Diana Ross: A Biography

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  When Ron showed up for work at the appointed time, Diana greeted him at the door in a white satin dressing gown trimmed with marabou feathers, the kind of outfit great stars wore in the movies of the 1930s. Her makeup and hairdo were probably more suitable for 7 p.m. than 7 a.m., but if that’s what it took to get her in the mood to work, Ron had no objections. Besides, she looked amazing—and at that hour! He followed her to the living room, sat down at the glass and silver-plated baby grand, and began to play “Touch Me in the Morning.” Diana leaned against the piano while he played, arms crossed with a frown on her face.

  “Play it again,” she said when he finished.

  After he had played it a second time, she shook her head. “Nope. It’s totally wrong.”

  “Well, why don’t you try singing it?” he remembered asking her.

  Diana came around and stood behind him. After humming three bars, she stopped. “It’s not right, Ron. The key is wrong.”

  “But it’s D flat,” he said. “Your usual.”

  “Well, it doesn’t sound right,” Diana said.

  “Look, why don’t you just run through it again?”

  “I don’t want to, Ron,” she insisted. “I know it’s wrong. Take it down to C flat and don’t fight me on this.”

  He played it at C flat. “But that sounds like shit, Diane.”

  “Well that’s my key,” she insisted, “and that’s where I want it.”

  That day, Diana left for New York. While there, she began practicing the song in her head in C flat. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, Ron Miller and Michael Masser decided to use their collective better judgment and orchestrate the song in the higher and more dramatic D flat. After returning to Los Angeles, Diana was quickly booked into the Motown recording studio for what the two men knew would be a moment of reckoning. She was stationed in the sound booth behind a recording microphone, the track playing into her ears through headphones. She then began singing the C flat melody she’d been rehearsing privately—but to a D flat track. It was all out of tune, a real mess, or as Ron would say, “It sounded like shit.” A couple of technicians snickered. She stopped abruptly.

  “Hey! What key is that?” she asked through the intercom system that connected the recording booth to the mixing console.

  “Well, it’s your key, Diane,” Ron said from the other side of the glass window. “Just like you told us—”

  “The hell it is,” she exclaimed. “Look, you guys have totally screwed this track up, and now you’re wasting my time!”

  “Well, what key do you think it is, Diane? You tell me.”

  “How do I know what key it’s in?” she shouted back at Ron. “I just know it’s not right. It’s supposed to be in C flat!”

  “Well, goddamn it, it is C flat,” Ron lied. He got up out of his chair and began to approach the sound booth. Michael cringed. He was the new kid at Motown and not used to upsetting the company’s queen. “Look, I’ll prove it to you,” Ron said, bluffing. “We’ll go to the piano right now.” Ron walked toward her, all the while wondering if she would call his bluff. This was a woman, don’t forget, who had been in the studio arguably hundreds of times in the last twelve years. She had recorded everything from country music to British pop to classic soul. Certainly, she knew the difference between D flat and C flat. Or did she? It was worth a gamble, anyway. Michael Masser sank deeper into his chair.

  “Oh, never mind,” Diana said, now exasperated. “I believe you. Let’s just cut this goddamn thing so I can go home.”

  The rest of the session was slow and laborious as Diana recorded the beautiful ballad in a key in which she hadn’t at all rehearsed it. But, still, her writer and producer knew what was best for it, at least musically. The higher pitch made her strain just a little to hit the notes in a way that was both involving and emotional. It was a great performance; truly, “Touch Me in the Morning” would end up being one of her best recordings.

  Lady Sings the Blues

  On 12 October 1972, the advertisements in the New York press trumpeted, “Diana Ross is Billie Holiday.” The time had come for the New York premiere of the film, and the Motown contingent had worked on the final edit up until the last possible minute. In fact, they changed the ending. Originally, the Billy Dee Williams character of Louis McKay walks out of Diana’s life when she, as Billie Holiday, is onstage in the final, emotional Carnegie Hall scene. When Billie’s agent asks Louis, “What do I tell her?” McKay says, “Just goodbye. Billie’ll understand.” All of that was clipped off, so Louis just watched Billie perform with tears in his eyes and the viewer senses they will be together, forever—or at least until her death at forty-four.

