Diana Ross: A Biography

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  During rehearsal breaks for T.C.B., Diana almost always retreated to her dressing room, never socializing with any of her former peers. In the midst of one lunch break, Mary, Cindy and the five Temptations gathered about a piano on the stage and, as someone played, they sang old doo-wop standards and had a fun time doing it. Meanwhile, Diana sat alone in a dark corner, her legs crossed and her arms folded. Whenever anyone looked her way, she averted her eyes and acted uninterested. However, when she didn’t think anyone was watching, her mouth would move along to the songs’ lyrics and her head would bop up and down to the rhythm. Even the most cynical observer would have been able to sense her loneliness, her isolation. She wanted to be included, but circumstances had made it impossible for her.

  This is not to say that she couldn’t have at least tried to be nice. Often she didn’t. In fact, she sometimes seemed to go out of her way to be difficult. During rehearsal for “I Hear a Symphony,” for instance, she stopped the music and turned to her singing partners. “What in the world are you doing?” she demanded to know. “You’re singing flat and it’s throwing me off.”

  “What are you talking about, Diane?” Cindy asked, surprised. “Our vocals are prerecorded.” In fact, Cindy and Mary had pretaped all of their parts and only Diana was singing into a live mic.*

  “Well, I don’t care,” Diana snapped at her. “Something’s not right back there. Maybe when you two prerecorded the vocals you were both singing flat.” She gave Mary a look.

  “Look, Diane,” Mary said, now speaking up. “I’m fine and Cindy’s fine. So, why don’t you just focus on what you do and we’ll focus on what we do and then everyone will be just fine.”

  Diana and Mary stared each other down. “As if I don’t have enough to worry about,” Diana said before storming off the stage.

  Afterwards, Mary and Cindy spent hours rehearsing and then taping a special Brazilian-flavored number, “Mas Que Nada,” with a few of the Temptations. They were very proud of it. Unfortunately, no one would ever see or hear it; it would be cut from the show before broadcast. Diana had nothing to do with that particular decision, but it was still difficult for everyone to not blame her, at least indirectly.

  T.C.B. was broadcast on NBC in December, 1968. Berry and producers George Schlatter and Ed Friendly had invested an enormous amount of money in the program in futuristic, state-of-the-art, acrylic staging and colorful costumes. In the opening number, the Supremes sparkled in formfitting gowns beaded in pink and green. Later, they appeared in yellow chiffon and sequined gowns with long capes—truly striking.

  A year later, Diana and the Supremes would again team with the Temptations for another special called G.I.T. [which stood for Getting it Together] on Broadway. This time the focus was really on Diana, alone. Special material writer Billy Barnes wrote a brilliant medley of “leading lady” songs for her which Diana performed with typical vivacity—tunes made famous by the likes of Ethel Merman (“Everything’s Coming Up Roses”) and, of course, Barbra Streisand (“People”). The medley was masterfully coordinated by Billy Barnes and Earl Brown, both special material writers who seemed to sense Diana’s aspirations. Costumes were designed by Bob Mackie; for “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from My Fair Lady, she wore a black and white paillette zebra gown with a flounce of sunburst-pleated organza, and a large black and white hat with forty, yard-long black pheasant feathers. “She was a genius in the way she pulled it off,” said Billy Barnes. “She could do anything, really, and do it well.” Bob Mackie, who still designs for Diana today, remembered: “With every costume I designed for her in that medley, Berry told me to try to create the impression that she originated the role on Broadway. I got the impression that he and she both wish she had.”

  Indeed, by this time, there was no doubt left in anyone’s mind that Diana had outgrown the Supremes and any possibilities the group could afford her. Now, Berry’s plans to launch her from the Supremes were fully under way. She would be booked to make solo television appearances, the first of which was on a Dinah Shore television special with Lucille Ball. Further elevating her star status, Berry would have Diana and the Supremes host the popular Hollywood Palace television show for ABC—twice. But while her singing partners sang just a few songs behind her, Diana sang, danced and shared banter with all of the guests, introducing and interacting with them.

