Diana Ross: A Biography

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Because Berry didn’t give Diana much time to rehearse the monologue, she was insecure about doing it on live television. After hearing her practice it a couple of times in her hotel suite, he was worried, too. He kept having her repeat it until she was totally fed up with it … and with him. “I know the words, Berry,” she finally said, exasperated. “My God! Leave me alone!” Years later, in speaking of him, Diana would refer to being “deeply wounded by the startling lack of sensitivity he was capable of demonstrating,” and recall feeling “unseen and emotionally abused.”

  Finally, it was time for the show. Carson introduced the Supremes and they walked onto the stage looking elegant yet properly respectful in floor-length black beaded gowns with high necklines and long sleeves. The song, of course, was terrific. Diana had been performing it for three years; she knew how to put it across to an audience with emotional sincerity. However, she was extremely nervous during the monologue and so she became tongue-tied, saying “gentles” instead of “Gentiles,” somehow forgetting how to pronounce the word “Protestant” and completely blowing the “great God almighty” line. She was under too much pressure to deliver a speech she had not fully prepared and, besides, it was an emotional time for everyone. Making matters even more difficult, this was the first talk show appearance during which Diana would sit at the panel alone—without the other two Supremes. She was extremely insecure about it.

  “Just say what you feel,” Berry had told her earlier when she expressed her doubts to him. “Be honest. You’re always best when you’re honest.”

  “I didn’t sleep very much last night, Johnny,” Diana began thoughtfully and softly. “I’m very sad. And, I’m angry, too. But, I don’t think it’s good to be angry. I really don’t know what to say, all I can say is what’s inside.” Diana’s eyes began to moisten. She seemed barely able to continue. “I’m Negro, and I respected and loved Dr. Martin Luther King very much. And I know he lived and died for one reason—and I want all of us to be together. Not just the black man but the white man and everybody … we should walk together.”

  Years later, Diana would remember that after King was killed she was “in a deep depression’ and felt “a sense of hopelessness” for some time. “I felt the pain for Coretta, and I loved her beauty and how regally she held herself,” she would recall. “I had marveled at how Jackie Kennedy had conducted herself, too. And I wondered about myself: would I have been able to be as strong, to stand as tall as these women had? I thought about that as I sat at the funeral and later at Dr. King’s burial.”

  When the program was over that night in April of 1968, Berry was impressed by the poise and dignity Diana had demonstrated on the panel with Johnny Carson. He thought she’d done a great job. It had been hard on her, though. Once offstage, she began walking down a long hallway at the NBC studio to her dressing room. Mary and Cindy had already changed into their street clothes. They were standing near the stage door sharing a laugh.

  “You have to get changed, Miss Ross. Time to go,” one of the road managers told her. “We’ve got a lot of stuff to do, and Mr. Gordy wants you to—”

  “In a minute,” Diana said in an exhausted tone. Couldn’t she have just a second to assimilate what she’d just been through on live television? Evaluate her performance? Take a breath?

  “But, Mr. Gordy wants you to—”

  Before she could get to the dressing room, Diana collapsed into a folding chair next to a water cooler. “I said, in a minute.” Burying her face in her hands, she began to cry. “Why can’t I ever—just—have—a—minute?”

  Ernestine’s advice

  A few days after Martin Luther King was assassinated, Ernestine Ross, her sister Bea, and Bea’s friend Mabel Givens took a trip to visit Diana in New York and see the Supremes perform at the Copacabana. The three women sat in the nearly empty nightclub and watched as Diana, Mary and Cindy rehearsed a showstopping medley of tunes that merged “Thoroughly Modern Millie” with “Second Hand Rose” and “Mame.” It wasn’t going well. “The lighting cues were off,” Mabel Givens recalled, “and something was wrong with the sound. They sang the medley five or six times, and it was a long medley. Finally, Mary was over it.”

  “Look, I say we stop this nonsense and let the light and sound guys figure things out,” Mary said, “and then come back later and continue the rehearsal.”

