To Be Loved

by Berry Gordy

  Much has been said about the making of Lady Sings the Blues and the fiery relationship between Sidney and me, some of it true, some of it not so true. Indeed it was fiery. My inexperience in making movies and his inexperience in working with somebody like me made that inevitable.

  I was thrilled to be in this fresh, new business where I could put my natural abilities to work, once again dealing with a pure creative process, and on something I was so passionate about.

  But I was being looked upon only as the money man—the angel—the backer. I resented that. There was no way I could sit around and watch my star in the role of her life and not get involved.

  To me it was crazy, but then I didn’t know the movie business. I had been under a major misconception—that a movie producer (like the producer of a record) would have some creative control.

  Those next three months of production were tumultuous.

  Despite the differences that developed between Sidney and me, we somehow made it through. That “somehow” came about because I began to see how my well-meaning opinions were making his job of directing impossible.

  One day he just walked out of a rehearsal, leaving me to run the whole show. I was lost, wracking my brain for who could take his place.

  Seven o’clock the next morning, to my great relief, he was at my house, telling me of his love for the project and how he could never abandon it.

  “I want your ideas,” Sidney said. “After all, you’re the executive producer, you’ve worked with Diana for years and I respect that, plus you have great ideas. So I really want your help. It’s just that I can’t deal with it in the middle of trying to direct. We’ve got to have one boss on the set.”

  I agreed with that. I knew that was the right way. We made a pact. I told him that I would never interfere with anything he said or did on the floor. If I didn’t like something I would tell him personally and in private.

  I kept my promise. Sidney went beyond his. Not only did he work with me and listen to my ideas, he even encouraged me to try out some of them with the actors.

  The first time was the scene at the plush Cafe Manhattan where Billie goes on a first date with Louis, and the dialogue had been sounding stiff and unnatural. Sidney was not satisfied. “I got to get more out of Diana and Billy,” he said, “and the script is just not doing it.”

  “I got an idea,” I said.

  When I told him what it was, he said, “Try it—what have we got to lose?”

  He told Diana and Billy I was coming over to talk to them about the scene. Getting right to the point I said, “What we’re going to do is put our scripts down and ad-lib this one.”

  I told Diana, “Billie, you have a major crush on Louis McKay but you don’t want to be no pushover. You want him to think you’ve been around.” I looked at Billy Dee. “And Louis, you’re gonna get her in the end but you’ve got to fight for it. You’ve got to charm her ass off.”

  Diana was ready. Billy Dee was hesitant. He told me he had an idea of his own he’d like to try. “After all,” he said, “I’ve had twenty years’ experience. You’ve had none.”

  “Right,” I said, “but look at it this way. If I make a mistake I pay for it. If you make a mistake I pay for it. Get it?”

  “Got it,” he laughed.

  Because it was an ad lib, Sidney had John Alonzo, our brilliant cinematographer, set up three cameras to catch all the angles—one hand-held that John himself worked. Then Billy and Diana did one of the cutest scenes I’ve ever seen—in one take.

  Another scene Sidney asked for my ideas on happened to culminate in a kiss—the only kiss in the movie between Diana and Billy. During rehearsal, every time they got up to kiss, I yelled, “Cut!” and had them start again from the top. I wanted them to save the kiss so there would be more electricity when it happened.

  The set was crowded—technical people, onlookers, the writers, other actors—everyone was watching. After a few rehearsals, we were ready to shoot.

  “Action,” I said, and we started the first take.

  They got to the kiss and again I stopped them because the take wasn’t right. When the same thing happened on the second take I heard some giggling from the set. I thought they were laughing at Billy Dee. Every time I would scream “Cut!” his movements were akin to a muscle spasm.

  We rolled again, but this time when I did it there was a roar of laughter. I was laughing, too, but when I looked over at Shelly he gave me a knowing look. “Beege,” he said.

