Diana Ross: A Biography

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Michael Browne held his breath. He knew that when Diana got a “great idea,” it was one that was sure to complicate his day.

  “What if we get everyone off this jet?” Diana asked. “Then, we hire another jet. Then, you take all the presents off this jet and you hide them on the other jet while I somehow keep the girls distracted in the airport, though I don’t know how I’ll do it. I’ll figure that out when I get there. Anyway, then we will board this jet again and take off. The other jet will follow us to Las Vegas … and maybe you should go in the other jet with the presents, just to be on the safe side. What if that? Now that sounds like a good plan to me, Michael. In fact, yes. I think that’s what we should do.”

  “Sure, Miss Ross. Two jets. If that’s what you want.”

  She mulled it over. “Well no, forget it,” she decided. “I don’t think it’s fair to ask Steve [Wynn] to pay for another jet just to take our presents to Las Vegas. Or is it? Hmmmm.” She looked at her assistant for an answer, but he was at a loss. “My God, Michael,” she exclaimed. “You know, you really must learn to make a decision. Okay, forget it,” she said. “Let’s just hope the girls don’t find the presents. And next time be more careful, will you? Do you promise?”

  “Yes, Miss Ross. I tried to hide them all, but—”

  “Fine. Whatever …” she said, now eager to let it all go. “Just sit down. So, where’s the Pouilly Fuissé? Let’s have some wine and toast the good life, shall we? Come on. I’m workin’ hard for this jet, so let’s make it worthwhile.”

  During the trip Diana was at ease, sipping her wine, reading business journals and other such publications and sometimes playing with her children. At one point, Michael retired to another area with the chef—all of the meals on the jet were freshly made in the galley by a professional chef who was skilled in the preparation of the finest cuisine. Also, Michael made sure that the hottest Cajun chicken that could be purchased in Harlem was aboard the jet, in case Diana got a craving for it. And Chicken McNuggets for the kids … just in case. He was relaxing, enjoying a smoke with the chef and two cabin stewards, when he heard a voice from behind. “Oooooh! I’m gonna tell.” It was Tracee.

  Today she’s an accomplished comedic actress with her own long-running situation comedy called Girlfriends. But, back in 1983, Tracee was just a precocious nine-year-old with braided hair and round, heavy-rimmed glasses. She was known for carrying a notebook and pencil everywhere she went. If she saw one of Mommy’s functionaries doing something she thought was wrong, she would quickly jot it down and later report it to her mother. Just like mom, she wanted to make sure everything was taken care of, in order. Therefore, everyone had his guard up whenever this tyke was around.

  “Mommy’s not gonna like it at all that you are smoking in here,” she told Michael Browne, her hands on her hips.

  “Tracee, your mommy doesn’t care if I smoke,” he told her.

  “Oh yes, she does,” said Tracee.

  “Then, go on and tell her then,” Michael said. “See if I care.”

  “Ooooooh!” Tracee then took the feared notebook from her pocket and scribbled something onto a page. “You’re really, really gonna get it this time,” she warned him. “Just you wait and see.” She turned, ran down the aisle to her mother’s side and showed her the note. Diana read it and looked up the aisle at Michael and playfully wagged her finger at him. Then she told Tracee to play with her sisters, “and mind your own business, for once.”

  In truth, Diana didn’t care if her employees smoked, even though she had given it up herself in 1977. She had been determined not to be controlled by any vice, she said, so she simply stopped one day, and after many years of smoking. “I’m going to be the first person to stop smoking without a lot of whining and complaining about it,” she said … and she did just that.

  After the Golden Nugget jet made a smooth landing at McCarran airport in Las Vegas, it was greeted by a motorcade of five limousines. Steve Wynn exited from one of the vehicles and ran up to the jet to meet Diana just as she was about to leave the plane. They greeted each other warmly.

