Illustration by Lusco y Fusco
Diana Ross is an astronomical powerhouse of a singer, having built her reputation as the star of The Supremes, one of the premier Motown acts of the 1960s. The group appeared a whopping 15 times on The Ed Sullivan Show, rendering them bona fide superstars, and won plaudits aplenty with 12 number-one singles, including “Stop! In the Name of Love,” “You Can’t Hurry Love,” and “Baby Love.” Later, as a solo artist, Ross ruled the charts with the classic “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”
The Supremes emerged at a time of political strife, as African Americans vied to stop the freight train of racial oppression and even violence. Ross became an emblem of changing race relations.
In fact, it was Ross who appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968. Her status as a strong African-American woman was a perfect fit for the times. And it helped elevate the status of African Americans.
The Supremes were a pop crossover success story. Equally popular among blacks and whites, Diana Ross and her Motown cohorts, such as Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and the Temptations, broke racial barriers in the early 1960s, paving the way for more African-American singers and bands to come into the spotlight.
Ross was an idol of beauty and class, evoking an image that inspired many women of color to emulate her fashion sense. That influence stretched for decades, eventually landing her her own makeup collection for M.A.C. in 2005.
There are myriad milestones, across the media, throughout Diana Ross’ career.
Oscar-nominated for her role in 1972’s Lady Sings the Blues, a biopic of Billie Holiday, Ross also starred alongside a young Michael Jackson in 1978’s The Wiz, an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz with an African-American slant. In 1988, she and her fellow Supremes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But beneath the chart-topping and star acting, a beastly addiction to alcohol and prescription painkillers emerged.
The now-seventysomething Ross reportedly used to put cognac in her coffee before she took the stage. But it was wine that really called to her.
Ross was arrested in Tucson, AZ, for DUI on December 30, 2002, and served a two-day sentence as a result.
At the urging of her children, she finally entered rehab in May 2002 —at the Promises Rehabilitation Center in Malibu, CA, a luxurious facility that has treated Robert Downey, Jr., Charlie Sheen, and Ben Affleck.
Like many alcoholics, Ross experienced depression. She had also checked into the psychiatric ward at Century City Hospital in Los Angeles at one point.
Ross scored a series of accolades post-rehab in the 2000s. She appeared with one of her daughters on the cover of Essence magazine’s 50thanniversary issue and was honored by Oprah Winfrey at the Legend Ball Weekend in 2005, an event celebrating 25 quintessential African-American performers, artists, civil rights activists, and influencers. She was honored alongside such luminaries as Maya Angelou, Aretha Franklin, and Coretta Scott King. She was a Kennedy Center honoree as well as a recipient of BET’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 2010, she set out on More Today Than Yesterday: The Greatest Hits Tour at the age of 66. The tour earned more than four million dollars, placing 66th on Pollstar’s Top 100 North American Tours. Because of its success, the tour was expanded to a second leg, and then a third leg. Ross then scored two Lifetime Achievement awards, from the Grammy Awards in 2012 and the American Music Awards five years later. But perhaps the most prestigious acknowledgement of her decades of influence came when President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2016.
Now, as mother to three girls and two boys, Ross is sober and reflects fondly on her life as an icon.
“I’m an icon, or a diva, or a soul sister, or a queen. Labels,” she told The Guardian in a lengthy interview from Paris Fashion Week in 2005. “I have never gotten into the label thing. Icon. What is an icon? When someone is iconic it means they have established a certain kind of legacy possibly, and I think it does come with time… I don’t think you are born an icon.”
But an icon she is. And now she sets a sober example.