  Looking around, I realized that the joke wasn’t on Billy Dee. It was on me. Everybody on the set could see my concern was not for the artistry of the scene. It had become obvious I didn’t want them to kiss, at least not more than once. Now I knew I really had to shoot this sucker.

  The next take would have to be it. “Take it from the top,” I said. “Good, good. All the way down. Good. Good. This is it.” I let it go. They kissed. A wonderful kiss. Tremendous. I waited for an appropriate amount of time. Not as long as I might have waited on another scene, I’ll admit. “Cut,” I said. They kept on kissing. “Cut, Goddamn it!”

  I looked around for a fire hose. There was none. I rushed over, pulling them apart. I could see Diana was struggling to free herself, but not nearly hard enough.

  Sidney later told me it was a great scene but he got a bigger kick out of watching me wrestling with my mixed emotions.

  Only in retrospect have I come to fully appreciate what a hero Sidney Furie was. I learned so much from him. A masterful director, he took on the most complicated emotional scenes and brought out the best in the actors. He not only gave his all to making the film, but he came to tolerate, understand and eventually love our working relationship. We had vowed early on not to let our egos get in the way of making a great film. We didn’t.

  In making any movie, there are days of major panic. My first one happened about halfway through shooting when Eddie Saeta, an assistant unit production manager, came to me saying, “Mr. Gordy, I know I’m going to get fired for this but you’ve got big problems. We’re running out of money!”

  Not having ever seen this man before I was surprised he had the nerve to come directly to me but I was grateful because I felt his concern was real.

  When I talked to the auditors they confirmed that yes, we had used up 95 percent of the budget—and I was only halfway through the film.

  I immediately made Eddie associate producer, putting him in charge of the money.

  People in the business who knew about my predicament assured me it wasn’t so bad. “All movies go overbudget.” They told me this one was so great I would have no problem getting more money from Paramount. “It’s done all the time.”

  Paramount Studios in those days was a hotbed of activity. In addition to Lady, The Godfather and Save the Tiger were in production. Enthusiastically making my way to Frank Yablans’s office early in the morning, I passed many crews setting up for the day’s shooting schedule. I waved to new faces like Bob Evans, the studio executive in charge of The Godfather, and Al Pacino, one of its new young stars.

  Colorful as they come, Frank was a small, wiry, balding executive with a Napoleon complex who played the part of powerful studio head to a tee.

  “How is it going, my friend?” he said.

  “Fine, fine. Everything is great. We’re doing Academy Award caliber stuff here but I just wanted you to know that we’re going a little overbudget, and we should rework it.”

  Frank laughed out loud. “What are you talking about—rework the budget? You kidding?”

  “No, I’m not. It happens all the time.”

  “Not with me, it don’t.”

  “But this is a major work of art! Maybe you should come take a look at it.”

  “The biggest budget for other black films is $500,000 tops. We’re giving you two million! You understand what that means, two million dollars for a black film? You should be happy.”

  “This is not a black film,” I said. “This is a film with black stars.”
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  “I guess you just don’t get the point, do you,” he said. “Let me see, you’re from the ghetto, right? I’ll put this in terms you can understand better. You went out and got yourself a case of the clap, and you infected me with it. And now you come back and expect me to pay you to get rid of yours! Does that make it any clearer?”

  “Yes Frank, much.”

  “If you’re out of money I suggest you end the film right where it’s at.”

  “That’s crazy. We’re right in the middle of it! How could I do that?”

  “Easy,” he said. “Just fade to black and put letters on the screen that say T-H-E E-N-D.”

  (I told you he was colorful.)

  “What are my alternatives?”

  “Pay everything over two million and you’ll get your money back after deferments, distribution fees, prints and ads and everything else. Or,” he said with a smile, “just bring me a check for the two million and the film is yours to do whatever you want.”

  “Fine,” I said, heading for the door. “I know my options.”

  The next day I handed a shocked Frank Yablans a check for $2 million. “The film is now mine to do with whatever I want.”