  Ironically, considering all that she had invested emotionally and all that Berry had invested financially, Diana could not attend the premiere. She was so close to giving birth to her second child, her doctor forbade her to fly. “There’s only one first for anybody, whatever his profession,” Diana said later. “I hated missing that premiere. It would have been the biggest day of my life.” Instead of going to New York with Berry and the Motown staffers, she had to remain in Los Angeles. Berry sent a basket of two dozen long-stemmed red roses with a note saying, “Tonight everyone will know what Diana Ross is …”

  “Why doesn’t he call?” Diana later remembered asking herself by 8 p.m. on the night of the premiere. She’d been pacing in her bedroom for the last hour, worried about the film’s reception. It was as if her entire career now hinged on a moment for which she wasn’t present, something she couldn’t control, which was maddening to her. “It’s too early. It’s a three hours’ difference from New York,” her husband Bob told her, trying to calm her.

  “Why didn’t they have the premiere in Los Angeles?” Diana asked. “Why didn’t that damn doctor let me go? Why’d I have to be pregnant, now?”

  At midnight the phone rang. Berry. “We’re a hit, Black!” he said, excited. “The movie’s gonna be a smash!”

  “Oh thank God!” Diana said, collapsing into a chair. “Just thank God!”

  Three days later, Diana gave birth to another girl, again by Caesarean section; this one to be named Tracee Joy. Sidney Furie’s wife, who was also pregnant on the last day of shooting, had her baby on the same day as Diana. Ernestine Ross, who had earlier gone back to Detroit, now returned to California to stay with Diana and help with her growing family.

  Just as Diana and Berry had expected, most reviewers and friends of Billie Holiday criticized the many biographical inaccuracies in Lady Sings the Blues. In all, the film is actually about 90 percent imagination and 10 percent fact. Or, as Berry puts it, “The picture is honest, but it’s not necessarily true.” Of course, Billie didn’t have a full orchestra at Carnegie Hall as Diana did in the movie—she had only piano, bass and drums. Billie didn’t wear lovely designer clothes—hers were usually cheap, store-bought items. Billie certainly never could have dreamed of as much continuity in her life as the Motown script allowed, either. However, Berry and company never intended to make a documentary about the life and times of Billie Holiday. Rather, they had hoped to capture Lady Day’s essence poetically on film, and create what Berry called, “a love story. Love is love,” he said. “It’s universal. Billie Holiday was a human being, a beautiful and lovely human being who had a tragic life. It didn’t matter about color. Everybody’s the same when it comes to love. Black people have joy like everyone else, as well as tragedy. When someone in the ghetto falls in love, she hears bells, the same bells someone uptown hears when she falls in love.”

  Through her amazing screen performance, Diana was able to elevate the myth of Billie Holiday, as many of Holiday’s friends noted. For instance, Leonard Feather, a close friend of Billie, had doubted that Diana could ever be convincing in this role. “To my amazement, I confess it, this newcomer destroyed almost all of my reservations,” he said. “Miss Ross brought to her portrayal a sense of total immersion in the character. Dramatically, this is a tour de force.”

  Another of B
illie’s friends, the late music critic Ralph Gleason, wrote for Rolling Stone, “I never thought someone so young could have loved Billie so much. How glad I am now to have been so wrong.”

  William Wolf from Cue magazine put it this way: “Diana Ross should be the biggest movie superstar to come along since Barbra Streisand, and she possesses deeper acting ability. No question about it: Miss Ross is a hit, and her movie is a hit …” Imagine how thrilled she must have been with that review, comparing her to Barbra.

  Making matters even more joyous, the Lady Sings the Blues double-record soundtrack shot straight to number one on the pop charts. Certainly, no one at Motown was singing the blues about that news, least of all Diana Ross.

