Originally Posted by
marv2
Darn it Ollie! Let me try to copy and paste the body of the text for you:
When it comes to ego, there ain't no mountain high enough to top Diana Ross'.
In her new autobiography, the singer rambles on about her own greatness and offers a vacuous pop philosophy usually found on the back of tea bags. For example:
"My love and appreciation of humanity and life extends to all people."
"I have to be Diana Ross, the performer, the star, not Diana the human being . . . "
"For a public figure, enduring unfounded criticism is a necessary evil."
"Success is not all that it's cracked up to be."
"If you ever get lonely, travel. If you can't afford the trip, rip out pictures in magazines and pretend."
My personal favorite, when Ross tried to quell a riot at her live performance in Central Park, she shouted to the unruly crowd: "Do you love me? Do you love me? If you love me, get out of the g------ park!"
Ross is self-serving, petty and vain, but she commits a bigger sin in her celebrity autobiography: She's boring.
The best piece of sleaze from "Secrets of a Sparrow" came out when Ross recently appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." The former Supreme told Winfrey that her eldest daughter, Rhonda Suzanne, 22, was the love child of a romance with her former Motown mentor Berry Gordy.
"I don't really say this in the book," Ross said. "Rhonda has two fathers. Bob [[Silberstein, Ross' first husband) raised her . . . yet Berry Gordy is her father."
All right, if Ross is going to save the juicy stuff for Oprah Winfrey, why plunk down 22 bucks for her new book? After all, there's not much else between the covers except for glossy, soft-focus photographs of the Queen Supreme.
This book is so self-centered and goofy, it's difficult to read without laughing out loud.
But she does dish out dirt about those who have offended or upstaged her.
For example, Ross mercilessly lashes out at the late Florence Ballard, an original Supreme who left the group, went broke, and died of a heart attack in 1976.
Ballard, Mary Wilson and Ross came out of a Detroit housing project, and beginning in 1964 recorded a remarkable string of hits as the Supremes.
Ross, with her elegant beauty and lilting voice, was the lead singer in a female trio that became the dominant Motown act of the '60s with hits such as "Where Did Our Love Go," "Baby Love," "Come See About Me," "Stop in the Name of Love," "Reflections" and "Someday We'll Be Together."
The Supremes sold tens of millions of records, but in 1968 Ballard was tossed out of the group. "Florence was . . . an angry woman who drank too much and wouldn't take responsibility for herself," Ross writes.
She also zaps Mary Wilson: "The girls had treated me very badly. They had gone against me with a vengeance."
Ross went solo in 1970, but the old wounds were painfully reopened in 1976 when Ross showed up at Ballard's funeral. Ross created a media circus and tried to run the show, which angered Ballard's relatives.
"I tried to take charge. I guess it's my nature," Ross writes. "I finally gave up. I didn't go to the cemetery. I just got into my car feeling terrible and went home to grieve alone."
Mary Wilson later blasted Ross in her autobiography.
"I loved Mary," Ross writes in her usual Hallmark-card prose. "I have forgiven Mary . . . but I had to allow our friendship to fade away."
Ross similarly dismisses her first two husbands but claims that main squeeze No. 3 -- multimillionaire industrialist Arne Naess -- is peachy keen.
"After the wedding we went on a honeymoon to Tahiti; Arne owns an island near there," Ross writes. "It's very small but completely private, and we were like Adam and Eve, running around naked. All I can say is we were very, very happy."
Diana Ross at 49 still looks stunning and retains an alluring singing voice. Her rise to wealth and fame, while raising five children, should be an inspirational story.
Unfortunately, all that is secondary to this book's real story: Diana Ross' unending love affair with herself.
Review
Secrets of a Sparrow
By Diana Ross
Villard Books
288 pages, $22.
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