Diana Ross: A Biography

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  As much as Diana enjoys publicity, she does prefer that it be limited to her public persona. She doesn’t appreciate documentation of her life and career unless it’s with her approval. Her life experiences might make for an interesting story, but she, like most celebrities, prefers that if it can’t be told from her viewpoint and with her authorization, that it not be told at all. Diana once recalled her reaction when a girl giving her a massage happened to say, “Gosh, what a great story your life is going to be!” Diana snapped at her, saying, “This is my life; this is not a [expletive] story.” Upon reading that comment, one is forced to wonder if Diana ever thought about how Billie Holiday might have viewed Lady Sings the Blues with all of its deliberate inaccuracies—the combining of all of her relationships into one person, Louis McKay; the creation of a character called Piano Man, in whom she could confide, etc.

  A year after Dreamgirls opened, this author would find himself at cross-purposes with Diana when I was contracted to write the first of my two previous books about her, this one to be published by Doubleday. Jackie Kennedy Onassis, at the time an editor at Doubleday, had originally been interested in Diana’s autobiography, mostly because of the success of Dreamgirls. Diana was flattered, but the idea of dredging up her past so soon after leaving Motown didn’t really appeal to her. She was also tired of all of the comparisons in the press between her life and the play, and she just wasn’t in the mood to address any of it. Therefore, she declined the offer, and that’s when I was contracted to write my first book, Diana—A Celebration of Her Life and Career. Perhaps not surprisingly, when I wrote to Diana to tell her about my endeavor, she wasn’t happy about it. She didn’t contact me, though. She went straight to Jackie and asked for a meeting.

  Diana and Jackie met at Jackie’s New York office on the morning of 8 February 1983. Diana was joined by Irving “Swifty” Lazar, a high-powered Hollywood literary agent. Two other Doubleday executives were in attendance, one of them being Sam Vaughn, who was Doubleday’s president at the time. Diana explained to Jackie and the others that she definitely was opposed to any book being written about her. “Randy wrote me a letter,” she explained, “and he actually said he hoped I would be happy about the book. And he also said he would even send me material to read in advance to make sure it was accurate. Well, I was very put off by that.”

  “But why?” Jackie wanted to know.

  Swifty answered, “Because this guy expects Miss Ross to help him with his book and he didn’t even offer her any money for it. That,” Lazar concluded, “takes a lot of nerve.”

  Diana then said that she had changed her mind and was now re-interested in writing her own story. She suggested that perhaps Doubleday might publish it and cancel the other contract—mine.

  “What kind of book do you have in mind?” Jackie wanted to know, according to the others present.

  “Well, it would be an inspirational book,” Diana explained. “It would be an autobiography, but with no personal details whatsoever.”

  “No personal details whatsoever?” Jackie repeated, looking confused

  “None.”

  Jackie wanted to know what kind of autobiography had “no personal details whatsoever.” Diana explained that she wanted to share her views about life and love, but avoid writing about her experiences at Motown, with Berry, the other Supremes or even her ex-husband, Bob Silberstein.

  “Well, that’s an idea,” Jackie offered. She didn’t sound very encouraging, though. “Perhaps we can talk about it further.”

  The two women then agreed to have lunch later and discuss the matter further.

  “But wait, what about that other book?” Swifty Lazar asked.

  “Oh, we’ll work something out,” Jackie said, turning to Diana. “Don’t you worry about it.”

  In the end, Doubleday decided to reject Diana’s idea and instead continue with my book.

  A couple of days later, I received a telephone call from Swifty Lazar asking if I would meet with him and Diana in his Los Angeles office. Of course I agreed. However, when I got there, I found the esteemed literary agent, one of Diana’s attorneys and a woman from her RTC management firm all looking very grim. If I was going forward with my book, Swifty said, Miss Ross would appreciate it if I avoided certain topics. He motioned to the attorney, who handed me a sheet of Lazar’s stationary with a handwritten list on it that appeared to have been composed just before my arrival. I took a quick look. It said:

  Subjects to Avoid in Taraborelli [sic] book:

  Berry Gordy

  Florence Ballard

  Bob Silberstein

  Anything having to do with Miss Ross’s private life and businesses

  “Great. What’s left?” I asked.

