Diana Ross: A Biography

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Diana needed a way out of this imbroglio, and quickly. Surely her image and reputation was worth a lot more than a quarter of a million dollars. Would she be willing to hand over a check for $250,000 to finally put an end to her humiliation? She didn’t have much choice. Either she did so or she would have to live with her new reputation as the first star to ever cheat the children of New York out of a park. The next day, Diana held a press conference at City Hall and handed the mayor a check for the full amount. He kissed her on the cheek and she forced a smile. Photographers snapped pictures and reporters asked questions such as, “Where did the money come from, Miss Ross?” She said that the check was “from my own earnings. We all got rained on. But, this is for the kids. It’s not for anyone but the children of New York. All I wanted was the park.”

  Indeed, today there is a small children’s park on the corner of 81st Street and Central Park West, in Manhattan. A varnished, gold-plated plaque on a block of wood states: “The restoration of this playground for the children of New York City has been made possible through the generosity of the Diana Ross Foundation.”

  Looking back on it now, the Central Park experience was more than just a train wreck for Diana Ross, however. Subsequent bad press aside, Diana would later tell confidantes that she sensed that the memory of her having braved the elements to entertain her fans would long outlive the local controversy about the shows’ financing. Years later, that has proven to be true. The image of her in her orange cape in gale force winds while she performs an unforgettable arrangement of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” is the most commonly recalled aspect of that event, and is symbolic as well. Had Berry Gordy been managing Diana at that time, he almost certainly would have handled things differently. He was protective to a fault, of both her persona and the woman herself. However, Berry wasn’t there to make it all better, to shield her from calamity … and perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing, after all. As a result of his absence, Diana was exposed to the world as a vulnerable and fallible yet still unstoppable woman.

  After the first of the two concerts, as Diana stepped over the dangerous puddles with shorting-out power cables, she held a souvenir booklet over her head to shield her from the rain. She then jumped onto her bodyguard Armando’s shoulders and rode him piggyback in search of her hired car—which had somehow got lost in all of the chaos. Under ordinary circumstances, if Miss Ross’s chauffeur had not been where he was supposed to be to whisk her away after an important concert, she would have been quite upset. But not on this night. “I’ll just catch a cab,” she joked. “After this day, it’s no big deal that something else has gone wrong, is it?”

  Still on Armando’s shoulders, Diana was then carried to the street so that he could hail a taxicab for her. Before getting into the vehicle, she turned her head to the sky, letting the water once again pelt her face. As she stood there taking in the moment, she was instantly surrounded by a large group of fans, all smiling at her, wanting to shake her hand and congratulate her for a job well done. She signed a few autographs and posed for a couple of photos. Then she got into the cab and the vehicle drove off. If she had turned around, she would have seen the fans, now joined by even more people, waving her off into the night.

  It’s interesting that Diana Ross would later say that she felt closer to her public after that night in the rain, despite the controversy that would follow it. Perhaps it wasn’t just the unusual circumstances that had made her feel that her public was now somehow more intimately involved in her life. Maybe it was the fact that something which had separated her from them for so long, was now gone—Berry Gordy.

  Classic “Miss Ross”

  There is a lot of folklore surrounding Diana Ross and her reputation as a self-important show business diva. There’s also a lot of truth to it. People who know her well say that Diana would today, at the age of sixty-three, readily admit that when she was younger there were times when she was quite difficult to people, and even unkind to them. Taking it a step further, she still has those moments today. She remains a passionate, expressive and unpredictable woman, and that hasn’t changed with the passing of the years even though she is now much more conscious of the way she treats people. Of course, most observers have been aware of her reputation for years. It’s what the “Miss Ross” legend is all about, after all—that maddening yet intriguing part of her personality that has to do with her sometimes self-involved, capricious and impulsive nature. Diana is not the first celebrity to be temperamental and unreasonable and she certainly won’t be the last—but, arguably, few have been better at it.

  In the 1960s and 1970s, when Diana was at Motown, the company protected her image at all costs. Though she certainly had her moments, the public didn’t really know about them. Whether it was the tossing of a drink in someone’s face or some other surprising behavior, the company always managed to keep any indiscretions made by Diana quiet in order to protect her image. She was, after all, Motown’s greatest asset. Berry understood that along with Diana’s drive for perfection came a flip side that had to do not only with her temperament but also with her vast insecurities, and that if he wanted to exploit the talent, he had to put up with the personality. When Suzanne dePasse was asked on a talk show who “the biggest pain in the neck has been” in her career, it didn’t take her long to answer. “I was thinking about another part of the anatomy,” she quipped, “but as long as we’re talking about pains, I’d have to say, pound for pound, Diana Ross.” And that was Ross’s best friend at the time!