  At the end of January 1973, when the Academy Award nominations were announced, no one at Motown was surprised that Diana Ross was named as a nominee in the Best Actress category. Certainly she deserved recognition for such an impressive cinematic debut. The film was also nominated in four other categories: Best Art Direction (Carl Anderson, art director; Reg Allen, set director); Best Costume Design (Bob Mackie, Ray Aghayan and Norma Koch); Best Scoring: Adaptation and Original Song Score (Gil Askey, who had certainly come a long way since acting out the Supremes show at the Copa in Berry’s office seven years earlier) and, most surprisingly, considering all that had gone into it, Best Screenplay (Terence McCloy—whose work was pretty much gone by the time the movie went into production, rewritten by the other nominees, Motown’s Suzanne dePasse and Chris Clark).

  Diana’s competition in the Best Actress category included Liv Ullmann (The Immigrants), Maggie Smith (Travels with My Aunt), Liza Minnelli (Cabaret) and Cicely Tyson (Sounder). The Golden Globe and all sorts of other awards had come Diana’s way, and she was thrilled by most of them.

  Only Diana’s husband, Bob, and mentor, Berry, really knew how much she wanted the Academy Award, the ultimate confirmation of her ability as an actress. Berry wanted it for himself as much as for Diana, of course, because it would secure him a place in the movie business. But, truly, he also believed she deserved it. At the same time Berry learned that it was customary for motion picture studios and production companies to purchase advertisements in trade publications—primarily The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety that specifically publish for those in the industry—touting their films and stars. First, the advertisements are placed to encourage members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to consider Oscar nominations. Once a movie has been nominated, more ads are purchased to encourage voting. Some people feel this is just a method of swaying votes, as well as financing the production of these trade journals. When Berry heard about how influential these advertisements can be, he thought it was a good idea, and maybe even had the wrong impression that the Academy Award might be up for sale. He spent many thousands of dollars touting Lady Sings the Blues and Diana in one of the most ambitious advertising campaigns in recent Hollywood history.

  Day after day, there were full-page ads of Diana looking her very worst as Billie: being photographed for her mugshot, her lips chapped and wig askew; going through cold-turkey withdrawal in a padded cell; sitting on a toilet wearing just a bra, shooting up; snarling at Billy Dee Williams with a switchblade in her hand; screaming and smearing lipstick all over a dressing-room mirror in a fit of hysteria. There was never any accompanying type. It was clear that Berry wanted to prove that Diana was a legitimate actress, and had selected the most melodramatic moments to illustrate that point. He also started to plant untrue stories in the trades about forthcoming film ventures. (The front-page headline in one trade paper reported that Diana had been “tapped” for two new films “and that negotiations were under way with a leading European costar.” It wasn’t true.)

  In short, it was overkill. Many industry observers and journalists would even later claim they were offended by the heavy-handed campaign. However, this practice still goes on, and what movie producers and studios do these days—filling almost an entire trade magazine like Daily Variety with advertisements for a single film or actor—certainly makes Berry’s campaign seem minimal in comparison.

  Consensus

  On 26 March 1973, the night before the Academy Award ceremonies, Diana hosted a twenty-ninth birthday party for herself at the Silberstein home. In attendance were many celebrities, the Motown top brass as well as the key players in the Lady Sings the Blues project. It was an extravagant affair with everyone just having a good time celebrating while also hoping for the best at the upcoming awards show. The sense, though, was that Diana was a shoo-in for the award, especially since she had earlier won the Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer—Female. Certainly, Liza Minnelli was concerned, or as she told one reporter, “I have only two words to say about the Oscars, Diana Ross!” Still, Liza had won the Globe for Best Actress (in a Comedy or Musical), so that had to have been a little worrying for everyone in the Ross camp. Indeed, Berry was concerned, but for another reason: it was the first time in history that two black women had run against each other for Best Actress in the same year: Diana and Cicely Tyson. He was worried that the two women might cancel each other out. However, he was in one of those rare situations in his life where there was literally nothing he could do about any of it.

  As a birthday gift, Berry gave Diana an enormous scrapbook of photographs of her, dating all the way back to the beginning of her career. She loved it. Bob then gave her a toy poodle. Everyone was in a party mood when Diana knelt down in front of the dog and Berry. As if bowing before Berry, she implored, “Oh, creative one, name my dog! Name my dog!”