  “Well,” said the woman from RTC, her tone indignant, “we’re certainly not going to sit here and tell you how to write a book, now are we?”

  I thought they must be joking, but no one was smiling let alone laughing.

  “Look,” I said, “maybe Diana Ross and I should discuss this thing.”

  “Absolutely impossible,” said Swifty.

  “Why?”

  He gazed at me through the enormous black-framed glasses for which he was so well known. “Because she’s a very smart woman,” he said, “and she knows that you will then take that conversation and use it in your book.”

  He had me there.

  In the months that followed, I wrote the Diana Ross biography my way and submitted the manuscript to Doubleday. However, unbeknownst to me, Diana, Jackie and Swifty apparently had a secret pact. Jackie agreed to send to Diana my manuscript for her approval. When I received it back a couple of months later, it was severely edited with the opinion that it had been too candid. I hasten to add that I don’t know that it was Diana who had edited it. I don’t know for certain that she read it, or even received it. I only know that it was sent to her—this based on correspondence given to me years later when I was researching a book about Jackie. At first, I was dismayed and felt betrayed. However, my feeling now, almost twenty-five years later, is that if Diana Ross was able to find a way to control my book without me knowing about it, more power to her. It was about her, after all, her life and times—and she certainly had a right to at least try to have her way with it.

  A week or so after Diana had that first meeting with Jackie, she received a telephone call from Suzanne dePasse. Again, she would be confronted with her past: dePasse had just been hired as executive producer of an NBC television special to be called Motown 25—Yesterday, Today, Forever. Its intention was to commemorate the label’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Her goal was to bring together as many of the former Motown artists as possible to celebrate the company’s history and its founder, Berry Gordy Jr.

  It had actually been twenty-four years since Berry founded Motown. Over the intervening years, however, most of the Motown stars had left the fold—some of them angry and disappointed. Martha and the Vandellas, the Temptations, the Four Tops, the Miracles, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Marvelettes, Michael Jackson, the Jackson 5, Cindy Birdsong and even Mary Wilson were all gone from the label. Many of these artists had left feeling they were owed money. A number of lawsuits were filed. A common complaint was also Berry’s attentiveness to Diana. Some of the singers felt that they and their careers had been neglected, that he only cared about pleasing Diana and fulfilling his aspirations for her. Ironically enough, even Diana was gone now. Suzanne dePasse’s challenge, then, was to convince the artists with axes to grind to put away their hatchets for just one night and celebrate. Even Suzanne had to later admit she’d done “so much begging, I had scabs on my knees.” It’s not that these disgruntled artists didn’t appreciate what Berry had done for them; however, they were now being asked to isolate a certain happy time of their youths from the crushing disappointments and frustrations of the much more recent past. It was like asking children to attend their father’s birthday party, despite the fact that they had reservations about him. Indeed, dePasse, in her role
as no-nonsense matriarch, may as well have said to the disgruntled Motowners, “This is a happy occasion. So be happy. Damn it.”

  While most could do it, a few just weren’t open to the idea. When Diana was contacted she wasn’t sure what to do about the offer. She was probably still smarting from what she viewed as the Dreamgirls exploitation and also Doubleday’s decision not to go forward with her autobiography the way she had envisioned it. Now this. Was she going to be a producer of the Motown special, or have some creative involvement in it, or make some significant money from it? No. Was it going to be built around her and put forth the company’s relationship with her as a shining moment in its history? Yes. Was it also going to put her into the position of having to credit Berry for everything she’d done in her career? Probably. Of course, she recognized that Berry and company were largely responsible for her success. But hadn’t she credited him enough over the years? How much was too much? Also, she was with RCA now and she wanted to look to the future, not the past—and she wanted her public to do the same. Besides, she hadn’t even seen or talked to Berry since the evening she walked out of his den two years earlier, when she told him she was leaving the label.

