My issues with Mary's first book was the exaggerations, and sometimes the outright lies, of things that we now know for a fact were just not true, such as Mary's account of Flo's last Tonight Show appearance, or "People" being taken away from Flo at the Copa gig, being given to Diana, and Flo never singing it again. Those cannot be "mistakes". And the last one is so painful because Mary even sometimes sang the only solo verse in "People" long after the Copa gig. Those are big statements and I don't believe Mary was ever asked to address these kinds of things. She's gone now, so it has to be chucked into the "it is what it is" bin and move on.
The other problem I had was Mary writing about Diana's personal life. The Diana/Berry relationship had a huge impact on the Supremes that it was unavoidable. Likewise, the Flo/Tommy relationship affected the group as well, so Mary writing about these things was necessary in order to paint an accurate picture of what was going on behind the scenes and the changes within the group. But we didn't need to know about Diana and Brian Holland or Diana and the white dude she was calling collect. That wasn't Mary's business to tell. Those things alone, I've always felt Diana had a right to decide that Mary was a part of her past and she should stay there. I shudder to think of anyone putting my love life [[or lack thereof
) in the pages of a book that isn't mine.
As far as Diana being a bitch of any sort, I say where there's smoke, there's fire. If enough people have enough stories about your bad behavior, all them folks aint lying. The sad thing is that the bitch stories dominate everything when in fact there are also a lot of stories out there about Diana's kindness and generosity. But it's a good case in point of why you should be careful how you treat people. People may not always remember the nice things you did, but they damn sure don't forget when you're nasty.
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