  At the end of that first television special—T.C.B.—Diana Ross and Paul Williams performed “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha while their respective groups—the Supremes and the Temptations—harmonized beautifully in the background. It was Paul who not so long ago had discovered Diana singing on a stoop in Detroit. He then recommended her to Mary and Florence for the Primettes and the rest became Supreme history. Now, just a few years later, he was world famous as one of the five Temptations … and she was, of course, the star of the three Supremes. Truly, one had to marvel at their achievements: American rags-to-riches success stories for both of them. Behind the scenes, though—as is so often the case in show business—there was a great deal of sadness and disappointment. With the passing of just a few more short years, it would become too much for Paul and he would do himself in, committing suicide to end his own personal story of unhappiness and disillusionment. It seems as if everyone had one, whether the details of it would ever become public knowledge or not. Paul would be found in a car, shot in the head, not far from the very Brewster Projects where it had all begun for him. Diana, of course, would continue to survive and flourish, but these early years would take their toll on her as well. They certainly would not be remembered by Motown’s leading lady with much warmth or sentimentality.

  “I cry when I think about those years,” Diana once observed.

  It was so complicated and I think I was too young to be able to digest it all. I wondered how we could be so successful and blessed yet so unhappy, and all at the same time. I think now, in looking back on it, we were working so hard there was no time to deal with any unhappiness, even though we all had a kind of, I guess, misery about it. You would just start thinking about things, start trying to understand things when the phone would ring or there would be a knock on the door, and that was the end of it … it was time to move, to go, to start tackling the next big challenge. There was no time to think, or to wonder or look at things, or process things. The clock was ticking and there was only time for one thing: work.

  Cindy is kidnapped

  By the summer of 1969, everyone involved in their business knew that Diana Ross’s days with the Supremes were numbered. Ever true to their personal dynamic, Diana and Mary never discussed the matter, nor did they with Cindy. “I’m not sure how we figured it out,” Cindy Birdsong recalls.

  There wasn’t a big meeting there where someone said, “Look, Diana is leaving so here’s what we’re going to do, now.” There wasn’t a moment where we all sat down and Diana made an announcement. You know how it is when you have a new relationship and you wonder what the previous person went through with that relationship? I started to say to myself, “Okay, now I get it. Now, I understand what Florence might have been going through. There was such a level of disrespect, all around. I didn’t know how Mary dealt with it, really.

  For her part, Mary Wilson confirms, “Diana and I never said two words to each other about her leaving the Supremes. I actually read about her leaving in the newspaper, like everyone else.”

  In June, Berry informed Mary and Cindy that he had found a replacement for Diana. It was interesting that he had decided to keep the group going at all, especially considering that it had been little more than a platform for Diana in recent years. But the name “Supremes” did have great commercial value and Berry couldn’t help but wonder if it could still generate revenue for the company, even without Diana as part of it. Berry and Shelly Berger had earlier discovered a statuesque, twenty-two-year-old singer named Jean Terrell performing in a group with her brother, boxer Ernie Terrell, at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. They were impressed with her and
decided that she would be an asset to the new lineup. Mary and Cindy accepted this corporate decision and just waited to see what would happen next—probably hoping against hope that someone would engage them in a real conversation about the future.

  That same month, Diana Ross and the Supremes opened a two-week sold-out engagement at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. During it, Diana’s pet Maltese dogs became ill and died backstage when they somehow got into some rat poison. She was so distraught, the rest of the two weeks had to be cancelled. That was $12,500 out the window for them, which was what the group was to be paid for the engagement. Diana’s decision to walk out no doubt had as much to do with exhaustion as it did with grief. It was clear to all that this group was finished, though there was still plenty of work to do before the final show in Las Vegas, which had been scheduled for January 1970.