  Once at the Nugget Hotel, Diana was ensconced in one of the two VIP suites—eleven opulently appointed, Normandy-styled rooms with stunning city lights views throughout. Diana’s 1,200-thread-count percale sheets were already fitted onto her bed, having been flown in the day before. Whenever possible, she preferred to sleep on her own sheets. She didn’t believe hotel employees changed the sheets on beds when they should, and in fact had a sneaking suspicion that they just switched dirty linen from room to room. “One day, I am going to just stand there and watch and see what they do,” she had said, only half joking, “and I’ll just bet the stack of clean sheets on those little carts of theirs does not go down.” Down the hall, the three Ross offspring also had their own eleven-room suite. Steve Wynn spared no expense when it came to Diana; even her assistant Michael Browne had a limousine at his disposal while in Las Vegas.

  The show the next day was, of course, a smashing success. Dean Martin opened, Frank Sinatra followed, then Diana—all as had been previously arranged. The three entertainers never performed together, though, which may have come as a disappointment to some of the concertgoers. Backstage, there was just a quick moment for Diana to be with Dean and Frank.

  “Come on, Frank. We really should record something together,” Diana told him. She snuggled up to Ol’ Blue Eyes while someone took their picture.

  “Sure, baby,” he said. “One of dem dere Motown hits of yours.”

  She tossed her head back and laughed. “One of dem dere Motown hits,” she repeated, imitating his tough-guy vernacular and cadence.

  He pinched her on the butt. She squealed loudly. Someone else took a picture.

  The next day, Miss Ross and company would take off on Steve Wynn’s private jet, the Nugget DC-9, for two glorious weeks of fun, just as promised: from Las Vegas to Sun Valley to Maui to Detroit to Miami, and then down to St. Martin in the Caribbean. Steve and his wife Elaine would be joining Diana and her children for the Sun Valley part of the trip, along with a gaggle of other close friends.

  As everyone boarded the jet, Diana noticed that Michael Browne seemed a little depressed. He was standing before 500 purple orchids—which had been presented to Diana somewhere along the line—and was trying to figure out how he would find room for them in the aircraft. “You’re missing your mom and dad in San Diego, aren’t you?” she asked, approaching him. One thing about Miss Ross: she knew her employees well, and their family histories, too.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” he admitted.

  “Well, of course you are. It’s Christmas,” she said. “And these are all strangers to you, I know,” she said, motioning to her special passengers. She put her finger to her mouth in thought. “Okay. I have a great idea,” she announced. “What if … ?”

  He held his breath.

  “… you fly to San Diego from here,” she continued, “and surprise your family for Christmas? And take all of these orchids with you … and give them to your mother? How wonderful would that be?”

  He had to smile.

  “Okay! Go, go, go,” she said. “Oh, and if you have to hire a Lear to get there, Michael,” she added as she raced off, “do it! We can afford it now. Okay. Gotta run. Love you. Bye.”

  A death and a new life

  The year 1984 would be a year of transitions—the death of one loved one and the rebirth of another.

  Ernestine Ross hadn’t been feeling well for some time. A private woman who never really complained about her troubles, she didn’t want anyone to know that she’d been ill, even her husband John Jordan. She kept it to herself for as long as possible until, finally, at the end of 1982, her daughters—Diana, Barbara and Rita—began to realize that there was a problem. They insisted that she see a doctor. The eventual diagnosis was shattering: breast cancer. Over the next year and a half, Ernestine would undergo a mastectomy and then chemotherapy. By the fall of 1984, she was losing her fight for life
.

  Diana tried to continue her career as best she could during her mother’s illness. While it’s easy to divide the busy life of a person like Diana Ross into chronological chapters of a book, the truth is that her experiences as a recording artist, entertainer, businesswoman and mother are anything but easily compartmentalized. She is usually involved in so many different life pressures at a time, the only way she is able to juggle it—or, so she has said—is by “careful scheduling.” At this time she was on tour, promoting her latest album for RCA, Swept Away. She was also feeling unhappy about her relationship with RCA. During her Caesar’s Palace engagement in Las Vegas in 1984, she told her backstage visitors how dissatisfied she was with the label. “They don’t listen to me,” she complained. “They don’t care about me.” She said that she wanted the Central Park concerts to be released as a live album, but RCA wouldn’t allow it. It wasn’t a strong enough concert to be put on record, the label executives argued. Diana told one visitor that she was going to try to have it released on the Motown label. When the guest asked how this would be possible when she was now an RCA artist, she rubbed her index finger and her thumb together and said, “It’s all about money.” It never happened, though.

