The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal (66 page)

When Diana floated away, Flo, about to boil over—something Gordy and Ross wanted to happen—called out to Mary, loudly enough to deafen the music being played on loudspeakers, “If she comes back over here, I’m gonna kick her!” Or at least that’s Wilson’s version; Tucker says the way Flo told it, it came out this way: “If that black bitch comes over here one more time, I’m gonna kick her black ass!” As the guests went mute and turned to observe the gathering storm, Mary anticipated the worst. While she perhaps might not have been overly upset that Gordy and Ross had been embarrassed, her priority was getting Flo out of there.

“Flo, I think it’s time to go,” she said, an instant before Gordy bellowed from across the pool, “Who brought that woman here?” and,

“Whoever did better get her out of my house!” Flo, by now very drunk, may have wanted to fight back, but when she got up off her stool her legs gave way and she half-collapsed, her fall broken by Mary who held her upright and walked her off the property to Mary’s car—a drill Wilson had become quite practiced at through the years—and drove her back home.

Flo chewed out Mary for taking her into this latest humiliation—

the worst part for her being that Mary again had failed to say a word on her behalf when things got ugly and personal. Despite Wilson’s protestations otherwise, and her recent independent streak, Flo believed Mary 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 349

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was conning herself, that she was “just scared to death of Berry Gordy. . . . She’s scared for her own financial future because Gordy’s drilled it into her head that she can’t sing anymore.” Even more harshly, she told Tucker, “Mary’s just brainwashed” and “just a puppet.” If that was so, then Wilson was living with her own humiliation.

All that Wilson would admit to in
Dreamgirl
was that after the pool party fiasco she had “curs[ed] myself for trying to make us all friends again.” That, she now knew, would never happen, because “[w]e had all suffered wounds that would not heal.”

So lofty was the status of the Supremes in 1968 that after the Martin Luther King rites of mourning and tribute Gordy decided to inject the girls into the national political discourse. Though he had backed Bobby Kennedy for the Democratic nomination, after yet another national trauma when Kennedy was gunned down in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel on June 6 after winning the California primary, Gordy felt it was his duty to endorse Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. That meant the Supremes had to as well, whether they cared to or not.

On July 23, a month before Humphrey would claim the nomination as police ran wild clubbing anti-war demonstrators in the streets of Chicago, Gordy arranged for the girls to publicly endorse Humphrey at a press conference at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria. As was the case with all public events of this or any kind, the publicity effects were carefully gauged; here, the Supremes would reap more credibility as mature, politically aware artists.

As popping flashbulbs coated them with streaks of lights, they posed in brightly colored mini-dresses with a beaming Humphrey—who likely didn’t know “Baby Love” from “Rub a Dub,” but was aware that he needed to shore up his support among black voters—and Diana read a prepared statement written by Gordy saying the group had “thoroughly research[ed] his record and talk[ed] to him for hours and hours.” Buying not a word of this tripe, hardboiled political reporters began bombarding her with questions about issues. Not expecting to answer any questions, Diana didn’t know what to say, and seeing her discomfort Humphrey shielded her by babbling that they had “discussed a greater emphasis on urban policy” and that “Miss Ross is very interested in the quality of life in the United States.”

“Yes, yes I am,” she agreed meekly.

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It went on like this, with Humphrey having to intercede after each question and Diana assenting to whatever he said. But after Humphrey admitted they hadn’t discussed Vietnam she felt she had to add something. “He said he wants to stop the shooting and talk later,” she offered—in truth not a bad answer, in contrast to Nixon’s inscrutable

“secret peace plan” and the endless Paris “peace talks” that hadn’t stopped the shooting. But it was too easy for the press to relegate the whole affair as the “Diana Ross show.” Still, on the premise that any attention is good attention, it was a success for Motown, whose denizens could read in the August 2 issue of
Time
that “[l]ast week in Manhattan when Diana Ross & the Supremes endorsed Humphrey, aides called a special press conference to announce the event.”

