Diana Ross: A Biography

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Of course, she hopes to one day find love again, such as she had with Berry, Bob and Arne. After all, as she has put it, “I’ve had this very, very romantic, interesting life.” However, those who know her best say that she is now planning her life around the idea that she may not find a suitable partner after all. She says that she’s fine with being alone, but her friends don’t really believe it. They think she’s disappointed by the revelation that she may grow old without a mate, but she says she can live with it as long as she knows she has her family. Of course, Ernestine Ross found love and married a second time when she was sixty, so that has to give her daughter Diana at least some hope.

  As of this writing, Diana is sixty-three—but it doesn’t overstate it to say that she looks about twenty years younger. Certainly, there are aspects of her life that have not worked out as she probably would have hoped when she was a youngster. She became famous, yes, one of the greatest diva stars of all time. In some respects, that wasn’t much of a surprise. She worked hard, and even if deep down inside she sometimes felt undeserving of the acclamation, she was always able to compose herself and act the part on days when she was feeling miscast in it.

  However, there were surprises along the way, both professionally and personally, for Diana Ross. She found that commercial success does not last forever—all pop stars have a certain shelf life. She also found that she was never able to shake the sense of being alone, no matter how surrounded she was by loved ones. It was as if she were only truly able to connect with people while onstage. Who knows why? Does it have to do with her father and the fact that he never really acknowledged her achievements? Does it have to do with Berry Gordy isolating her from her peers when she was young? The fact that she never learned how to communicate with people who viewed her as a threat? Does it have to do with being singled out as the star of the Supremes? The fact that she couldn’t figure out how to get along with two childhood friends, never really understanding their emotional connection to her? She’s still working on it. Often, there are no easy answers. Sometimes, one just has to go forth and live life to its fullest and not spend an inordinate amount of time asking “Why?”

  Truly, for Diana, there must sometimes have seemed to be no rhyme or reason to certain sadnesses of recent years: Chico’s problems, T-Boy’s murder, her DUI, Arne’s accidental death. No doubt it would have been so much easier for her if Ernestine had been at her side through it all, but she too was gone. “It’s just life, I think,” Diana has concluded in trying to sort it all out. “The process of life. I don’t know. I could sit here just asking why, but it’s like people asking why they got sick. Who knows why? I just don’t think you can avoid suffering. But with me it wasn’t just the bad things that happened; it’s that they happened all at the same time.”

  No matter what others may think of her—and it does seem that she has finally entered a new realm in recent years, from being viewed as a difficult and spoiled superstar to finally a respected pop culture icon—Diana Ross says that she knows who she is, as do her children, “and that’s what’s most important. In my heart, when I close my eyes and it’s just me. I know who I am and what I have done with my life, and I’m okay with it. I’m okay with me.”

  The Supremes, in 1966, performing Al Jolson’s “Rock-a-bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody” with canes and hats – the epitome of Motown finesse and glamour. Left to right: Florence (aged twenty-three), Mary and Diana (both twenty-two). (RetroPhoto)

  Diana’s ever-supportive mother, Ernestine Ross, travelled as a chaperone with the Supremes in the early days. Here she is, on the left, posing with Diana, Berry Gordy, Jr., Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard in Hollywood. (RetroPhoto)

  The Andrews Sisters – arguably the greatest girl group of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s – passed the baton to the Supremes when both acts appeared on Sammy Davis Jr.’s television program in 1965 – singing each other’s hits! Here, all six divas review the show’s script. Left to right: Mary (smoking!), Diana and Florence, with Laverne, Maxene and Patty Andrews. (RetroPhoto)

  By the summer of 1967, Florence knew she was on shaky ground with the Supremes. Here, the girls are in Las Vegas on 30 June (during their engagement at the Flamingo Hotel) trying – unsuccessfully? – to get along at a birthday barbecue for Florence’s twenty-fourth birthday. (Courtesy of Joseph Morgan)

