STAR INTERVIEW

The Motown Mama of Music, Diana Ross, was lounging comfortably in slacks and a sweater in her elegant penthouse suite at the Waldorf Towers in New York City, when Star interviewer Jack Hamilton called on her. Once the lead singer of The Supremes, Diana is now performing successfully on her own, and is also receiving raves with her break into movie stardom and her no-Iess-than-spectacular role as the late Billie Holliday in the movie, Lady Sings the Blues.

STAR: Diana, Lady Sings the Blues must have been an incredible challenge for you, both personally and professionally. Can you give us an insight as to how you first felt about playing Billie Holliday?
 

DIANA: Well, you know, before we even started the picture, Harry Belafonte said to me, "You must have a helluva lot of guts to take on a legend like Billie. It's like somebody asking me to play Dr. Martin Luther King or Malcolm X." And I told him, I think her life probably should be done': I don't think I'm going to hurt her memory or her legend. And I really did the best I could, I worked my butt off! .
 

STAR: Was it difficult to play the role of someone you never knew?
 

DIANA: This morning I was Just thinking to myself: I never met her one time, and I only know people who knew her and said what a monumental legend she was. I remember asking Joe Louis, "Why did everybody love Billie Holiday," and he said, "I don't know if everybody loved her, maybe they just felt sorry for, her." But, whatever it was, it seemed as though they loved her. It's hard for me to talk factually about Billie Holiday, when I never knew her. So all I did was not to try to be Billie, but to take the circumstances that were given to me to act by the script, and from the things I read about, and I talked with people who knew her. Then, taking all these things and putting them inside, I tried to insert something which I instinctively knew was part of her.

STAR: I don't imagine you had the same upbringing as Billie. How did you relate to her life?
 

DIANA: Are you so sure of that? I just feel that Billie Holiday was a lot like the kids I knew in Detroit, and the kid I was when I grew up. White people don't realize that black people have FUN! I know that even though she was born in Depression days, she had FUN and good times, when she was cussin and sayin' those four-letter words, and wrestlin' with the boys. She did a lot of singin' and a lot of dancin'. My mother was in the Depression, but somehow she and her friends found time to have good times.
 

STAR: What were you like when you were younger?
 

DIANA: When I was a child, I slept in the same room with my two sisters and three brothers; three in a bed, with a kerosene jar lighted to keep the chintzes away. But I always had fun. I was a wild playground tomboy. I was real close to all the bullies. We used to kill chickens in garbage cans, and we shot rats with bows and arrows.
At parties I wore patent-leather shoes with big bows in front, and danced, and the boys passed the hat for me. My father had two jobs at once, as a mechanic and an office worker, and my mother worked for up-tee-do white families. At 15, I joined with my two school friends, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard, to become a singing trio, the Primettes, who turned into the Supremes at Motown in 1962, with Berry Gordy. Everybody took an interest in us when we were kids, and just getting started as the Primettes. It was very normal-just like, in another way, religion was important to us when we were growing up, just as it was an important part of Billie's life.
 

STAR: What qualities do you admire in Billie Holiday?
 

DIANA: Billie Holiday had a lot of courage. She pushed for what $he wanted. I know she wrote in her book about the gory things that happened to her, and she got involved in drugs, somehow just like kids today get involved. But in her day it was more unusual.
 

STAR: But didn't Billie have to face a lot more racial nonsense than you do?
 

DIANA: It's hard to make it in this business, especially then. Billie struggled, she wanted to sing, to be an actress, but she didn't give up. She was the first black singer to go out on the road with a white band, and the white public accepted this because they thought all the guys were making her, and this gave them a kick. She never felt inferior to anybody, she felt equal, but coming upon all those problems in the South, like the lynching and the KKK, were rough on her; she was only a young girl. These racial problems seem so really weird. The same problems exist, like 40 years later. The times, you know, haven't really changed all that much. I'm sure I have a lot more privileges than she ever had, like I can use the front elevator here in the hotel! But they shouldn't be privileges, they should be had. Billie may have been too smart for her own good. But she said that drugs never made you sing better, never made you a better musician, or a better writer, or a better person. It just made all the people who loved you very unhappy.