  “I agree with that,” Cindy said.

  “Well, I don’t,” Diana decided, facing them. “You girls stay right where you are until I work this thing out. I mean it, Mary.”

  “Oh, please!” Mary exclaimed. She was never one to be cowed by Diana, and that hadn’t changed. She would still stand up to her, even if she usually didn’t win such confrontations. “I need a break. Can’t a Supreme even go to the ladies room these days? I mean, really, Diane … you are so uptight.” With that, she gave Diana a look and walked off the stage. Cindy stood in place for a moment. She glanced at Diana. Then, she tracked Mary with her eyes and made her choice: she followed Mary. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back,” she told Diana in a reassuring tone. Diana just shook her head and exhaled deeply as if to say, “Oh, good Lord! Those two.”

  For the rest of the afternoon, the three women did not seem happy with one another. When the rehearsal continued, Ernestine looked on disapprovingly as Diana tried to straighten out matters to her own satisfaction. As the trio rehearsed their version of Tommy Dorsey’s “Let’s Get Away from It All” she kept repeating, “It’s too loud back there.” She was referring to Mary and Cindy’s background vocals. “The sound isn’t right,” she hollered up to the technician’s booth. “Turn down the girls, please. Hello? Is anyone up there? Hello?”

  “The girls are turned down enough already,” Mary said. Then she put her mouth right up to the mic so that the sound of her voice reverberated loudly throughout the club. “Maybe someone needs to turn down the lead singer,” she suggested.

  Cindy suppressed a giggle.

  “Honestly, Mary, are you ever serious about anything?” Diana asked her. “I mean, really. Here we are, at the Copacabana. I remember when we first played here and everything had to be just right. Now, no one cares about anything.”

  “I know,” Mary said, rolling her eyes. “Just look at how far we’ve come, huh?” She was in rare form; even the musicians had to laugh. Diana took her in from head to toe and then walked off the stage muttering to herself.

  “It was unfortunate,” recalled Mabel Givens, “and wasn’t really about the sound or the lighting, it was more about the relationship between the girls, which wasn’t very good. I sat next to Ernestine throughout the whole thing, and I can tell you that she was very concerned. After the rehearsal, Diane took me, Bea and Ernestine to lunch at a restaurant in the Waldorf-Astoria.”

  As the four women dined, Ernestine carefully broached the subject of the group’s relationship. “You know, Diane, I wonder if you should be nicer to them,” she said.

  Bea and Mabel watched without saying a word.

  Ernestine reached over and put her index finger beneath Diana’s chin. She then raised her daughter’s head slightly thereby making direct eye contact in a loving way. “You know what I’m saying, don’t you?” Ernestine asked.

  Diana smiled at her mother. “You know, sometimes, I just want to scream,” she said, opening up. “The stress is nonstop. The pressure to just be good all the time and good enough, and to not mess up. I know I take it out on the girls. But really I’m not mad at them. I’m really mad at …”

  “Berry?” Ernestine finished.

  “It’s been years,” Diana said, nodding her head. “I did all of this just to please … him.”

  “And to please yourself, Diane,” Ernestine reminded her. “You have wanted this since you were a kid.”

  “Yes, but …” At that moment, Diana looked at Mabel and Bea and her demeanor changed, as if it suddenly occurred to her that she was revealing too much in front of them.

  “You’re mad at Berry,” Ernestine
said. “Not the girls. I know …”

  Diana turned to her mother, put her index finger under Ernestine’s chin and raised her head for direct eye contact—a duplication of Ernestine’s earlier action. “No,” she said with mock seriousness. “It’s you I’m mad at, Momma. You could be nicer to me, you know?” Then she laughed, as did everyone else at the table. Ernestine pushed Diana’s hand away. “Girl, you haven’t changed one bit, have you?” she remarked. “Now, just go and eat your food!”

