Why everyone on the set of ‘Lady Sings the Blues’ hated Berry Gordy: “Diana was beyond frustrated”
By the 1970s, Motown founder Berry Gordy wanted to expand his empire beyond the music business and into Hollywood. He relocated the company’s offices from Detroit to Los Angeles and began to develop a project for one of Motown’s biggest stars, Diana Ross. No one, including Gordy, thought that the Queen of Motown could actually act, but in Lady Sings the Blues, she would be playing Billie Holiday, and the most important thing was that she could sing and electrify an audience.
Ross had only recently struck out on her own, separating herself from The Supremes to start performing as a solo artist, but Gordy wanted her to become more than just a pop star. He had helped shape her career and public persona and now wanted her to be a movie star. So, for her film debut, he cast her in the lead role of a two-and-a-half-hour film in which she would play one of the most complicated and recognisable figures of the past half-century.
Things were made even more challenging by the fact that Ross had just given birth and gotten married to music executive Robert Ellis Silberstein. The child, however, was Gordy’s. Ross and the Motown founder had struck up a romance in the mid-60s, but had called it off before she married Silberstein. Not surprisingly, the history between them led to some difficulties on set, particularly when it came time for Ross to perform romantic scenes with her on-screen love interest, Billy Dee Williams.
The shoot was already challenging for Ross, who was carrying the entire production on her shoulders. The scenes in which she was ill with drug addiction, fighting with Williams, and struggling to perform on stage were emotionally and physically harrowing, particularly for a first-time actor. As Williams explained it to Ross’s biographer, however, Gordy was the one who came across as the most troubled during the production.
“It was clear to me from the beginning that they had this psychodramatic, complex love affair going on, even though she was married to someone else,” he said, explaining that although everyone knew they were no longer physically involved, their history hung over the shoot. Gordy was particularly resistant to filming a scene in which Ross and Williams were supposed to kiss. Every time they would get to that point in the script, Gordy would interrupt and find a reason to skip it.
“Diana was beyond frustrated,” Williams recounted. “‘Jesus Christ, Berry,’ she said, ‘it’s only a kiss.’” Eventually, they made it through the scene in front of the cameras, and everyone survived, even Gordy.
The gamble of the entire production paid off. Ross received rave reviews for her performance and even earned an Oscar nomination. She could, it turned out, act as well as any other Hollywood star, and the critics raved. The film was a resounding success, earning five Academy Award nominations in total and suggesting that Motown might become the next big thing in Hollywood. It was the high point, however. No other film from the company did as well, and eventually, Gordy abandoned the movie business altogether.