  By autumn, Berry Gordy Jr. had moved to the Hollywood Hills into the former home of comedian Tommy Smothers. Motown still had its offices in Detroit, and Berry maintained the three-story million-dollar mansion he owned there. However, he was now eager to move the entire Motown operation to the West Coast to explore the possibility of featuring Diana Ross in movies. Plus, he was beginning to feel that Detroit—parts of which were now quite dangerous—was no longer the place from which to run a multi-million-dollar enterprise. On Berry’s heels, Diana and Cindy both leased homes in California; Mary was already living there. However, life in Los Angeles was certainly not without its own problems, as Berry and the Supremes would soon learn.

  On the night of 2 December 1969 Cindy Birdsong returned home to her Hollywood apartment after a day of rehearsals with Mary and Jean Terrell. She was greeted by her then-boyfriend, Charles Hewlett, who had keys to the apartment, and a friend of his. When Cindy went into the bedroom to change her clothes, she found an intruder waiting for her—a white man in his late twenties with a crazy look in his eyes. Wielding two butcher’s knives from her kitchen, he pushed her back into the living room. Apparently, he had been hiding in there the whole time Cindy’s two friends were waiting for her. Holding a knife at Cindy’s throat, he forced her to bind her friends’ hands behind their backs with their ties. He then dragged Cindy, kicking and screaming, out of the building and to her car.

  With Cindy in the passenger seat, her kidnapper drove along the Long Beach Freeway, a journey Cindy would later describe as “thirty minutes of sheer terror.” While traveling at high speed, the two struggled in the car, his knife slicing all of her fingers on both hands. He then threatened her with what was going to happen after he met up with two of his friends. That was all Cindy needed to hear. In a moment of desperation, she opened the car door and leapt into the cold, dark night. Hitting the hard concrete of the freeway, she then rolled down a dirt embankment. Somehow, she managed to keep her wits about her and realized that if she got back up to the road and then ran in the direction of the oncoming traffic, her kidnapper wouldn’t be able to follow her unless he first exited and then returned for her. Hoping to buy some time before that might occur, Cindy tried to flag down passing motorists. However, the cars whizzed right by her; no one would stop to help. Fortunately, two California highway patrolmen finally came by and noticed the screaming and crying woman. They rescued her and took her to the Long Beach Hospital. Once safely there, she required stitches and other treatment for cuts and bruises.

  Later, Berry was awakened in the middle of the night with the news, “One of the girls has been kidnapped.” At first, he thought it was Diana; she certainly would have been the more obvious victim. He was relieved to learn that she was safe but, still, this was frightening. Berry and Diana thought of Cindy as a wonderful woman who’d only wanted to do the best job she could in a tough situation, replacing one of the original Supremes.

  Cindy says that Berry was afraid that the attack had actually been directed toward him—that someone was trying to teach him a lesson by grabbing one of “his girls.” She recalls, “I definitely did not want to believe that. However, I did sense that Berry felt he had enemies out there.” There had always been rumblings of underworld connections to Berry, though such stories were not true. However, there were definitely people in Detroit who were angry with him as it became more clear that he was permanently moving the company out of that city. Cindy and Diana once went to visit Berry and were surprised by something they found at his home.

  I remember that there was a painting in the living room that had been slashed to bits and there was blood splattered everywhere. I thought, “Oh my gosh, what is this?” We were very scared. Berry was upset and he got me and Diane out of there fast. It was never talked about again. The next day, Berry, Diana and I acted as if it had never even happened. In my mind, Berry was not at all a violent man. However, I sensed that there was an element of danger around him. Why else, I wondered, would he have to have so many bodyguards?

  Who knew what anyone was capable of doing in the tumultuous 1960s? The brutal Tate and LaBianca murders by the so-called Manson Family had occurred only three months earlier, and just miles from where Berry was now living, creating a climate of fear in that well-heeled neighborhood. Security was beefed up at his home until the next day when a man named Charles Collier, Cindy’s kidnapper, surrendered to authorities in Las Vegas. When asked why he had kidnapped the Supremes star, he gave an obvious answer: “For the money.”