  Moreover, the good old days may have been just that to a lot of people, but she had to admit to having some conflicting feelings about the past. She was on an Aspen Airways plane flying from Kansas City, Missouri, to Lincoln, Nebraska, for a concert when someone in her organization started playing “I Hear a Symphony” on a cassette player. Though she hummed along, she seemed very sad. “You know, when I think of the past, I love some of the memories,” she told her assistant Michael Browne, “but, then I think, ‘Nothing against Motown but, goddamn, I sure did work my ass off for that company.’ I should be a part owner of Motown by now, if you ask me.”

  Indeed, for many reasons, it wasn’t an easy yes or no as to whether she wanted to appear on Motown 25. Diana was dining in a Los Angeles restaurant when she happened to run into Ralph Seltzer, Gordy’s former head of counsel at Motown and the man who had accompanied her so long ago when she bought her first home. She greeted him warmly and asked if he would be her special guest at the show, should she decide to do it. He declined. He then asked her if she and Berry had resolved their conflicts. She said that they really hadn’t, according to Seltzer’s memory.

  “Actually, he doesn’t even return my telephone calls,” she said. “He’s angry, I guess. I sometimes think he would just as soon not see me there.”

  “Then, why do it at all?”

  “For the others,” she said. “The other artists.”

  “But you know how those people feel about you, Diane,” Ralph said. “There’s a lot of jealousy there.”

  “I know,” she agreed. “I was never very popular with some of them, was I?”

  Ralph had certainly known about the tension Diana’s departure from the Supremes and then from Motown had caused and he tried to comfort her with, “Well, that was a long time ago.” She let that statement hit her. He watched as her wheels turned for a moment. Then, as if a light had switched on, she suddenly made her decision. Yes, she decided on the spot, she would appear on the Motown program, even if her better judgment told her it might not go well for her.

  That night she went back to her suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Bungalow 20. As soon as she got into her room, she got a telephone call from Berry. He truly wanted her to do the show, he said, and he promised she would have a good time reconnecting with those from her past. Whether or not they wanted to admit it, he told her, the other artists had all drawn strength in their lives and careers from her and the example of her success. Without her presence at the show, theirs would mean so much less. So, as he explained, he and she should arrive together—the king and queen of Motown. It was only right and fitting. After all, as he reminded her, “Where Diana Ross goes, so goes Motown.” If she truly did not want to appear, he told her, he would understand. He would be disappointed, but he would understand. However, in his view, she belonged there. She had to agree. She did belong there, and now she knew it. In the end, the fact that Berry personally called her to ask her to go to the show with him meant everything to her. Of course she would do it. For him.

  After Diana’s appearance was confirmed, the reunion of the Supremes had to be arranged. Cindy’s participation would not be a problem, but Mary’s was an issue. She and Berry had recently traded lawsuits over her right to use the name Supremes to promote herself and her nightclub act. In order to settle, Berry offered her a solo recording contract in lieu of the group name. She accepted it. Then, after one record, the company dropped her. It felt to her, as she would write in her book Supreme Faith, “the label had given me a solo deal just to get me to drop my lawsuits against it.” Therefore, by 1983, she wasn’t in a very celebratory mood. When Suzanne tried to persuade her to appear on the show, she got the same reaction she’d got from Diana: ambivalence. Eventually, Mary consented, provided she was given a solo spot singing Barbra Streisand’s “How Lucky Can You Get?” Suzanne agreed at the time, but later changed her mind about it. Then, many of the other artists with their own discontented histories also consented to appear on the show.

