Diana Ross: A Biography

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  We finally got it that Tony thought of black people as charming little imps. He was looking at blacks with what I personally perceived as a racist perspective. Diana didn’t see it, though. I think she was just glad to be taking direction from someone other than Berry. She and Tony started getting along famously. He started listening to her problems, advising her … It wasn’t good.

  Much to Diana’s dismay, Berry and Tony began clashing practically every day. It became obvious that Berry was tired of having Tony around, and he really wanted to direct the film himself, but didn’t quite know how to go about it. Instead, he insisted on rehearsing Diana and Billy in their scenes, as Tony—who had never before encountered such insolence from an executive producer—fumed at the interference.

  Unlike Sidney Furie on the set of Lady Sings the Blues, who understood Berry’s territorial nature where Diana was concerned and found a way to work around it, Tony was determined not to do so. “I can’t act with all of this tension,” Diana finally complained after a big argument between the two men. “Berry, why don’t you go back to Los Angeles? Please!” Of course, he was going nowhere, and he couldn’t believe that she actually wanted him to leave. He had always been her rock, her support. Indeed, it was beginning to feel like she was slipping from him—and that Tony, somehow, was responsible.

  The final disagreement between Berry and Tony came over the simple matter of the casting of a bit player. Of course, as in most disputes, both men have different versions of what happened:

  Berry’s. He says that Diana was upset because Tony had hired a terrible actor for the part of a rapist. She complained about it to Berry. As it happened, Berry had another actor in mind for the role, anyway. When the two men auditioned, Tony agreed that Berry’s was the better choice. Therefore, Berry’s actor was hired. Much to Diana’s dismay, however, when she finally began work on the scene, Tony’s actor was the one being used in it. Again, she called upon Berry; she hated Tony’s actor and didn’t want to work with him. Berry begged Tony to stick to the earlier decision and use the actor he had chosen. Tony refused, saying he had changed his mind, and that was the end of it as far as he was concerned. One thing led to another and Berry finally exploded and fired Tony Richardson on the spot—and that, Berry concludes, with typical humor, “was the first time I really got his attention.”

  Tony’s version. He says that Berry wanted Diana, as Tracy Chambers, to goad the rapist character into a confrontation. He wanted her to show her spunk by standing up to him after being hotly pursued by him, and then offering him “a piece of ass.” The point was that she really hoped to intimidate him and scare him off. Tony said he was appalled by the notion of Diana offering herself to a rapist, no matter the reasoning behind it. Still, Berry stood behind the idea. He found an actor to play the rapist and began coaching him on the scene. Meanwhile, Tony says he found another actor to do it his way. According to Tony, “Gordy blew up at me. I refused to give in. It was as if he was saying, ‘I know black rapists better than you do.’ I knew he was just using this casting as an excuse for an altercation. Finally I said to him, ‘Berry, you should just fire me. You really want to direct this movie, and you know it. You’ve got the money. So, do it.’ That was that. I was out. He was in.”

  Likely, the truth is a combination of both scenarios. Either way, Tony Richardson was fired and Berry Gordy was now the new director of Mahogany. “The only person I felt sorry for was Diana,” Tony said, “who I knew would be very sad that I was going … and Berry was staying.”

  “Diana wasn’t happy about this change at all,” Rob Cohen confirmed. “She had really enjoyed Tony. He’s brilliant, well traveled, well read, articulate, witty. They liked each other. She loved having an Academy Award–winning director to work with, to advise her. Now, he was gone and she was faced with having Berry on her back again, telling her what to do, criticizing her, pushing her way beyond her limit.”

  The associate producer on the film, Neil Hartley, says that Diana telephoned him to discuss her anxiety over the transition. “How do you think this goddamn thing is going to work out?” she asked him.

  “Well, he’s Berry Gordy,” said Neil, trying to be diplomatic. “I’m sure it’ll be just fine.”

  “Well, I’m not,” she said. “I’m really worried. This is not going to be good for me and Berry, I can tell you that much.”

  “She had some legitimate concerns,” said Neil.