  Berry announced, “I dub thee … Oscar.” Everyone laughed and cheered.

  Later, Diana led everyone to an upstairs bathroom in which one of the walls had been papered white. All of the guests were asked to write some sweet sentiment on it to memorialize the night. As all of this was happening, Diana cornered Ron Miller in the hallway. It was late and both had had a lot to drink. “So, Ron, tell me the honest-to-God truth. Do you think I’ll get the Oscar?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s doesn’t matter if you don’t get it, Diane,” he answered, trying to be diplomatic, “because, creatively, you certainly deserve it.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” Diana said with a raised eyebrow. “I know I did a good job. Now, I just really want that goddamn award, Ron. I really and truly do. What do you think are my chances? Tell me the truth.”

  Ron hesitated for a moment. “Okay. I think Liza may get it,” he told her. He remembered instant tears coming to Diana’s eyes.

  “But why?” Diana asked. “She wasn’t any better than me, was she?”

  “No,” Ron said. “But, you see, they never gave an Oscar to Judy Garland. And I’m afraid Hollywood will now try to appease its guilt by giving one to Liza.”

  “But that’s terrible,” Diana countered. “That is so unfair.”

  “Well, that’s Hollywood,” Ron said.

  “Love it or leave it, huh?” Diana asked.

  “Yep. Love it or leave it,” Ron agreed. “But promise me one thing,” he asked her. “Promise me that even if you lose the award, you’ll call the dog Oscar anyway.”

  Diana laughed. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  This was such a momentous time in her life, Diana wanted both her parents, Ernestine and Fred, present to support her through it and both were with her. Ernestine, of course, was thrilled for her daughter.

  At the party at the Ross-Silberstein home, Fred was talking with Ernestine and a bunch of the Motown staffers when Diana approached.

  “You know what everyone’s saying here, don’t you?” Ernestine asked Diana as she took both her hands in hers.

  “What do you mean, Mama?”

  “Everyone agrees you’re going to win,” she said, glowing with pride. The others present all smiled at Diana. She took it all in and beamed. It was quite a moment.

  The next evening, 27 March, Diana, Berry, Bob, Fred and Ernestine attended the forty-fifth Academy Awards presentation together at the Dorothy Cha
ndler Pavilion in Los Angeles. What a big night. Diana decided to keep her hairstyle simple for the occasion, short and extremely conservative-looking. She wore a silver satin pantsuit with matching sequinned waistcoat, white blouse and black cravat. A red corsage on her lapel perfectly matched her lipstick. Later, she would change into a slinky black evening gown. When the nominees’ names were called, she held her breath and waited … for what turned out to be a huge disappointment, maybe the biggest of her life up until that time. Liza Minnelli’s name was announced; Judy’s kid had won for Cabaret, just as Ron Miller had predicted. Diana applauded, took a deep breath and tilted her head back. Trying to maintain her composure, she closed her eyes and visibly exhaled. Then, she reached over to Bob and held his hand tightly.

  In the end, Motown lost all of its nominations to others. Berry was characteristically optimistic that evening, at least in front of the press as they left the theater. “We’ll be back. We’ll definitely be back,” he said firmly. Privately, he was crushed. Later, as everyone at Motown tried to figure it out, they began to think that Berry’s aggressive advertising campaign had ended up costing Diana the Oscar. It’s true that the promotional strategy was a bit unsettling, by the standards of the 1970s. “I tried to tell Berry and Suzanne just that,” Jay Weston later said. “But they wouldn’t listen to me. They thought they could put that Motown money at work. They didn’t understand that the Academy voters are older, conservative and, for the most part, white and easily insulted.”

  Diana kept a stiff upper lip all the way through the ceremony, but during the long walk from the front door of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion across the theater plaza, it was clear that she was going to cry. A hand reached toward her and handed her a crisp, starched handkerchief. She grasped it as she entered the waiting limousine. Once safely inside, she couldn’t hold back her emotions. She folded into Bob’s arms as her parents watched from across the stretch limousine. “There were tears,” her father recalls.