  Also in 1984, another in a long succession of announcements would be made regarding Diana’s pet project, a movie based on the fascinating life of Josephine Baker. Jean Briley, who wrote the screenplay for Gandhi, had apparently been hired to write the script. François Lesterlin, president of Eurocom, announced that he planned to coproduce The Life of Josephine Baker with Diana Ross. But, in the end, this did not pan out for her. It would become one of Diana’s greatest career frustrations that she was never able to mount a film version of Baker’s life. (In 1991, actress Lynn Whitfield would star in a television film biography of Baker, winning an Emmy in the process.) It seemed that the problem for Diana when it came to her film career was that she required control over any vehicle and was simply not willing to compromise that agenda. Also, she wanted to be the star of any film she made. After so many years since Lady Sings the Blues, more than ten at this point, few movie studio executives, if any, would entertain the idea of giving Diana—a woman, a black woman, who had not had recent film success—quite that much power. It was a shame that Diana never seemed quite able to envision herself as a costar or supporting player. Any stubborn streak of hers, though, is really just a consequence of her Motown experience. After Berry, she was determined to never allow herself to be just a puppet in her career … and at any cost.

  In September 1984, Diana was scheduled to perform at Radio City Music Hall—her first appearance in Manhattan since Central Park a year before. The advance ticket sales were a record-breaking $1.7 million for the eleven performances, eclipsing Liberace’s $1.6 million for fourteen. After what had happened in New York around the Central Park shows, she wanted nothing more than to redeem her public image and present a show no one would soon forget. It was impossible, though. With Ernestine so ill in Detroit, there was no way for Diana to totally commit to her work or her audience. However, she would not cancel the engagement either. She felt a responsibility to those who had purchased tickets, and was determined to go on with the show.

  At this time, the extended Ross family was also still busy and thriving. Fred, Diana’s father, was retired and living in the Detroit area; Arthur—T-Boy—was working as a recording engineer and had also made an album for Motown; Margarita—Rita—was a housewife, married and the proprietor of a resale boutique for maternity clothes in Berkley, Michigan; Barbara—Bobbi—had become a doctor of osteopathic medicine, married with five children. She had recently been inducted into the navy reserve as a lieutenant commander, MC (Medical Corps). It was the first such accomplishment for a black woman in the state of Michigan. Wilbert Alex—Chico—had worked as a dancer in Diana’s nightclub act and was trying to get his own career off the ground in Los Angeles. Everyone was involved in Ernestine’s life, and trying to assist her during this difficult time. Today, Diana regrets that she didn’t just cancel her engagement, but at the time she thought she could handle both—perform for her audience and be present for her mom. Therefore, she took the two-and-a-half-hour flight to Detroit to be with Ernestine every day and then, at night, returned to New York—emotionally drained and incredibly sad—so that she could go on stage and be … Diana Ross. Her friends say that she barely got through the engagement. “My life had become a nightmare,” Diana would recall. “I wasn’t completely present for my work or for my mother.” She was so spent, in fact, that her voice was giving out on her during the songs; she required a doctor in attendance backstage for her throat.

  It was understandable to those who knew what was going on in her life that the shows would not be her best. She was distracted, could not remember her lyrics, seemed disconnected from the proceedings. The New York press was merciless in panning her, but there was nothing she could do about it. Her thoughts were with Ernestine. “For two years, Mama suffered terribly,” she would later recall. “It seems unfair that she should have left this life in such pain. It was fast and traumatic for all of us. We could see that she was trying to hold onto life, but we could also see that the life was slowly leaving her.”