  Obviously, Cindy was terribly shaken up as well as injured during her ordeal. She would be released in time for Diana Ross and the Supremes’ final television appearance together on The Ed Sullivan Show later in the month. On the day of her release, there was a small party in her room, which Diana and Mary attended. “Did he try to rape you?” Diana asked Cindy, according to her memory.

  “No,” Cindy answered, “he didn’t. I asked him if he was going to,” she continued, “and he laughed at me. ‘Hell no, I’m not gonna rape you,’ he told me. ‘So, don’t flatter yourself.’”

  Diana’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “He said that to you?” she asked in amazement. “The nerve of him! Why, I would have slapped him right across the face!”

  Someday we’ll be together?

  The official press release from Motown was made on 3 November 1969: “Diana Ross a Single in 1970—Jean Terrell Becomes Third Supreme in January—All Stay with Motown.” The handout indicated that Diana “had achieved such unquestioned superstar status that it would be incredibly unfair not to permit her to go the whole gamut of the entertainment world from Hollywood to Broadway, something that would be impossible as part of a group.” Moreover, the release noted—and this was untrue—that in her free time Diana would “help Miss Terrell learn the complicated and effervescent style of the Supremes.”

  It was also at around this same time that Diana introduced the Jackson 5 on the Hollywood Palace television program; five youngsters from Gary, Indiana, who were led by a precocious eleven-year-old named Michael Jackson. In a stroke of marketing genius, Berry attached Diana’s name to the group’s early publicity campaigns, even though she really had nothing to do with discovering them. She even wrote the liner notes to the album Diana Ross Presents the Jackson Five. Actually, it had been Gladys Knight and Motown producer Bobby Taylor who had brought the boys to Berry’s attention.

  During these last few months, Diana became disturbed when the other Supremes started to distance themselves from her as they planned for their own futures. It was one thing for Diana and Berry to separate themselves from everyone else—as they had done for years—but, apparently, quite another when the other Supremes started doing the same thing. Indeed, Mary and Cindy began to make it clear by their total indifference toward Diana that they couldn’t wait to get rid of her. “The girls treated me very badly,” Diana would write in her Secrets of a Sparrow memoir. “They had gone against me with a vengeance. They were so blinded by jealousy. I had been tormented, treated as if I were invisible, talked about behind my back when my back wasn’t even turned. And yet I had tried to continue, I had tr
ied to perform and pretend that all was well.” Her words provide an interesting counterpoint to Mary’s critical viewpoint of her in Dreamgirl, so one certainly can’t discount them. However, despite the passing of so many years—twenty-three of them by the time Secrets was published—Diana still did not seem willing to take much, if any, responsibility for her part in the turmoil of the Supremes. She even blamed the fans for the dissension, writing, “Instead of appreciating us as a unit, they kept picking their favorite Supreme, saying this one was better than that one, thereby pitting us against each other.”

  More than anything, Berry wanted Diana Ross and the Supremes to have a number-one single as their farewell effort, which was easier said than done. They’d had quite a few single releases since “Love Child,” but only one with the Temptations, “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” was a bona fide hit. “I’m Livin’ in Shame” squeezed into the Top 10, but the next releases didn’t even make the Top 20. The notion that Diana would leave the Supremes without a hit record seemed unfathomable. Shelly Berger suggested releasing a song called “Someday We’ll Be Together,” written by Johnny Bristol—a tune Diana had recorded back in June. When Berry first heard it, he thought it would be terrific as her first solo outing but agreed that, in the absence of anything else, it could work as the last Supremes single. On “Someday We’ll Be Together” Diana was backed by a choir of voices that only the most naïve fan would have ever taken for Mary and Cindy. Still, it was a superior record, a gospel-flavored mid-tempo arrangement with a composed, easygoing delivery from Diana. It began to climb the charts as soon as it was released in October. By December, it was number one with more than two million copies sold. Not only was it the Supremes’ last number-one record, it also holds the distinction of being the very last number-one record of the 1960s. Two chapters in musical history were now closed.