Seeing how humiliated Ross had been, Gordy apologized for putting her into such a vulnerable position. But the Supremes were too valuable to forfeit as a symbolic totem in his political and social grand-standing. When he made the scene in April 1969 at a $1,000-a-plate Beverly Hills fundraiser to pay off Bobby Kennedy’s campaign debts, the girls were again beside him.

At least on the matter of the ’68 presidential race, the last laugh went to Flo Ballard. During the fall campaign, Tommy Chapman, looking for some way to pitch Flo, thought it would be an effective counterpoint to the Supremes’ Humphrey endorsement to offer to Nixon’s people the

“other” Supreme’s endorsement. Nixon may have known even less about rock and roll than Humphrey, but he had done a cameo turn on
Laugh-In
, laboring in vain to sound cool uttering in puzzlement, “Sock it to
me
?” Besides,
any
black support for him was welcome; indeed, on the very short list of black celebrities who backed him, Flo was not far down from Sammy Davis Jr. and Lionel Hampton.

And she was not forgotten. At the inauguration on January 20, 1969, it had to be a moment of delirium for Flo Ballard that she was standing where the Supremes would have been had they chosen right in the campaign: up on the stage singing for a well-heeled, powerful, and white crowd—a Berry Gordy kind of crowd.

After the inauguration, Flo and Tommy realized that they’d spent most of the money they had been able to get from Leonard Baun, who as treasurer of their Talent Management company had vowed to toe the line against profligate spending, for their own good. Now, having blown 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 351

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thousands of dollars of their “allowance” and the $15,000 ABC advance on the Manhattan penthouse, gigs like the unfortunate Atlantic City horror show, travel, and the gowns Flo wore at the inauguration, they dropped in on Baun’s office for what they thought would be a routine request for funds; they were, after all, president and vice-president of the company.

Baun first tried to dissuade them, saying the money was tied up in high-interest accounts and investments that would cost them large penalties for withdrawals. When they persisted, he seemed to forget that line and instead turned to berating them for wasteful, irresponsible spending. Then he insisted he’d had to spend money trying to help Flo’s career, such as the $5,548 that went to Lou Zito when he promised to get her bookings. Then, with real
chutzpah
, Baun criticized them for signing with ABC, because it didn’t have the “right concept” for her. To their utter disbelief, he said Flo should have
stayed at Motown
! Gordy, he ventured, “had the right personnel to handle her,” confessing that he

“didn’t know [that] at the beginning.”

Flo knew there was more to it than regrets about past deals. Baun was clearly blaming her and Tommy for a reason, which soon followed when he flat-out told them that all their money was gone—or would be when the IRS was finished dunning her for her back taxes and the financial attorneys he’d hired had been paid. The tax issue, of course, had been the great Damoclean sword hanging over her head, given that Baun was unable to obtain the earnings statements from Motown that would have allowed him to blunt a huge tab. Not only was every penny in the company account scrutinized by the IRS, said Baun, but she owed hundreds of thousands more. Insisting that he was working on reducing the debt, he asked them to leave it to him because if Flo wasn’t careful she could go to prison for years for tax evasion.

The Chapmans felt numb, nearly unable to move or speak. That this was the first they’d heard about any such consequences made them suspicious that Baun was handing them a line of bull. But that would mean Baun had stolen their money, and they didn’t want to believe it; more critically, the idea of jail scared them to death. Seeing them waver, Baun suddenly remembered that he did have the $5,000 for the gowns she’d never been given, in a separate cash account, and said he would withdraw it for her. With that, they agreed to stick with Baun and not press the money issue.

By April, however, not having seen the five grand, they went back to Baun. Flo told him she didn’t want to hear any more bull and to 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 352

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hand over to them all of the company’s financial records, bankbooks, withdrawal receipts, and copies of the Motown agreements, which Flo had not read in full. Baun produced some of these, but said he didn’t have them all, that other attorneys working on the tax case had taken them. Flo had had enough of Baun. What with two children to feed and clothe, a mortgage, car payments, and bills as far as the eye could see, she had recently taken to borrowing from friends to get by, and Tommy had returned to driving (though not for Motown, contrary to what he said Gordy had promised). Desperate as she was, she could think clearly enough to figure that Leonard Baun had swindled her. Right there on the spot she fired him as her manager and as treasurer of Talent Management.