  On 30 June 1967, after the girls’ Vegas show, friends gathered for a surprise party for Florence. Here, Florence seems glum, as she prepares to cut her birthday cake. The very next day she would be fired from the group! Berry Gordy was not at the party. Left to right: Esther Gordy Edwards (Berry’s sister), Mary Wilson, Diana Ross (both twenty-three years old), Anna Gordy (another of Berry’s sisters) and unidentified guests. (Courtesy of Joseph Morgan)

  Seeming a bit more cheery, Florence opens her birthday presents. Note prize fighter Joe E. Louis sitting next to her, and Diana next to him. On Diana’s right is group manager, Shelly Berger. (Courtesy of Joseph Morgan)

  After the party, everyone went dancing, blissfully unaware that the next day would be Florence’s last with the Supremes. Here, Florence dances for the camera. (Courtesy of Joseph Morgan)

  At first, Berry Gordy was unsure how to alter the group’s name to give star billing to Diana. This is the marquee announcing the act’s engagement at Steel Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in August 1967. It was an experiment. Afterward, Berry would finally settle on Diana Ross and the Supremes. (Paul Austin Orleman)

  A rare photo session in swimsuits. The Supremes rarely posed in anything other than their most glamorous gowns. That’s Cindy, twenty-eight, on the right. Mary, twenty-four – wearing a blond wig! – on the left. And, of course, no one jumps off a diving board quite like Miss Ross, in the middle, also twenty-four. (J. Randy Taraborrelli collection)

  Berry and the Supremes toast the future at a party following Diana’s last show with the group on 14 January 1970 in Las Vegas. Though they are all smiles for the camera, there wasn’t a lot of smiling going on behind the scenes. Left to right: Berry, Diana, Mary and Cindy. (Soul Magazine)

  Soon after Diana left the Supremes in 1970 she married Robert (Bob) Ellis Silberstein. (RetroPhoto)

  Dilemma? Pregnant with Berry’s child, Diana and Bob decided to raise the child as Bob’s. They kept the secret for years. (RetroPhoto)

  Though Fred Ross – sixty-three years old at this time – had always had conflicting feelings about Diana’s career, 27 March 1973 marked a memorable evening. Father and daughter attended the Oscar ceremony together and Diana was nominated as Best Actress in recognition of her stunning debut in Lady Sings the Blues. (Soul Magazine)

  If a picture is worth a thousand words, triple that for these three. This book’s author snapped off these shots just as Diana and Berry began to engage in an intense conversation about her act while backstage at the Ahmason Theater in 1977. “I like the opening number just as it is, thank you,” Diana told him. (J. Randy Taraborrelli collection)

  What a long and passionate relationship these two have enjoyed over the years. Here’s Diana with Berry at an awards ceremony in April of 2006. Inset is a photo of them taken in 1965 in Paris, the week they began their romance. (Main picture: Amy Graves/Wirelmage. Inset: Mark Watkis)

  The Supremes – Mary, Diana and Florence – in the Orient, 1966. (RetroPhoto)

  A typically glamorous photo shoot, 1996. (RetroPhoto)

  Diana, Florence and Mary, 1966. (RetroPhoto)

  1960s photo session for the More Hits by the Supremes album. (RetroPhoto)

  Cindy Birdsong’s first show with the Supremes at the Hollywood Bowl, April 1967. Left to right: Cindy, Mary and Diana. (Mark London Photography)

  Diana as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues. (RetroPhoto)

  On stage in Las Vegas. (J. Randy Taraborrelli collection)

  Singing “My Man” to her man – Berry Gordy, Jr. – at the Pantages Theater, 8 November 2004. (Billy Masters) (Opposite page: RetroPhoto)

  Diana Ross – in
front, of course! — with the Supremes, 1966. (J. Randy Taraborrelli collection)

  Epilogue: home at last

  The word “survivor” is so often applied to celebrities, it means little these days. An actress has a hit movie, then a flop, then another hit—and, suddenly, she is a survivor. Or, a singer has a long string of hit records, one commercial disaster, and then another long string of hit records and, suddenly, that person is also a survivor. A high-profile person gets divorced from another high-profile person. Afterwards? Survivor. For the real definition of the word, though, arguably one needn’t look any further than at Diana Ross—more than forty-five years in a career full of record-breaking successes and crushing disappointments all the while navigating the stormy seas of a turbulent personal life, and successfully raising five children in the process. Think what you will about her, and say what you will—and call her Miss Ross while you do it, thank you—this is a woman who deserves acclamation because she truly has risen above adversity, and she has done so time after time.

