Diana Ross: A Biography Read online

  Critics Rave About

  Diana Ross

  by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  “A definitive biography … a riveting page-turner.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Taraborrelli is one of the best at what he does, and Ross is a fascinating subject. Highly recommended.”

  —Library Journal

  “A riveting celebrity dish-fest … colorful, action-packed, and prophetic.”

  —Washington Post

  “Well done, filled with anecdotes … one supremely thorough bio for any Ross fan.”

  —Evening Bulletin (Philadelphia)

  “A complete up-to-date history of the star.”

  —Associated Press

  “The dish on Motown’s most famous songstress, a candid view of a most enigmatic woman. Taraborrelli writes with authority, with first-person clarity, and with fairness.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “Dishy.”

  —Fashion (Toronto)

  “Admirably balanced, nuanced, and respectful … grips to the very last page.”

  —The Sunday Times (London)

  “Ripe with juicy revelation.”

  —The Herald (Scotland)

  “Nobody could be more sympathetic to her troubles, nor more unsparing in recounting them in full.”

  —Sunday Telegraph (London)

  BOOKS BY J. RANDY TARABORELLI

  Call Her Miss Ross

  Michael Jackson

  Sinatra

  Jackie, Ethel, Joan

  Madonna

  Once upon a Time

  Elizabeth

  Diana Ross

  The Secret Lift of Marilyn Monroe

  After Camelot

  The Hiltons

  This book is dedicated to the many Motown stars who transformed my youth by allowing me to join them on their fantastic journeys.

  You’ve been watching me since I was a teenager, since I was sixteen. You watched me go a little bit crazy, watched me get big-headed, watched me spend too much money and then watched me catch up with myself and have my family. That’s a close relationship.

  Diana Ross to J. Randy Taraborrelli, 1981

  My separateness, my aloneness, has always been here and is here now, a recurring theme that has continuously run through my life. Deep down inside … I am still profoundly alone.

  Diana Ross, 1993

  Contents

  Praise

  Books by J. Randy Taraborelli

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Part One: Diane

  “I remain in bondage”

  “Fight like you never fought before”

  The Brewster Projects and the Primettes

  Father and daughter in conflict

  The Primettes start rehearsals

  Berry Gordy Jr.: pioneering a movement

  Auditioning for Berry Gordy

  The first recording sessions

  Fred Ross’s bad idea

  A loss of innocence

  Diana and Smokey

  Cass Technical High School

  1962

  The Motor Town Revue

  “Just a little bit softer now.”

  “Why are they singing leads?”

  Girl trouble

  Part Two: Supreme Success

  Twists of fate

  The first hit: “Where Did Our Love Go”

  The Motown Sound … the Motown way

  1965: a banner year

  Somebody loves you

  The balance of power

  Ecstasy to the tenth power

  Finances

  “Class will turn the heads of kings and queens”

  “Are you mad because I’m the lead singer?”

  The Supremes at the Copa

  Florence: “I’ll do it my way”

  Coming home

  No Flo, no show

  Diana’s Boston breakdown

  “No one ever wins”

  “Call her Miss Ross”

  The die is cast

  Florence is fired

  “I’ll bet Diane just loves that marquee …”

  Florence’s birthday

  Not over till the fat lady sings?

  Part Three: Diana Ross and the Supremes

  Deconstruction

  Echoing Martin Luther King’s words

  Ernestine’s advice

  Florence is pregnant

  From Funny Girl to “Love Child”

  Making a statement for civil rights

  The lonely leading lady

  Cindy is kidnapped

  Someday we’ll be together?

  A farewell in Las Vegas

  Part Four: Solo Star

  Las Vegas solo turn

  Heartbreak

  Finally breaking from Berry

  A wedding and a baby … but whose?

  “The blues? But why?”

  “Why pick a girl who can’t really act?”

  It’s official: Diana will play Lady Day

  Recording the Lady soundtrack

  Making the movie

  Touch me in the morning

  Lady Sings the Blues

  Consensus

  “Oscar, anyway”

  How do you follow a Lady?

  Preparing for Mahogany

  Casting Mahogany: “How much?”

  Filming Mahogany

  Diana slaps Berry

  “Forget Diana”

  Mommy

  Love, Flo

  Diana and Bob divorce

  A million bucks before breakfast

  The Wiz

  Part Five: Miss Ross

  “Miss Ross to you”

  Ryan O’Neal

  Coming out

  Diana leaves Motown

  The RCA years

  Grappling with the past

  No wind, no rain can stop me …

  Classic “Miss Ross”

  The good life

  A death and a new life

  Arne

  Paparazzi nightmare

  Michael Jackson sends his regrets

  Diana and Arne marry

  Part Six: Ordeal

  Mary Wilson’s Dreamgirl

  More babies … and back to Motown

  Chico in trouble

  Out of darkness … but not quite

  Diana’s marriage to Arne in trouble

  T-Boy dies

  Diana and Arne split

  Detained at Heathrow

  Diana and Mary: battle royal

  A return to love?