STAR: Did you try to sound like Billie when you sang? The show business trade paper, Variety, wrote that, "Miss Ross attempts to ape the late singer's distinctive vocal style, but fails to connect either in form or substance. "
 

DIANA: Well, I'm ready for it. In fact, after this, I'll don't know whether "II do another film or not. You can't do a Billie Holiday story without doing her songs. I wasn't going to play her re- cords and lip sync. I knew I'd be wide open to a lot of criticism, which I really don't mind, but I do feel that I did all the songs with as much of my heart as I'm sure she gave. So it wouldn't be like criticizing me, it would be like criticizing somebody I've become a fan of. Even when I finished the film, I felt drained and incomplete, because I had been living her life so long. I just lived with her records. I didn't listen to any- thing else for nine months. I found out that when you're sad and depressed, you can listen to her as much as when you're happy. Billie was a REAL singer. She knew about music and she made her voice like a horn. She knew about phrasing and timing. She was a musician when jazz was a whole different thing from the music today, a whole different feel. I would never compare her singing with mine. I'm all feeling. I know nothin' about notes and music and things like that. She was just so wild with it she could stray over from the melody, and then come back to it, and let people know she knew she had been there, and then do some other thing. She was really art in music.
 

STAR: Did It blow your mind to become an actress when you've never acted before?
 

DIANA: All that never meant much to me. It went completely over my head. I never paid that much attention to movies, only TV and havin' fun. To me, Paramount was just a place to go to work. I just had to hang in there, and not be embarrassed to make a fool of myself. Sometimes that's the whole thing about acting, being afraid to act in front of people. And, yes, I did have fear. I had a complete loss of confidence, and the only person I ever told this to was Berry Gordy, the head of Motown. "Lookit," I said, "you sure I can do this okay? I have a lot to lose, can I be hurt, is it worth it to do it anyhow, maybe I shouldn't do it at all?" And then he told me to shut up.
 

STAR: It was Berry Gordy who got the part for you; he's the love of your life, isn't he?
 

DIANA: Oh yeah, oh yeah, definitely. He's a marvelous man and a very sensitive man, a very complex man, a businessman, a genius. But why don't you ask me about my husband? He's a very nice man, from New York here. He moved to Los Angeles the same time as I did. When I was just learning tennis, we met on a tennis court. We dated for about two years, and then we got married. it was no secret of any kind. We went out a bit, we broke up, and we went back .together, and we did the trick of staying together, back and forth, through stormy times. And so we decided to get married. I was surprised when he asked me.
 

STAR: Do you have problems that arise because he is white and you are black?
 

DIANA: There's no color problems involved in our relationship, it's just two people. We've had problems, but it's never been racial. I think he's just a man, and I'm just a woman. . . lovers . . . normal things. Every couple goes through these things, getting to share the bathroom, and stuff like that. . .I'm like my daughter Rhonda, I love my freedom. I like to walk, I love New York, and I get sick of this hotel suite, with the same food all the time. They are all so protective of me, they all have their eye on me.
 

STAR: Could you imagine having a movie done about your life?
 

DIANA: What would be the point of my story? Answer: there would be no point. I started here, went to this, there, and that; it wouldn't be the same kind of thing as Billie's story. The Supremes are forgotten. We're remembered by a few, but not really. Times go too fast and memories fade. No- body feels that the Supremes made such a big move in the business. Elvis Presley and The Beatles, Lena Horne and Sammy Davis, Jr., made big moves, but not one person would say they were the first female black group to do this and that, and were the best- selling divas in history-YES YES YES YES, but somebody else always comes up more important. When Sullivan put on his last big show, he brought out all the people who'd been on it for 20 years. They had that nice big segment for us. That little trio of the Supremes - I guess we did hang in there for quite some time.
 

STAR: I'm sure your name will become a legend too, Dianna. Thank you

Star Magazine Copyright © 1973 Petersen Publishing Company