  She was worried about how she was going to come across in the movie. How could someone who had never directed a film bring out the performance in her? To her way of thinking, he couldn’t. She felt that Tony would have brought forth qualities from her that Berry wouldn’t be able to access. But, of course, she wasn’t consulted about any of it, anyway. It was foisted upon her. The next thing she knew, her ex-lover was her director, and that was it.

  Rob Cohen was away from Chicago at his father’s funeral in New York at the time of the final confrontation between Berry and Tony. Berry had promised that he would not make any decisions about Tony until Rob returned. So, when Rob heard about what had happened, he telephoned Berry. He recalled:

  When I reached him, he was flying high, just as happy and giddy as can be. “I’m directing this movie, Rob,” he told me. “What do you think of that?” It was a shock, but I understood it. If anyone could get a performance out of Miss Ross, it was going to be Berry, I thought. “I’m sorry, Rob. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he told me, “but I had to do it. I had to fire that son of a bitch. I did it for Diane. I couldn’t let him ruin her movie.”

  On the first day of shooting with Berry as director, exterior scenes were to be filmed. It was a snowy, freezing-cold Chicago day. It had been decided that Tony Richardson’s British crew would stay on with Berry for the rest of the shooting—they all called him gov’nor—after Berry agreed to pay off Tony’s contract. They were all busily preparing for the scene, setting up the equipment. Meanwhile Diana watched Berry with a critical expression as he coached the actor he’d hired to play the rapist.

  “Okay, let’s get started,” Berry ordered the cast and crew.

  No one budged.

  “I said, c’mon, let’s do it!” Berry shouted.

  Again, everyone ignored him. Finally Shelly Berger, one of Gordy’s top executives, leaned over to Berry and said, “You gotta say ‘Action!’”

  Berry laughed. “Ac-shun!” he bellowed, drawing out the word with a wide grin. With that, everyone fell into place.

  After the scene was played successfully, there was plenty of applause and enthusiasm for the new director of Mahogany on his first day on the job. As everyone milled about, laughing and slapping each other on the back, no one seemed to realize that the cameras were still rolling. Again, Shelly leaned over to Berry again. “It might be nice, Berry, if you said ‘Cut!’ right about now.” Berry’s mouth fell open. “You mean they’re still rolling?” he asked. “Cut! Cut! Cut!” he shouted as everyone cheered.

  Indeed, everyone seemed to be happy now, with the exception of one woman: Miss Ross. In her view, Berry had once again found a way to control her. He had invaded the one creative area of her life which she had thought of as her own. Her last bit of freedom, gone.

  Diana slaps Berry

  Diana Ross, wearing a full-length, off-the-shoulder mauve gown and holding a matching marabou-feather muff, was precariously posed on the edge of an ornate baroque fountain atop the Janiculum hill, one of Rome’s most spectacular attractions. The Mahogany company had begun work in this location on 13 January 1975

  “Ac-shun!” Berry Gordy shouted through a bullhorn.

  On cue, Anthony Perkins put his hand on Diana’s waist and gently pushed. She fell backwards into the freezing pool and proceeded to thrash about in the water, all the while screaming at him at the top of her lungs.

  “Cut!” Berry commanded. “Okay. One more time, Diane.”

  “What?” she asked unbelieving. She was standing in the water, soaking wet and shivering, her o
nce-wavy wig hanging loosely in front of her face, her mascara streaming down her cheeks.

  “I said one more time,” Berry blithely repeated.

  “Enough is enough,” Diana announced as she climbed out of the pool of water. This had been the sixth take. As far as she was concerned, she had been dunked, dried off, changed and dunked again for the last time. She whipped a towel out of the hand of an assistant and stormed off the set muttering angrily.

  “So, you think we got a good take in there somewhere?” Berry asked one of his aides. He was totally oblivious to his star’s fury.

  “Certainly hope so, gov’nor, because she isn’t doing another.”

  “Oh, she’ll do another—if I tell her to,” Berry said. He stepped down from his high director’s chair and ran after her, calling her nickname. “Black! Hey, Black!”