For Baun, this would not bring about a marked life change. If she was right about him, he’d abandoned his responsibility to her long ago, having cleaned her out and left her with a mountain of debt—but he had little to worry about in the way of amercement since for decades victimized artists had recovered about as little from finagling managers as from exploitive record companies, and for the same reason: onerous contracts.

That didn’t stop Flo from trying. Aided by her brother Willie, she began a full-on crusade to make Baun pay. Over the course of months, then years, she would tell her tale of woe to anyone who might help, the police, prosecutors, the Michigan State Bar Association, the state attorney general, even the FBI and black political figures like Congressman John Conyers and Julian Bond. But the outcome was similar to the blanket resistance she faced getting her records played: No one wanted to listen. Neither did lawyers want to represent her on a contingency basis, asking instead for money up front. One who did come aboard requested documents from Baun, was rebuffed, and quit. Her own bank, the Commonwealth, refused to let her examine records pertaining to the account or to the Motown settlement, which only Baun had access to. To get those she’d need a subpoena, but how could she obtain one with no lawyer?

Ballard’s plight found its way into the press in mid-’69. Only a few months before, her story was still being played not as paradise lost but as one merely in pause. In a February
Ebony
article, “FORMER SU -

PREME TALKS—A LITTLE,” Flo, tiptoeing along the Motown line, explained her departure from the group with “Oh, I was just tired of traveling so much and wanted to settle down”—the same line, the story noted, that she “has used for 18 months. . . . Nobody has been able to 0306815867_ribowsky:6.125 x 9.25 4/22/09 11:07 AM Page 353

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get beyond ‘that answer.’” Hardly seeming to be suffering, she was photographed happily holding the twins as she stood beside Tommy, wearing an “at-home gown” with “ranch mink sleeves” and at ease in her home with its “feel of Oriental splendor, crystal chandeliers [and] a large round shell-topped table suspended from the ceiling by a brass chain.” At the time, both of Flo’s records had been, she admitted, “flops, just plain flops,” but the ABC deal still wasn’t dead and she vowed to

“hit the road hard. . . . My husband has lots of things lined up for me.” After all, she reasoned, the Supremes had endured many “flops” before finding success. Tommy chirped in, “Flo’s in for some really big things . . .

college dates, TV, everything.”

As for the suggestion that “Motown gave her a fantastic sum of money to relinquish all claims,” she laughed, saying that she was “far from being a millionaire,” but that she and Gordy were “very cordial to each other . . . he’s a very nice man.” Lying that she didn’t know about the name change to feature Ross until after she “decided to quit,” she denied there’d been any “fights” with Diana, merely “arguments and things, just like sisters,” and, “They’re doing their thing and Flo Ballard is going to do hers.”

Now, in early summer, no “really big things” were happening and she was in debt up to her eyeballs: Because Baun hadn’t paid any of her back taxes, the IRS put liens on her house and car as collateral as she began to make restitution herself, the money coming partly from Tommy’s job and whatever else the Ballard family could bring in. But most of it was from selling off her jewelry and designer clothing.

By the end of the decade she’d helped define, visitors to the house would find her tramping around in old, torn housecoats and dust-trap slippers in drafty, nearly completely empty rooms, dressing the twins in secondhand-store rags. The basement nightclub was now a dark, deserted catacomb. She did, however, seem to have enough to keep the liquor cabinets filled.

She also was making noises about going public with Berry Gordy’s

“dirty laundry,” though it’s unclear what she could have had on him beyond the Ross affair and the Mob rumors, both of which everyone already knew about; most likely she meant the details of her firing, since she’d begun talking of writing a “tell-all” book, which surely would have made Gordy look bad but could do little lasting damage since the Supremes were about to be recast anyway with Ross’s impending exit.