  Florence is pregnant

  In August 1968, the Supremes were rehearsing a new routine in Detroit with choreographer Cholly Atkins when Florence Ballard’s name came up. Cholly mentioned that he was in the process of working with her on a new nightclub act. Mary asked enthusiastic questions about Florence and the show, and Cholly told her that Flo was well and the act was coming along nicely.

  It had been rough for Florence since leaving the Supremes. Because she was unhappy with her original severance package, she decided to hire independent counsel and see if she could do better for herself. Indeed, after some intense negotiation, she was able to get about $150,000 from Berry and Motown. Though there was still no offer of future royalties, at least there was some money for her. Florence, her attorney Leonard Baun and Mike Roshkind finalized the agreement at the Motown offices in February 1968.

  “And you know you can’t ever say you were a member of the Supremes in your press material,” Mike told her.

  “But I’m the one who thought of the name,” Florence said, according to her memory of the conversation.

  “No, you didn’t,” Mike told her. “If you remember, you picked it from a list of names that Janie Bradford gave you, and Janie is a Motown employee. Therefore,” he concluded, “Motown owns the name Supremes.”

  Florence would later say that she couldn’t believe her ears. Still, she signed the nine-page document outlining her release.

  A couple of days after the settlement, Florence married Tommy Chapman, on 29 February 1968 in Hawaii. While she was gone, the settlement money was paid to Leonard Baun. When the newlyweds returned, Florence tried to get the money from Baun, but to no avail. In fact, she never saw a penny of it. The attorney was later disbarred for spending all of it.

  Meanwhile, Florence had signed a solo recording agreement with ABC Records for a $15,000 advance. Because she was barred by Motown from mentioning the Supremes, her press biography for ABC was ridiculous: “For the past several years, Florence was a member of one of the world’s most famous entertainment trios and the fame of the group was such that each member received worldwide publicity and each converted contemporary music lovers into personal fans.” She could have been one of the Andrews Sisters, for all anyone knew. Of the dozen or so songs she recorded, only two were issued as singles and both were commercial failures. The record company would later drop her from the roster.*

  When Mary asked Cholly Atkins if Florence had any bookings, he explained that her husband, Tommy, was now her manager. He had not been able to secure any dates for her at all. “Things could not be worse,” Cholly said, sounding grim.

  Suddenly, Diana perked up. “Well, then, Berry should help her.”

  Mary recalled that she and Cholly turned to face her, surprised. Diana became defensive. “I just mean … well, Berry has connections, you know?” she explained. “Maybe he can help her. I think he should, don’t you?” She turned to Mary, who seemed irritated by the exchange. “Well, don’t you?” Diana asked.

  “Of course, I do,” Mary finally answered. “I’m just surprised to hear that you …” The thought died on her lips. She wasn’t about to get into it with Diana over Florence.

  Diana was hurt. Instead of thinking that the issue was that Berry would probably be the last one to help Florence, she immediately thought that Mary and Cholly were blaming her for Florence’s undoing. “Look, all I ever wanted for Blondie was the best,” she insisted. “Why doesn’t anyone believe that? It’s not my fault things didn’t work out with her. I did everything I could think of to do,” she concluded. “And you wanted her out, too, Mary, so don’t you dare just sit there and act like you didn’t.”

  Mary stared at her.

  “Look, it doesn’t matter, anyway,” Cholly said finally. “She’s pregnant. So, that’s that.”

  “Oh, my gosh, why, that’s wonderful,” Diana enthused. “Why, we have to call her!”

  Cholly and Mary didn’t respond. Indeed, it was nice that Florence was pregnant, but with no job, no money and no career, how “wonderful” could it be, really?

  From Funny Girl to “Love Child”

  By the summer of 1968, Diana Ross—like a lot of people—had become a big fan of Barbra Streisand. As earlier stated, Florence says it had been she who first suggested Streisand’s “People” and “I Am Woman’ for the Supremes act. However, Berry would later tell friends that he realized he was falling in love with Diana the first time he saw her perform “I Am Woman” at the Apollo—arguably, a statement made even more ironic by Florence’s involvement. Berry agreed with Diana: Streisand was special. Barbra was a contemporary doing the kind of work on Broadway, in movies, on record and on stage that he wanted for his star, Diana.