  “My music is something I started doing because I loved it,” Diana said in an interview in November 2004. “So, now I’m getting back on the road and singing because I love it—and I no longer worry about being judged.”

  Indeed, on 8 November 2004, Diana Ross made her return to the Los Angeles stage, at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. It seemed as if almost everyone connected to the pop star wanted to come out to support her after the last couple of years of personal problems. Berry Gordy was present, as were a host of other Motown colleagues including Mickey Stevenson, Motown’s artist and repertoire director, the man responsible for recruiting the teachers who taught the Supremes their act for the Copacabana in 1965. “When you were sitting in the Copa on opening night with Berry,” the present author asked him, “did you ever think that almost forty years later you would be with him again, watching Diana perform?” He laughed. “Yes,” he said, “to tell you the truth, I sorta did.”

  Scherrie Payne and Lynda Laurence, the two Supremes Diana toured with four years earlier, were also present. “I still hope Diana will one day get together with Mary and Cindy,” Scherrie told me. “That’s the legendary group. That’s the group that set the standard for the rest of us.”

  Also attending was Cindy Birdsong, who had replaced Florence Ballard in the Supremes so long ago. Now, in her sixties, she still looked young and beautiful, and as a blonde! We hadn’t seen each other in years. “Can you believe we have known each other since 1967?” she asked me. “Is that even possible? So much has happened,” she concluded. Then, she echoed what was probably a thought shared by many in the house tonight: “It’s hard to believe we managed to squeeze all of this life into one lifetime.”

  “Still following me around, are you?” Berry asked me as I trailed him on his way to his seat, which, as it happened, was directly in front of mine. “It’s gonna be a big night,” he promised. “She’s in rare form these days.”

  “Do you realize that this year marks forty years since ‘Where Did Our Love Go’?” I asked him.

  “Don’t remind me,” he remarked with a laugh.

  I couldn’t help but remember the time many decades ago when Berry made Diana pose for a photo for me to help me out with a story I was writing as a cub reporter for a black newspaper in New York. I was barely a teenager. “Send me a copy of the article, will you?” he had told me. “Now, get lost, kid.”

  I took my seat, next to Berry’s lovely niece, writer and producer Iris Gordy—daughter of his brother Fuller. She was once married to Johnny Bristol, the man who wrote and produced Diana Ross and the Supremes’ last hit, “Someday We’ll Be Together.” No matter how much they may have disagreed with what I’ve written about Motown and its artists over the years, Berry’s family has always treated me well. For all of these decades, I’ve never been a close friend to any of them, or to many of their artists. Rather, I’ve just been an observer—always watching, learning and trying my best to figure these people out. “We knew you would be here,” Iris told me, shaking my hand firmly. “It’s been too many years for you to not have been here.”

  Indeed, and those years had flown by.

  As had always been the case when it came to his star, Berry was right: Diana was “in rare form.” As soon as she ran onto the stage, it seemed as if she had a renewed spirit. Now no longer drinking, she looked improbably fit and sexy and ready to go to work. Of course, all of the elements were in place: the explosion of hair, the kohl-lined eyes, the glimmering teeth. She was totally immersed in a red ruffled cape for her entrance. She slipped out of it to reveal a red sequined miniskirt. The audience of 3,000 was on its feet as soon as she started her first number, “Take Me Higher,” from one of the last of her Motown albums. Looking at her, one had the feeling that time had stopped and it was 1970 again; she seemed youthful, vital and happy.

  The two-and-a-half-hour show was full of great moments, such as when she sang “Baby Love” to one of its composers, Eddie Holland of the Holland-Dozier-Holland writing and producing team that gave the Supremes their first string of number one hits. Diana weaved from one hit to the other, covering the full spectrum of her career, from “Love Child” to “Upside Down,” “Reflections” to “Love Hangover.” Her signature song, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” seemed particularly evocative and even redemptive in the light of her recent travails. She performed it and all of her songs that evening as if she’d been reborn somewhere along the line over the last couple of years, the proverbial phoenix now risen from the ashes. She had faced her demons, apparently taking them on with the same vengeance with which she’d faced other obstacles in her life, and had emerged the victor.