  Recrimination

  Promises made and broken

  DUI

  Death and life

  Epilogue: home at last

  A final note

  Update, 2008

  Update, 2014

  Acknowledgments

  Discography and Other Notes

  Searchable Terms

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Diana Ross.

  The name on a page prompts a strong reaction from almost everyone who sees it. For many, it is a trigger for happy memories of a rich musical legacy. Certainly, no one can deny the deep impact her soulful and distinctive voice has had on so many people around the world. Others, however, raise an eyebrow at the mere mention of the name, choosing to view the controversies about her unpredictable moods and demanding “diva moments” as being that which actually defines her. Yet, neither of these two aspects of Diana’s reputation—her unique talent or her unpredictable nature—can be fairly quantified without the other.

  This is actually my third book about Diana Ross. The first one, Diana, was published in 1985. The se
cond, Call Her Miss Ross, was published four years later. In both books, I sought to make sense of this complex and, at times, enigmatic woman. When these works were published, little had been done to unravel the tightly wound spool of facts surrounding the controversies of Diana’s life, such as her complex relationship with the other Supremes, her love affair with Motown’s president, Berry Gordy, her temperamental reputation, her drive and ambition … even the paternity of her first daughter and why she had kept it such a closely guarded secret. I attempted with those two books—and especially with Call Her Miss Ross—to present a fair portrait of who this woman was and how she came to be the superstar we know her to be today. As the foundation of my research, I conducted hundreds of personal interviews over the course of many years. I also drew from my own interviews with Diana, her parents, some of her siblings and other family members, all of the Supremes, Motown artists, various intimates such as Michael Jackson and hundreds of other friends, foes and business associates. It was an ambitious undertaking. However, as someone who had enjoyed a personal history going back to childhood with many of the story’s principals, it was nothing if not also a labor of love.

  I first met Diana Ross when I was just ten years old, after a Supremes concert in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I even started the first international fan club for her and the group at that time. It was a success. I was paying taxes by the time I was twelve, so obviously the venture was a popular one with a legion of fellow Motown fans. At the age of sixteen, I parlayed my adolescent appreciation of the Supremes into a professional career as a reporter. It was Diana who was the subject of my very first interview with a celebrity for a feature story in a New York newspaper called The Black American. At nineteen, I left my hometown in the suburbs of Philadelphia to accept a job offer from one of the Supremes, Mary Wilson, to work for the group in Los Angeles. It was then that I began to consider public relations as a vocation. Touting the talents—or lack thereof—of upcoming disco stars was not for me, as I quickly realized, and so I resumed my writing career for a number of entertainment publications. As a result of a series of interviews I conducted with Diana in 1981 for the Los Angeles newspaper I edited and published called Soul, I obtained my first book contract—to write Diana for Doubleday. Even after following that book a few years later with another about her—Call Her Miss Ross, my first international best-seller—I realized that there were many questions that had been left unanswered for me. I always figured that I would one day go back to this saga of success and heartbreak—a story that had held such fascination for me over the years.

  Meanwhile, I went about the business of my own life and career. I first wrote a detailed history of Motown Records and then followed it with best-selling biographies of pop culture luminaries such as Carol Burnett, Cher, Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Madonna, Princess Grace and Prince Rainier of Monaco, Jackie, Ethel and Joan of the Kennedy dynasty, and most recently, Elizabeth Taylor.

  During those years, I also continued my research into Diana’s life and times … just in case chance and circumstance ever conspired to bring another book about her my way. Also, during that time, in a plethora of autobiographies more facts, fantasies and other musings were revealed by some of the key players. For instance, Diana’s own memoir, Secrets of a Sparrow, gave me a perspective on her particular view of history. Berry Gordy’s autobiography, To Be Loved, helped me understand his side of the story. Mary Wilson followed one very good book about her life, Dreamgirl, with another, Supreme Faith, both illuminating her points of view as an original member of the Supremes. Otis Williams of the Temptations wrote a book; as did Smokey Robinson; Michael Jackson, his parents and even his sister, LaToya; Berry’s ex-wife, Raynoma Gordy; and Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas. One of the Marvelettes even wrote a book! Someone who had once been the Supremes’ hairdresser also managed to squeak one out. Each provided bits and pieces of a puzzle—some fitting perfectly, some not fitting at all. Still, the overall picture that was assembled would become the historical record of events, one that would forevermore be picked apart, processed and deliberated over by Motown historians such as me. Most importantly, however, the time that passed gave me an opportunity to grow up, live my own life and finally see in full, mature perspective Diana Ross’s experience for what it really is—an intricate fusion of passion, drive, obsession, insecurity, misery, joy … and of course talent.