  After Diana and Berry parted ways, a few things occurred that would leave her vulnerable to public exposure. First of all, she was on her own and there was no one to advise her on how some of her decisions might play in the public forum, how some of her actions might be viewed. It’s interesting that when she left Motown and moved to the East Coast, she really did cut her ties with just about everyone she ever knew in her former life. As she unabashedly explained in Secrets of a Sparrow, “When I initially moved to New York, it was a time of letting go of loose ties. Sadly, this included friends and people I loved, especially the people who had supported me in my career and helped me build my wonderful life. But, I had to let go. It was time for me to move on from them, and I found this tremendously painful.” Some of those people, like Suzanne dePasse, may have been able to assist her in making certain decisions, but at this stage of her life—and really, from this point onward, all the way to the present—she did not want such assistance. In her quest for independence, she wanted to rely only on herself. It was as if she was so afraid her foundation might be shaken if an important person left her side, that the only way to avoid such turmoil was for her to leave first.

  Another consequence of leaving Motown was that she immediately felt under tremendous pressure to prove herself. Just as some thought she might not make it as a solo artist or as an actress, there was a sense in the show business community that she would all but ruin herself once away from Motown. She wasn’t about to let them be proved right and, in her mission to make sure everything around her was perfect, she would often be less than ideal in her behavior toward others. She would be the first to admit that when she feels stressed and anxious, she can lash out. Again, in Secrets of a Sparrow, she wrote of the nerve-racking preparation during the afternoon of the Central Park concert. “I found myself yelling at the wardrobe girl for something quite trivial, like the lipsticks or the Q-tips not being in their designated places,” she recalled. “I don’t want to have to search for anything. I want to just reach out and know exactly where it all is: my lipstick, the coffee, the sugar, whatever I need.” Written like a true diva …

  In 1983, with the pair of Central Park concerts behind her, Diana embarked on a lengthy worldwide tour, mostly one-nighters. The park concerts had been free, but now she was back on the road and making at least $220,000 per performance. “One requirement,” said John Mackey, who worked for Ross through Loeb and Loeb, the law firm that represents her, “was that $100,000—half her f
ee—was to be paid by cashier check during intermission. The suggestion was that if she didn’t get it, she wouldn’t go back out for the rest of the show. It always struck me as funny that people thought the intermission was just to give them a chance to go to the bathroom, when actually it was to give Diana a chance to get paid. Never once, to my knowledge, did she not get the money and have to walk off the show.”

  During her 1980s tours, Diana’s accommodation was—as it always still is—first class. When promoter Ronald Mayes was trying to book her for a San Francisco engagement, “The Presidential Suite in which Miss Ross will be booked will be stocked with whatever Miss Ross requests (VCR, stereo, records, spirits, food, etc.). Her floor will have limited access and all charges outside of the incidentals will be billed to me.” Often, though, Diana asked that the dressing-room facilities be totally redecorated for her appearance. When she appeared at the Five Seasons Center for a one-nighter in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a waiting room and three adjoining dressing rooms had to be repainted and re-carpeted for her. David Pisha, the manager of the facility, said that “Miss Ross” asked for earth-tone colors to be used in the new decorating scheme. “She asked that it be made to look like a star’s dressing room.”

  Sometimes, if things were not going well, Diana could lose her cool while on stage. During her European tour (in the summer months of 1982) things got off to a rocky start at the Wembley Arena in London. The sound system was not up to Diana’s standards. In front of 9,000 people, Diana stopped the show and began shouting at the sound crew. “What’s wrong with you people?” she screamed. “I have just about had it with you!” Then, she actually had a tantrum and knocked one of the sound monitors off the stage with a kick one reporter later said was “worthy of Pelé.” People were stunned; an unexpected intermission was called. The next day, the British press panned Diana. “It was the shoddiest outburst of show business tantrums I have ever seen,” wrote Peter Hold for the Evening Standard. Another critic wrote that she “spent far too long spitting and snarling like a rabid kitten.” A couple of days later, Diana held a press conference to, much to her credit, apologize. “I think I handled it badly,” she said, “because I got uptight. I wanted it to be perfect. I’m not perfect. I’m normal.”

  Most of the time, Diana’s emotional outbursts were about things that really didn’t matter much to anyone but her. Occasionally, though, she would go too far and innocent people would get caught in the crossfire of impulsive decisions. For instance, it was on 17 October 1983 that Diana sat down to compose what quickly became known among her circle as “the letter.” Typed on “Diana Ross” stationery (21 East 63rd Street, New York, New York), it read:

  To Whom It May Concern:

  The Following People are no longer in my employment: [Eight names were listed]

  If I let an employee go, it’s because either their work or their personal habits are not acceptable to me. I do not recommend these people. In fact, if you hear from these people, and they use my name as a reference, I wish to be contacted.

  Diana Ross

  She signed her name in big, sprawling and determined letters.

  It isn’t uncommon in show business for an employer to issue a press release announcing that an employee has left the company. However, it is extremely unusual and, arguably, unethical for an employer to circulate a letter that criticizes former staff members’ “personal habits,” especially if her opinion was not solicited. One person who worked for RTC at the time explained:

  A story about Miss Ross that she didn’t like but which was nonetheless true was leaked from the office. When she heard about it, she became upset. She called each of her employees into her office to try to determine the identity of the snitch. No luck. No one would confess. So Miss Ross decided that they would all be punished. She fired every one of them. Suddenly, she had no staff.