  At one point in the performance, Diana ventured out into the audience and stood directly before Berry, squeezing her girlish frame into the row in front of him. “If not for this man,” she told the audience, “I would not be here tonight.” She then introduced him to a thunderous ovation. “Black, what do you want to hear from Lady Sings the Blues?” she asked him once the applause had died down. He grinned broadly. “‘My Man,’ of course,” he answered. Diana then sang Billie Holiday’s song of intense longing directly to her first real love, Berry, her eyes locked on his for the entire performance. One can only imagine what was going through their minds in those moments. After all, they share so much rich history. She finished the number to a standing ovation and then kissed Berry on the cheek. “We’ve been through a lot,” she told him with tears in her eyes. He nodded and looked at her adoringly.

  It was a memorable show. After Diana took her final bows to a standing audience, she fluffed up her mane of wild ringlets, raised her arms in triumph, and beamed as the applause rushed over her. Yes, she truly was back. Watching her in this moment, even the most critical observer had to marvel at the magnitude of her achievements: from the Brewster Projects to the top of the record charts, from sock hops and seedy Detroit beer joints to the Copacabana and Caesar’s Palace, from one-night stands in segregated theaters in the South to television and movie stardom. During most of the journey she had been shepherded by Berry, and then she took control of the reins herself in 1981 with mixed results—until she totally lost that control a few years ago and paid a dear price for the loss. Indeed, in his very favorable review of the show for the Los Angeles Times, the critic would write that Diana had performed “with the gratitude of one who had finally found her way home. She projected the humility of one who’s come close to losing the things dearest to her.”

  When the show was over, Diana welcomed guests backstage. Berry was one of them.

  For all the importance Berry and Diana had in each other’s lives, the two were unable to remain in the others’ presence for long. It wasn’t due to a lack of respect or affection; more likely the opposite was true. Each was reminded of what they once had, what they could have continued to have if they had simply followed their hearts. There was always a look of disappointment in Berry’s eyes whenever he saw Diana. And she, even with all he
r moments of self-involvement, saw that pain—maybe even shared it.

  “It wasn’t meant to be,” Diana once said of herself and Berry. “He sees me too clearly. That’s not always good,” she had joked.

  Now backstage, Berry—a man familiar with holding court at such gatherings—stood to the side, appearing somewhat sad. Diana spotted him and excused herself from a cluster of friends and family. She then walked up to him and lifted his hand, clasping it tightly between both of hers. “How’d I do, Black?” she asked softly.

  A smile crept onto his face.

  “Perfect, as always,” he said.

  “As always?” she replied. “You sure kept that a secret too long.”

  He looked her firmly in the eye. “You know something, Black? You’re right. I did.” He kissed her on the cheek before she was stolen away by a guest. He then continued to watch her as she headed back to the crowd.

  Seconds later, Diana turned, looking back to the place where Berry had stood. He was gone. The shine disappeared from her eyes for a moment as she looked toward an empty doorway. Then she took a deep breath, and turned back to the crowd.

  While she had often said she had no regrets, could that really be the case? Had she made mistakes? Absolutely. Been insensitive? Certainly. Lost her temper? Of course. After all, stardom hadn’t totally transformed young Diana Ross from the Brewster Projects. It hadn’t brought with it inner peace. It hadn’t erased all anxieties, all conflicts. It hadn’t made her or her life perfect … and she knew it. She’d always had a voice in her head, one that was both her biggest fan and harshest detractor. Though at times motivating and supportive, it was more often than not critical and judgmental. It would remind her that perfection had not been achieved, that no matter what her accomplishments were she, somehow, still wasn’t good enough. Sometimes, it was her father’s voice. Sometimes, Berry’s. Often, her own. “I didn’t know,” she’d mused just a couple of weeks earlier, “you sort of keep blaming yourself for stuff. You want to think you’ve done something wrong.”