  Yes, I thought I really knew Diana Ross when I wrote my first two books about her. I didn’t. As it happened, it took many more years for her to fully reveal herself to me, and only after more painstaking research and contemplation. My original intention with this project had been to just update Call Her Miss Ross. However, I soon realized I had to do more than just that. I really needed to rewrite and revise it. So, while some of the original passages from Call Her Miss Ross can be found in this text—readers of that 1989 book will be able to spot them—much of this book is a brand-new creation. In preparing for it, I went back to my original interviews with people like her parents, her siblings, the other Supremes … her friends, her adversaries, her Motown colleagues. Some of the tapes were from the 1970s—I was lucky to even get them to play! Many of the interviews with The Supremes were recorded with nothing more than a small suction-cup device on a telephone handset, connected to a cheap tape recorder. I transcribed each one of them personally because only I could make out the voices—mine the sound of an excited starstruck kid, theirs wordly and oddly sophisticated considering their own youth. I delved into a dozen file cabinets filled with my original notes, photographs and other minutiae compiled over the years—all of the original research for my Motown-related books and much, much more—to now re-create in more detail than ever before the odyssey of Diana Ross’s life.

  At its core, the Diana Ross story is nothing if not inspiring. After all, she is a woman who has faced adversity many times over the years, yet has always come away the victor. Her life has been a labyrinth of gut-wrenching lows and spectacular highs. She was once a youngster of simple means whose gut told her she was meant to be somebody. She has spent much of her time on this planet proving just that. Love her or not, the place she holds in musical history and in our popular culture has been hard earned and well deserved. Today, no label easily fits her, no category clearly defines her. Truly, she is her own invention.

  J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Autumn 2006

  Prologue

  Detroit, Friday, 27 February 1976

  “Let me tell you, I was at the funeral for that Temptations guy who shot himself in the head. So I know you gotta get here early if you want a good spot. And at that funeral, honey, I saw all the Motown stars, crying and acting so sad and miserable. Got some great pictures, too.”

  The heavyset African-American woman with the beret pulled over her ears and wearing a bulky green coat checked twice to make sure the film was loaded properly into her Instamatic. She said she had been waiting since seven in the morning; it was now two o’clock, “so you know I’m serious about seeing some stars.

  “I went all the way to Philadelphia for that Tammi Terrell funeral a couple years back,” she continued, grandly. She was speaking of the young Motown chanteuse who had died of a brain tumor six years earlier. “Of course, I had to take a train to get there, but it was worth the trouble because, honey, Mr. Marvin Gaye was there, in person!”

  She noticed ears perking up around her. “And I got a color picture of him crying his eyes out. Poor fool. Loved Tammi so much.” She shook her head dramatically. Everyone around her did the same.

  “Well, who’d you see at the Temptations funeral?” a young fellow in a suit wanted to know. “Did you-know-who show up?”

  Looking around, the lady seemed to realize that her audience was growing as people gathered. “Hell, no, she didn’t show up. Too uppity, I guess. Making movies now. So grand, ain’t she?”

  “Sure is,” sniffed another woman. “I heard she fired poor Flo from the Supremes.”

  “That’s wha
t I heard, too,” someone else said. “Kicked her ass right out.”

  “Pitiful,” the woman in the green coat decided.

  “Poor Flo.”

  “And Mary, too. Had to put up with her all those years!” another lady piped in.

  “Yeah, poor Mary.”

  “Poor Flo and poor Mary,” everyone agreed.

  “Pitiful.”

  As a limousine slowly inched its way toward the New Bethel Baptist Church, police officers cleared away people who were peering into its tinted windows and blocking its path.

  “Who’s in it?” someone asked. “Is it her?”

  When the car stopped in front of the church, a dinner-jacketed chauffeur jumped out. The crowd surged forward. A back door opened. Two more men in black suits got out. Finally, one of them opened the remaining door, and a long black-stockinged, high-heeled leg peeked out, toes pointed demurely.

  “It is her!”

  She looked very small, almost frail, in a black coat trimmed with sable at the collar and cuffs, a matching knitted cloche-style hat, and gold hoop earrings. Her face was expertly made up, contoured, blushed and highlighted. Heavy-lashed eyes were mournful. She was immediately the center of attention, though she seemed to be oblivious to it all. Flanked by four stone-faced bodyguards, she bowed her head as she walked through the charged crowd. Everyone started taking pictures.

  “Look this way.”

  Click.

  “Look over here.”

  Click.

  “Now over here.”

  Click.

  Miss Ross had arrived.

  “Well, she certainly has her nerve,” said the woman who had been waiting since seven in the morning. “Coming here in a fancy car like that.” She snapped a picture just before getting elbowed in the ribs by someone else.

  “Out of my way! Gotta get her to sign this paper for my daughter.” The autograph-seeker rushed up to Diana. “Diana, honey, can I have your auto—?” The star and her bodyguards ignored the intrusion and rushed by. The scene turned even more chaotic. People began booing as Diana and her entourage made their way through the huge crowd.