  Ernestine Ross Jordan was sixty-eight when she died of cancer at her home in suburban Southfield, near Detroit, on 9 October 1984. Services were held the next day at St. Andrew’s Catholic Church at Wayne State University. Diana’s talented background singers Sharon Wade and Robert Glenn sang hymns at the services. Diana’s daughter Rhonda wrote a touching biography of her grandmother that was distributed to the mourners at the funeral. “I remember that when we walked out of the church, the paparazzi were all on top of us,” Rhonda recalls. “We had tears streaming down our faces and they wouldn’t leave us alone. I remember thinking, ‘God, that’s really mean. Why can’t they just leave us alone?’”

  It would take many years for Diana to cope with the loss of her mother. “I think it’s safe to say that she never really accepted it,” says her sister Rita. “Like the rest of us, she just learned to live with it. But accept it? No. Our mother was her biggest fan and supporter, the one person, I think, who knew Diane better than anyone else and who was totally accepting of her. We all miss her, of course. But her death, I think, hit Diane especially hard.”

  “Toward the end, I had a conversation with Ernestine that was very emotional but very much like her,” said Mabel Givens.

  “I’m in the winter of my life now,” she told me. “I never expected this to happen to me,” she said. “I, somehow, just never expected to get old and die. Isn’t that funny?” she asked. “Now that it seems to be happening,” she said, “how proud I am to leave behind such wonderful children.” She said that she told the girls—Barbara, Diana and Rita—that many things change as a woman ages, but one thing that always remains is character. “I think all of my children have good character, but my girls have the most,” she told me. “They’re wise old souls. They will live good lives … with character.”

  At about the same time as Ernestine’s illness and death, Diana made a life-changing and maybe character-defining decision about Rhonda. At this time, Rhonda was thirteen, Tracee eleven, and Chudney nine. It was time, she decided, that her eldest daughter knew the truth about her paternity.

  For years, Rhonda had suspected that something was being kept from her, though she couldn’t imagine, she now says, what it was. She did know, however, that she looked nothing like her sisters, and it perplexed her. Whereas Tracee and Chudney were tall, willowy and light-skinned—like their father Bob Ellis Silberstein—Rhonda was short and dark—like Berry. Once, in London, she began to complain to her mother about her height, “My father is six feet tall,” she said, speaking of Bob. “Shouldn’t I be growing soon?” It wasn’t the first time Diana had heard this question from Rhonda. In fact, it had become a running theme, the matter of her height. The explanation Diana had been giving her daughter for so many years—“Don’t worry, you’ll grow”�
��seemed to no longer satisfy her. Finally, she just blew up at her. “You’re short, all right!” she told her. “So deal with it.” She later felt badly about the exchange. One thing holding her back from telling her daughter the truth was that she knew that her ex-husband Bob loved Rhonda so much. He had raised her, after all. It was Bob, not Berry, who had cared for her when she was ill, who had shared special moments at holidays and birthdays, who had disciplined her, supported her. It was even Bob’s name on Rhonda’s birth certificate. In fact, when Rhonda was born, Diana and Bob sent out announcements to all of their friends. For all intents and purposes, Bob really was Rhonda’s father. “But I couldn’t lie about it any longer,” Diana would explain years later. “I just wouldn’t.”

  Diana gave some hints as to why she finally revealed the truth and it seems to have had to do with Ernestine. “I never knew what her sorrows and pains might have been,” Diana once remarked of Ernestine. “She didn’t reveal much of her problems to me.” Indeed, Ernestine’s life had ended without her telling Diana, or possibly anyone else for that matter, what specifically went on between her and Fred Ross. “I wished I had asked her more questions,” Diana would say. Because Diana could never muster the courage to ask her mother and also simply didn’t want to upset her, those kinds of questions would have to go unanswered. People very close to Diana say that her mother’s passing left her feeling as though her own big secret simply had to be revealed. After all, if she were to die suddenly, Rhonda may never learn the truth. Even if the girl did somehow eventually find out, without her mother’s explanation there would always be questions about the circumstances of her conception and birth. Diana wanted to present the facts to Rhonda herself, while she had the chance. “With Ernestine gone, life was seeming more finite to Diana,” explained one of her relatives, “and she wanted her daughter to know that she came into this world the product of two people who loved each other.”