  The first weeks of the Mahogany shoot had been a transforming experience for Diana. Tony Richardson was the kind of director who believed in building the confidence of his actors on set. He was also a genuine fan of Diana’s acting style. When the two worked together, each good moment of her previous take was applauded, and the adjustments he asked her to make were gently presented as suggestions. She felt like the Oscar-nominated actress she was with Richardson at her side. Now, with Berry directing, Diana had something specific with which to contrast Gordy’s style. His interest in and need to affect every glance and gesture of hers made her feel that he had no respect for her as an actress. Whereas Tony had treated her as a peer, it was as if Berry treated her as a puppet.

  From the beginning, when the Motown crew arrived in Spoleto, north of Rome, it was obvious that Diana was miserable. In fact, she could barely look at Berry. He had taken this thing she loved so much—acting—and turned it into something she loathed by micromanaging it as he did everything else. There were other problems, too. “The business of her designing the wardrobe hadn’t been such a good idea,” says Neil Hartley. “It added a ton of pressure on her. She was going crazy with that job, and everyone knew it. She made sure everyone knew it.”

  Another person who worked on the film’s production put it this way:

  She was not always kind to people. Some of the seamstresses and others making that wardrobe began to dislike her. She could be a real screamer, Miss Ross, and the pitch of her voice could cut right through you. As a result of the stress she was under, her acting suffered. “Who had the brilliant idea of letting her design all of this stuff?” Berry wanted to know. Of course, it had been Rob [Cohen]. So there was some tension about that, too.

  Making matters worse, at the end of January 1975 Berry’s beloved mother, Bertha, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Berry had to leave Rome for Los Angeles. He was at his mother’s side in the hospital when she died. Many of the Motowners, including Diana and Billy Dee, attended the funeral. When Berry returned to Italy he brought along his grieving father, Berry Sr., who had recently had a leg amputated because of an illness.

  A couple of days after the services—in the second week of February—work resumed on Mahogany. By this time, matters between Diana and Berry seemed even worse, if that was possible. Everyone was on edge, and partly because of a personal irony. Diana was a couple of months pregnant at this time with her second child from Bob Ellis Silberstein, though not yet showing. Meanwhile, Berry’s present girlfriend, Nancy Leviska—also in Rome with him—was pregnant with their first child. The stunning and blonde Leviska was a Motown employee who held a number of jobs at the company, including the writing and editing of the company’s in-house newsletter, Commotion. The crew was well aware of the production’s double pregnancies, which only served to make things even tenser.

  Bob Silberstein stayed with Diana for much of the filming in Europe, and was well liked by the crew. “He was a very attractive and very nice fellow,” Neil Hartley said. “I liked him. But he had his hands full with her, poor guy.”

  Indeed, Diana and her husband still didn’t seem particularly happy. She knew how to hide her feelings from the world; she’d been doing it for a long time. Bob, though, was not as skilled at it. When he was in a dark mood, it showed. His friends said they didn’t know what his life was like with Diana, especially given Berry’s ongoing influence on her. To stay busy, he immersed himself in his work as a publicist; he had taken the less “ethnic” surname Ellis when he began working in that capacity and was now known simply as Bob Ellis. Still, there were other problems. One big one had to do with Diana’s in-laws, especially her mother-in-law, a Jewish woman who lived in Long Branch, New Jersey. Suffice it to say, she did not approve of Diana and gave her a hard time over the years. In fact, Diana would say that Bob’s mom was the only woman who had ever intimidated her, so she must have been formidable. There’s not a lot known about the situation, just that it existed for years and that no matter what Diana did she could not work it out.

  By the end of the movie’s production, Diana was working with a queasy stomach and a hot temper. One particular day, the script called for her to run up and down the Spanish Steps, all the while shooing away pigeons. After about a dozen takes, she’d had it with that particular scene. “Goddamnit, Berry. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No, Diane, I gotta—”

  “You got to do nothing because I’m finished!” she said angrily. She smacked a pigeon away from her with the back of her hand. “I’m going home.” Everyone on the crew held his breath, waiting to see what was going to happen next. Some began to feel these violent scenes between Diana and Berry were even better than what was being filmed between her and Billy Dee Williams for the movie.