  Another explanation from a former RTC staff member has it that Diana discovered that someone in her employ embezzled money from her and, since she couldn’t figure out who had done it, she apparently fired everyone. As stated earlier, in 1981, an accountant had embezzled money from her right after she left Motown. Caught and tried, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced. She had a difficult time getting over the matter, and was very sensitive to money matters at RTC.

  Whatever the circumstances, the way Diana spread the word about her former staff was particularly upsetting to Gail Davis—who wasn’t even working for Diana when the incident occurred at RTC that precipitated the firings. Despite that, Davis, who had worked in the entertainment business for many years before becoming Diana’s administrative assistant, was one of the former Ross employees listed in the letter. According to a lawyer she retained after the letter was circulated, she had resigned—was not fired—nearly a year earlier in November 1982. She had been under the impression that she left on good terms. Still, when she left to work for David Bowie, she was glad to go. “She had a temper,” Davis said of Diana years later. “You never knew when, at whom or why she’d lash out.” Based on the reaction Davis says she got from the letter, Diana had apparently sent out hundreds of copies. Davis filed a libel suit against Ross seeking millions. Then, another former employee also on the list—Carol Aquisto—did the same thing. Both cases were settled in June 1986, likely costing Diana some money.

  For obvious reasons, most of Diana Ross’s former employees are not eager to discuss her or their work at RTC without a promise of anonymity. She asks staff to sign a confidentiality agreement designed by lawyers to prevent disgruntled employees from discussing her after they are long gone from her life—if they do they will be liable for monetary damages to her. Back in the 1980s, when her attorneys came up with this tactic, it was unheard-of. In fact, back then it wasn’t even called a confidentiality agreement; it was called a secrecy agreement. Today, of course, it is a common procedure for celebrities to require employees to sign such documents. Madonna, Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman and the rest who customarily make this request have Miss Ross to thank for the protection of their secrets because she’s the one who pioneered the paperwork.

  While Diana’s employees became used to her, others outside the circle were sometimes perplexed. A backstage visitor during a Las Vegas engagement recalled:

  I learned that when she wants to turn someone off, she will do so and seemingly never give that person a second thought. We were sitting together and the phone rang. One of Diana’s staff came over and told her that so-and-so was on the line.

  “Hang up,” Diana said, very calmly.

  “But Miss Ross, he wants to know if—”

  “Hang up,” Diana repeated, this time curtly.

  So without saying another word, the aide went to the phone and hung it up. Diana then continued her conversation as if nothing strange had just occurred.

  Then, of course, there is the long-rumored Diana Ross protocol having to do with the royal notion that she not be spoken to unless she speaks first. In fact, when Diana is conducting business in lawyers’ or agents’ offices, employees are usually told in advance that they should not approach her or talk to her unless she makes the first move toward them. Of course, as earlier stated, she was then to be addressed only as “Miss Ross.” This seems understandable. Why should she have to speak to fascinated people when she’s just trying to pass through and do business in the middle of a busy day? “It’s a little frightening, though,” said John Mackey, “to get that memo that says, ‘All hallways must be cleared and everyone is to go into his office and close the door.’”

  God forbid you should catch yourself accidentally in the hallway when she was walking through. You didn’t know what to do, stand still, run like mad, jump out the window or … what!? She would come up to the twenty-third floor using the freight elevator so that she didn’t have to be exposed to people coming up from the lobby. Honestly, I thought maybe she was people-phobic. It was a strange dichotomy that this woman who generally got along so well with her public was so afraid to be exp
osed to them during the workday … or maybe just sick of being recognized. I remember circling the block with her countless times in New York in front of the Sherry Netherland where she had a residence. She would say, “There are too many people in front of the building for me to get out of the car. Keep circling and let’s see if they disperse.”

  There is also the other infamous regulation, which is to “avert the eyes” if an employee accidentally makes eye contact with Diana. This is a preposterous demand many celebrities make, even today—they don’t want to be gaped at when they are in public. However, when one is in show business, part of the trade-off for making millions of dollars from the public’s support is, arguably, that those same people get to stare at you if they want to do so. Still, in the workplace, it must be maddening. According to John Mackey, “avert the eyes” soon became a catchphrase to announce Diana’s arrival. The staffers would whisper to one another, “Avert the eyes,” and everyone would then look downward, knowing that you-know-who had just walked into the room. Diana long ago abandoned this absurdity; it was definitely a phase best relegated to the 1980s.

  “What’s the biggest misconception about you?” Barbara Walters once asked Diana during a televised interview.

  “That I’m a bitch,” Diana said. “I mean, if people think that.”

  Barbara nodded her head, seeming to know what the answer was to be to the question. “Now why do they think that?”