  Pausing, he slowly took the check. “Oh yes, but we have to distribute it.”

  “What do you mean? You said if I gave back the two million…”

  “I know what I said, but you must have misunderstood me. We took the gamble, investing our money first. Under no circumstances would I have ever suggested that we wouldn’t distribute the picture.”

  I didn’t like his tactics but I had no choice. The studio kept control of the film, its ownership and distribution rights, even though I was the one on the hook for everything. That should have been a lot scarier than it was but I was passionate about the control and creative freedom that I was able to have from then on. Creative people many times do dumb things. Business people watch for the budget, creative people only for the magic.

  After wrapping production, in early ’72, we had only begun editing when I got a call from Frank. He was in New York meeting with Paramount’s board of directors. They wanted to see what we had.

  I told him it was nowhere near ready.

  “Look, Berry,” he said, “we have to know whether you’ve got a film or not.”

  “I can’t bring the film to you now, Frank. We don’t have the montages in there, we don’t have music, we don’t have a lot of stuff.”

  “Just grab the reels, put them under your arm, come to New York, and let us see them.” When I protested further, he assured me, “Hey, we’re movie people here—we know it’s going to be rough. You can narrate the parts that are missing.”

  Against my better judgment, I hurried off to New York. By the time I got to the small private screening room to make the presentation, I was excited. And in watching the reels I had brought, even where we had spliced in “Scene to come” or “Music to come,” I loved everything we had. I was sure everybody watching it felt the same way. But when the lights came on, I noticed a strange reaction—they were all sort of staring at the floor.

  Frank said, “Can you meet me in my office?” and walked out without a smile.

  I followed him into his office and sat down, feeling very confused.

  He looked at me sorrowfully and said, “The picture’s in trouble but maybe I can help you. There’s a couple of film doctors I know who can probably save it.”

  I was stunned. I couldn’t understand how anybody couldn’t see what I saw. I felt so stupid that I had let this man talk me into coming to New York to show them a film that was not completed.

  In no uncertain terms I told Frank I was not interested in a film doctor, that all I wanted to do was take my film back to L.A. and finish it.

  I had learned a big lesson about making movies. Not everyone is able to look at work in progress and see what it could be. They only see what it is.

  Knowing Frank didn’t like the film I took the opportunity to renegotiate the deal, getting better terms. I got a better deal in the foreign markets and lowered my distribution fee domestically. But they kept the negative and they wouldn’t budge on the length of the movie. That meant cutting over four hours of film down to two.

  I returned to Los Angeles with my reels, more determined than ever to make the movie that I envisioned.

  “Get Barney Ales on the line,” I told my secretary, Rebecca, talking on a phone in a small office near our editing room at Paramount. Though the bulk of the company was moving to Los Angeles by now, Barney wasn’t. He was all over the place—busy in Europe, in Detroit and in Florida where he had bought a house, hoping to get me to move the business there. His resistance to moving out here was becoming more and more of a problem.

  Because of his inaccessibility, I couldn’t get any answers. Whenever I checked with his people I could feel they were under great strain not to tell me anything—from wanting to know where Barney was at the moment to what record was selling the most. They knew Barney would fire them or cut their bonuses and I wouldn’t. Ours had always been a complex relationship. The situation was not unlike me being a president of a small nation, loved by all the folk, and him being the big general who controls the army.

  Though it drove me crazy, that was part of the reason he was so strong.

  Here was a man I valued not only for his marketing mastery and leadership, but someone who was my friend. We had gone toe-to-toe on many issues, but we were a solid team. Wherever we went—around the world putting our international machinery in place, making deals, turning the most boring of sales conventions into entertainment extravaganzas—Barney and I had fun.

  I also realized that Barney was one of the few executives at Motown whose job I could not do. But now we were at odds. It was becoming harder and harder to control Barney. He wanted more autonomy than I wanted to give him. He refused to be subject to the controls I put in place. While I was off in Los Angeles making movies he refused to report to anyone else. He wanted to do things his way, not my way. I thought perhaps he wanted to go his own way. I made it easy. I told him he was fired. Once the words were said, it was kind of ironic; he seemed relieved and I felt sad.