  “Like hell you are,” Berry snapped at her. He got down from his director’s chair. “Now listen, Diane,” he began, trying to hold it together but losing it, fast. “I want you to get back up those stairs and—”

  Before Berry could even finish his sentence, Diana hauled off with everything she had in her and slapped him right across the face. There was a loud smacking sound. His sunglasses flew into the air.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” he asked, flustered. “What the hell is going on with you?”

  “I hate you. I hate you,” she screamed. “That’s what the hell is going on.”

  With that, she ran off the set. Four assistants trailed behind her, nervously asking what they could do to help. Diana threw her pearl-and-gold button earrings at them. “Just leave me alone,” she shouted at them. Then she stepped into her trailer and slammed the door behind her. “You! Pack my makeup,” she screamed at someone inside the trailer. “I’m getting out of here.”

  Back at the set, the crew and other actors squirmed in embarrassment. Berry was as stunned as he was humiliated. He simply couldn’t believe she would do that to him, and in front of everyone.

  “Does this mean we’re done, gov’nor?” someone asked.

  “I think so,” Berry said, rubbing his sore cheek. He had blood on the bridge of his nose. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. He headed to her trailer. “But, look,” he added. “If I don’t come out in ten minutes, send someone in to save me.” His pride may have taken a hit, but his humor was obviously still intact.

  According to what Berry later recalled, by the time he got into her trailer, Diana was throwing clothes all over the place, and some were even ending up in her three open suitcases. “Okay, let’s try to figure this thing out, Black,” Berry said.

  “I already have it figured out,” she snapped. “I’m leaving. Rhonda has a fever at home and I’m going to be with her, and that’s that.”

  “Please, you can’t do this. I just need you for one more day, I promise. One more day.”

  “No!”

  What was happening? Berry always used to be able to reason with Diana. But no more. He became upset. “Listen, I have millions wrapped up in this goddamn movie, Diane,” he said, according to his memory. “You can not do this to me. Please. If you leave now, you should know that I will never, ever, do another movie with you.”

  “Is that a threat?” she aske
d, now facing him with hard eyes.

  “How can I ever trust you again with my money if you leave now?” Berry continued. “Don’t do this to me,” he said, struggling to soften his tone a bit. “Don’t do this to us. We’ve been through too much, Diane. Look at me,” he said, trying to make eye contact with her. “It’s me. Berry.”

  With that, she closed the three suitcases in rapid succession—snap! snap! snap! “You over there,” she said to someone else in the trailer, “get these to my villa. Now.” Then, without so much as a look back at her mentor, Diana stormed out of the trailer. As she walked off the set, she must have known that she was running away—away from the turmoil that Berry had caused within her, away from the disagreeable person she had become while trying to fight his hold over her. But, she also knew she was running away from the man who had made Diana Ross … Diana Ross. With that fact in mind, she had to know that this was a risky move.*

  “Forget Diana”

  In September 1975, “Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To?)” was released. Prior to its release Berry Gordy and Michael Masser, who also composed the soundtrack to the film, argued over the mix—the actual sound of the recording. Berry wanted one version released, Michael another. As a last resort to get his way, Michael sneaked into the recording studio and erased a portion of the version Berry preferred, thereby causing his (Masser’s) version to actually be released. It was a clever trick on Michael’s part, and Berry wasn’t pleased about it at the time. Since then, he’s learned to laugh about it, especially since Michael’s version went straight to number one on the pop charts. It remains one of Diana Ross’s most popular songs. Her performance on it was imaginative and compelling and set the stage beautifully for the release of the movie.

  Mahogany finally opened in New York in September … to a lukewarm reception. In fact, the advance trade reviews for the film were dreadful, so much so that they caused tension for everyone at Motown. When Time magazine accused Berry of “squandering one of America’s most natural resources: Diana Ross” all hell broke loose.