  “Diana’s always measured herself against Barbra Streisand,” Marvin Gaye once said. “If she had been white like Streisand, it would have been a hundred times easier for her.”

  It just so happened that in August 1968 Streisand’s much-heralded $12 million Funny Girl film was scheduled to be released. Berry had the shrewd idea of beating the original soundtrack recording into the shops with a Funny Girl album by Diana Ross and the Supremes. “It was what you would call a rush job,” recalled Gil Askey, who produced the album with Berry. “We did the whole thing in two days in New York. Diane was in her glory every step of the way.”

  Jule Styne, who wrote the music for Funny Girl and produced the Broadway show, assisted Berry and Gil in the studio with Diana’s lead vocals. He also consented to write liner notes for the album. “I’m proud that they chose Funny Girl for their first full-scale show and movie album,” he wrote. “My life is now complete. From Frank Sinatra to Barbra Streisand to Diana Ross—what a parlay!”

  Diana Ross & the Supremes Sing and Perform “Funny Girl” was regarded by most pop music critics as a sort of practical joke—not because the performances were bad, but because no one took them seriously. Few seemed interested in hearing Diana sing anything other than Motown songs, which was a shame because the Funny Girl album contains some of her best vocal performances. She is in full-bodied and spirited voice on songs like “The Music That Makes Me Dance” and “People,” both of which were—like the rest of the album—lavishly and lovingly arranged. Her pleasure in the album comes through loud and clear. Jule Styne liked the finished product, though he had said he wanted to record the entire record with the Supremes in front of a live orchestra. He was told that they just didn’t work that way at Motown. The three women never recorded together, and they always used tracks that had already been recorded for the session. Also, he was unhappy about the fact that so many unfamiliar voices were ultimately added onto the tracks—many of the songs didn’t have Mary and Cindy on them. But, alas, that had also long been Motown’s way.

  By the summer of 1968, the Supremes’ recording career was in a slump, for a number of reasons. First of all, after the departure of Holland-Dozier-Holland, Berry wasn’t sure how the company should rebound. Music had become much more aggressive and less cute than it had been in the early and mid-1960s, influenced by hard rock and heavy metal as well as the country’s changing and tumultuous social climate. Also, Berry really was preoccupied with Diana and simply not as interested in hit records for the Supremes as he had been in the past. In fact, the group hadn’t had a major hit record since “Reflections” more than a year earlier.

  “One thing that was always inevitable was that when Diana Ross had a hit record, the whole company benefited,” said Deke Richards, one of the best of Motown’s new writers
and producers, post H-D-H. “It was good for company morale: if the queen had a hit, so did the rest of the court. Berry decided she should have one, and it should be something contemporary and exciting. So, he put together some very strong forces—Frank Wilson, R. Dean Taylor, Pam Sawyer, Hank Cosby.”

  Berry checked the team into the Hotel Pontchartrain on Washington Boulevard in a three-bedroom suite with a sweeping view of the Detroit River and city skyline, and told them to start writing. It was like a present-day reality show where four people might be locked into a hotel room together until they come up with a hit record. Every few hours, Berry would check in on them to ask, “Did you do it? Did you write a hit yet?” After days of frustration, the team actually dreamt up something that was brilliant—“Love Child.” In all, they had been sequestered for five days … but it had sure been worth it.

  When he heard the rough composition, Berry’s instincts told him that the song was a smash. He scheduled a recording session for September. At that time, however, Mary was so exhausted by the group’s touring schedule, she asked for a vacation. “This is not a good time for that,” Berry told her sternly. “We’re getting ready to cut this new record and it’s hot. And you’re telling me you don’t want to be in on it?”