  I knew there would never be another Barney. He brought a style and way of leading and building that had been unique in the industry, that I probably would never see again.

  I got Ewart Abner on the phone. I told him to take charge of Sales and Marketing temporarily so I could get on with my movie.

  The main problem with editing the movie was simple. Too much film. We had shot everything, mistakes and all. After cutting hundreds of hours of great footage down to things we felt just had to be there, the film was still four and a half hours long. We had to get it down to around two hours so the studio could have more showings in theaters.

  Sidney, editor Argyle Nelson, still photographer Larry Schiller (responsible for many of the great montages) and I—with the help of Chris, Suzanne and Shelly—studied and restudied areas that could be trimmed, changed or cut out altogether.

  It was a painstaking process that ended with us eliminating many entire scenes. We finally got it down to about two hours and fifteen minutes. Something else had to go, but what?

  The studio executives convinced us that we did not need to show the lowest part of Billie’s life, which we called the degradation scene, where she has gone back to Dean & Dean’s, the very first club she had worked, and hears her mother has died.

  That was a real tough one for me, not only because it was a great scene but because my brother Robert played the role of Hawk, Billie’s dope pusher, and had done a wonderful job, playing off of Diana and Richard Pryor, creating his own dialogue.

  He had proven again to be a natural, this time in front of the camera, even though he had never acted before. Nevertheless we cut the scene from the movie.

  We were on our way to Detroit for our first big preview of the film at the Americana Theater when it dawned on me that all of my family, and Robert’s friends, were expecting to se
e him in the film, and his only scene was cut out. I got panicky. There was no way I could do this to my brother. I put that one scene back in just for the Detroit showing.

  That brought the film back up to two hours and fifteen minutes. But after playing it for that first audience we all could see that Robert’s performance was brilliant and that low point in Billie’s career was exactly what was needed to make the higher points shine. We left the scene in.

  Lady Sings the Blues opened in October of 1972 at New York’s Loew’s State 1, breaking the attendance record previously set by Love Story.

  While there was some criticism for the movie’s factual inaccuracies, the majority of the reviews were raves, not only for the film itself but for the acting debut of Diana Ross. Now the Motown machinery went to work. Promotional events were scheduled. Concert appearances. Magazine and TV interviews. International appearances, including a prestigious screening closing the Cannes Film Festival. “Good Morning Heartache,” a single release from the film and soundtrack album, was climbing the charts. The soundtrack album had been assigned to Suzanne and my niece Iris, who edited and coordinated the album. With the help of Guy Costa they lived in the studio for about a week to make the release date.

  Even though Phil Jones, our sales manager at the time, and his people had not been too enthused about the double album with expensive packaging, a higher price, “old-timey” tunes and dialogue from the movie, they worked on it like it was the greatest thing in the world.

  With excitement for the picture building everywhere that double-record album shot up to #1 Pop.

  In February of 1973 came five Academy Award nominations for Lady Sings the Blues. Diana’s nomination for Best Actress put her up against four established actresses: Liv Ullmann for The Emigrants, Maggie Smith for Travels with My Aunt, Liza Minnelli for Cabaret and Cicely Tyson for Sounder. After winning the Golden Globe Award as Best Actress a month before, the talk around town was: Diana Ross is a shoe-in.

  Diana had always said to me, “If you can think it, I can do it.” And she really had.

  Lady’s four other nominations were: Best Art Direction (Carl Anderson art director, Reg Allen set decorator), Best Costume Design (Bob Mackie, Ray Aghayan, Norma Koch), Best Scoring: Adaptation and Original Song Score (Gil Askey). And a real personal victory was the nomination for Best Screenplay—Terence McCloy, Suzanne de Passe and Chris Clark.