Gordy Presents Diana Ross as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues. The deal was on.
When word got out that Diana was going to play Billie Holiday, criticism came from everywhere. “That skinny little Rock ’n’ Roll singer is going to do what?” “That role should go to an experienced actress, someone who’s paid her dues, worked at her craft.” “What makes her think she can relate to Billie Holiday?” The comments went on and on. And for good reason. Billie came up the hard way; Diana had not. Billie’s singing came from pain and blues; Diana’s did not. Billie’s was a tortured, troubled life; Diana’s was not. Billie Holiday was an addict; Diana Ross was not.
Bombarded with complaints all I could say was, “Well, this is called acting, isn’t it?”
Sidney Furie never gave it a second thought. He just kept walking around saying, “She’s magic.”
Everything about this movie seemed to be magic. Then I started reading the script. Panicked, I called in Suzanne de Passe and Shelly Berger to get their opinion. They hated it, too.
We set up our first script meeting with an anxious Sidney, who wanted to hear what we thought. As he had written it with a writer named Terence McCloy I had to be very careful.
I started by telling him some general things I thought inappropriate—like, for instance, her robbing a drugstore with a gun, looking for pills. “I think that’s a little overdramatic, stereotypical, don’t you?”
He didn’t look too happy. “Anything else?” he asked.
Suzanne and Shelly smiled, looking at me.
“Sidney, I think it could use more blackness,” I said.
Sidney just stood there, slowly nodding his head. I could see doubts already forming in his mind about our relationship. I was hoping he would see the benefit of our working together. I was hoping he wouldn’t call the whole thing off. “You’re probably right,” he said, “we probably could use more blackness.”
Things warmed up as he said how happy he was with honesty and truth. As the meeting went on Suzanne and Shelly chimed in with a few more comments, holding back some we’d discussed before. The first thing we all agreed to do was get a black writer.
But by the end of the meeting, he was confident enough in us to turn over all the research so we could fix the script.
This “fixing” would ultimately turn into a major rewrite starting four months before production and continuing all the way to the last day of shooting.
We left that meeting all looking for that new writer. Then I realized I already had one—Suzanne. She had been my creative assistant for four years now and had proven herself on every other project I’d thrown her way. Why not this one?
“Me? I’ve never written a script before.”
“So what? You’re one of the smartest people I know. And you do know about black people—don’t you?” With me, Suzanne always had trouble living down her middle-class upbringing.
Though I had now made her an official writer, everybody continued to work on it—the same unconventional team approach we had always used in music, TV and stage shows—that initially included me, Shelly and shortly afterward the sarcastically creative Chris Clark.
She, too, had never written a script. But I figured with her Jazz background and subtle wit, she would add something important to the mix. None of us had any idea that this white girl could come up with such great black dialogue. I made her an official writer along with Suzanne, while Shelly and I continued to give input.
Indispensable to the process was Billy Davis, who was forever reminding us what Billie Holiday had stood for in our lives. We’d be in the middle of writing a scene and in he’d come, singing one of Lady Day’s tunes. “Man,” he’d say, “remember at the Flame—the lighting, that pin spot on her face, the gardenia in her hair. You gotta capture that same glow in the script.”
There were aspects of the story that we took liberties with. We were not making a documentary but presenting one view of this beautiful woman’s life. In real life, Billie’s sidekick, we were told, had been the great Lester Young, my favorite tenor sax player. But for our storyline purposes, we created a character called “Piano Man” to be her confidant. When it came to focusing on a romantic interest, we chose her real-life husband, Louis McKay, who had been the most well known of the men in her life.
In the course of researching, Billie’s estate had graciously sent us some of her things. One day while looking at a bunch of photographs spread out on the floor of our production office at Paramount I heard a giggle from Shelly Berger. “Beege, have you ever taken a picture with Billie Holiday?”
“Yeah, once,” I said, “but I lost it a long time ago.”
“Well, I found it.” He handed me a copy of that same photograph taken at the Flame Show Bar many years before.
I was shocked, but so thrilled. Billie Holiday had had a copy made for herself. At her death she had only a few things left and this was one of them.
Now this movie was more meaningful to me than ever.
The production office at Paramount was jumping. Around me the team of writers toiled as assistants and secretaries ran in and out with pages of revisions, clippings and transcriptions. There was also that constant ringing of the phone from the Motown offices across town.
The casting room was jammed. People everywhere. Just watching the beautiful people coming in and out, auditioning for various parts, fascinated me. This was Hollywood.
Looking for an actor to play Piano Man, I brought a comedian I had managed many years before to Sidney’s attention. I had signed him after I saw him perform at the Apollo Theater in the mid-sixties. His name was Richard Pryor.
Soon after he walked through the door for that first meeting, talking his shit, we knew he could provide comedy relief and the drama we wanted. Sidney and I looked at each other in amazement, saying at the same time, “Piano Man!”
Suzee Ikeda, who became my favorite all-around assistant in the studio, had been bugging me for weeks about some guy named Billy Dee Williams who had played in the TV movie Brian’s Song. She said he was handsome, sexy, perfect for the role of Louis McKay.
Though there were many actors who read for the part of Louis McKay, Sidney and I both agreed on one thing: Billy Dee Williams had been the worst.
First of all, he came with an attitude. Pompous, a pretty boy.
“Read? Me read? I’ve been acting for twenty years. She’s never had a role. You want me to read?”
Sidney assured him if he wanted to be considered for the part he had to read first.
Taking forever to start, he read with Diana, missing his lines constantly.
Clearly unprepared, he struggled through the scene, making jokes every time he messed up. The only person who found him amusing was Diana.
Sidney had already planned screen tests for callbacks and Billy Dee was not going to be one of them, had he not piped up and said, “I know I could do a lot better if I had my glasses.” Thi
s told us he really wanted the part and was willing to go back and work on it.
We agreed to give him another chance. But as impossible as it may seem, his screen test turned out even worse than his reading—and this was after he had prepared.
That really should have been the end for Billy Dee, but something had gotten to me. Both times, regardless of his poor readings, I could see the interplay between Diana and him and I liked it. They had fun together. Great chemistry. I knew the part was his.
“Don’t worry,” I whispered in his ear as he finished the screen test, looking dejected, “you’re Louis McKay, I just gotta convince the others.”
At first Sidney disagreed, but eventually I was able to persuade him to take a chance, using a word he knew well: magic.
While the casting and other preproduction work were going on, Diana did her homework—poring over books, pictures, news clippings, studying the smallest details. She walked around all day and went to sleep at night with headphones on, listening to old live recordings of Billie’s. Even before production I started calling her “Billie.” She started becoming Billie.
When Sidney and I heard the recordings Gil Askey had made in the studio of Diana singing several Billie Holiday classics we actually thought we were listening to old recordings of Billie. Spooky.
I told Gil to pull her back a notch from Billie Holiday and leave a little Diana Ross in there because, “Her future’s got to extend far beyond this picture.” Gil went back and recorded the songs all over again, in addition to arranging and composing other pieces for the movie. After watching Brian’s Song I fell in love with Michel Legrand’s music and wanted just that same feeling for Lady Sings the Blues, so we hired him to compose the score.
Finally, on December 3, 1971, in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles, which looked just like the Baltimore of Billie Holiday’s youth—we rolled camera.