  On 25 March 1983, the program was scheduled to tape at the Pasadena Civic Center. At about 5:30 p.m.—half an hour before it was time to let the audience into the theater—Diana arrived to rehearse with her former singing partners, Mary and Cindy. She had gastric flu, she said, and really didn’t look well, even if she was wearing a full-length white mink. She seemed anxious and stressed out. For each former Supreme there was a quick, obligatory hug and a blown kiss. “What have you done to your face?” Diana asked Mary. “You look different,” she said, looking at her with suspicion. “What have you done?” They were not off to a good start, and it would only get worse.

  Suzanne informed Diana that because of the lateness of the hour there was no time for a decent rehearsal. Diana deliberated for a moment and decided: “Well, then, we’ll have to skip the Supremes medley we were going to do. The girls will be happy with ‘Someday We’ll Be Together.’” She motioned to her former singing partners, but didn’t look at them. In her view, she was once again doing what she felt she did best: she was taking charge, handling things. The “girls” didn’t like it, though, and whispered angrily to one another about it. This was not 1967, after all.

  Suzanne and producer Don Mischer explained in great detail to Diana exactly what was expected of her during the show’s finale. She was to introduce all the other acts, bring them onstage and then coax Berry down from the audience. Then, after a haphazard, five-minute rehearsal of “Someday We’ll Be Together,” during which Diana didn’t really acknowledge the presence of either Mary or Cindy on the stage, the three went their separate ways.

  Finally it was showtime; the excited audience began to fill the auditorium. During the course of the night the artists were able to do what many observers thought might be impossible, but was exactly what they’d been doing for most of their lives: they put aside their personal and professional problems in order to perform for an appreciative audience. There were many memorable moments, including musical reunions of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, and hits medleys by the Temptations, the Four Tops and Stevie Wonder. The evening’s most compelling highlight, however, was Michael Jackson’s awe-inspiring, almost surreal performance of “Billie Jean.” In a silvery black jacket and matching baggy tuxedo pants, his imaginative display of theatricals—including the premiere of his famous “Moonwalk” dance—brought the house down. With this performance’s broadcast, much of America would, for the first time, become aware of Jackson’s unique and magnetic stage personality. Berry and some of his family members sat in the balcony and enjoyed every second of it.

  The entire show, though, was really just a buildup to the Supremes’ reunion. Soon, film clips of Diana’s career with the group were being shown in chronology, and her old music being played throughout the auditorium. It was a retr
ospective she’d had nothing to do with and, though laudatory, one had to wonder if it rubbed her the wrong way given her feeling at this time that so many people seemed out to exploit her past.

  When it was time for Diana’s appearance, she entered from a back door of the theater and glided down the center aisle. She wore a short black satin skirt, low-cut silver beaded jacket, rhinestone high-heeled shoes, and a white fox stole slung over her shoulder. Her hair looked uncombed, oddly enough. The audience began to stand and cheer as she started “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” It was obvious, however, that something was very wrong. She seemed disoriented … bewildered … uncomfortable. Not only was red lipstick smeared all over her teeth, her tongue was beet-red from hard sweets she had nervously been eating backstage earlier. She even had a run in her stocking. How, people had to wonder, was it possible that Diana Ross would take the stage on national television with a run in her stocking? Once onstage, she tossed her fur to the floor as she continued singing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”

  “When you get out there, step on that fur!” Richard Pryor told Mary as she waited in the wings. Though he was actually a friend of Diana’s, even Richard couldn’t resist a little dig at her.

  “Yeah, kick that goddamn thing off the stage!” someone else said.

  “If Miss Ross forgets the words to the song, steal the song from her, Mary,” another person hollered.

  Meanwhile, onstage, Diana’s singing was sluggish and off-key. When she started to pay tribute to Berry, she appeared hesitant and unsure of herself. “It’s a strange thing, but Berry has always felt that he’s never been really appreciated,” she said in a halting voice. “I feel a little emotional.” Her eyes filled with tears.