Baby, Baby, Where Did Diana Go?

THE face is familiar, but the melody --well, it just isn't right. Up on the stage of Los Angeles' the Now (formerly Cocoanut Grove), a nightclub thick with the ghosts of potted palms and a thousand big-name bands, Diana Ross makes her electric entrance, shimmering like a Broadway sign. She sports a frizzy Afro wig about the size of a boxwood hedge and a sequined sarong that looks as if it were cut from the Orion constellation. That's not the only star trip this lady is on. She seizes the microphone and leans into a song: Don't Rain on My Parade. What is this? Diana Ross, ex-Supreme, making like Barbra Streisand?

The Supremes were one of the biggest --and for a time, one of the best --rock groups of the last decade. They pushed the smooth syncopation of Detroit's Motown sound onto the top of the charts with twelve No. 1 records. But then came the new rocks--and the Supremes suddenly sounded a little rinky dink. Kind of nice, maybe, but definitely oldfashioned. So Diana decided to go another route. A song that she sings in her new nightclub act points the direction:

A leading lady, leading lady, I've always wanted to be a Broadway leading lady: The rootin' tootin'est Annie or a madcap Mame or Dolly, That sad and funny girl Fanny, Nelly Forbush or unsinkable Molly . . .

A few weeks back, Diana, in company with her longtime friend, Motown Mogul Berry Gordy Jr., returned to her old neighborhood in Detroit to see "where I came from and to get an idea of what made me the kind of person I am." From that perspective, there is no doubt that Diana Ross has been energetically traveling the road to superstardom most of her life.

Etiquette. Her family's third-floor walkup, located in a "very, very poor" area, looks shabbier to her now. "I remember when I was growing up that it was decorated nicely," she told TIME Correspondent Sandy Burton. "We had a red velvet couch that I thought was beautiful." Diana's youthful memories are free of the usual ghetto scrounging and deprivation. Her whole family (three brothers, two sisters) sang in the choir of a Baptist church, and Diana learned secular music from a cousin who was known as "the girl with the golden voice." Diana took high school courses in sewing and fashion design, and the money she saved by running up her own pleated skirts she spent on bobby socks and sweaters. She was proud to be voted her class's "best-dressed girl," and prouder still when she began to sing semiprofessionally and all the kids at school suddenly knew her name.

Half a semester before graduation, Diana and her friends Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson auditioned for Gordy. His advice was quick and certain: Finish school and come back when you graduate. The trio showed up again in July, and Gordy enrolled them in his special course of daily "artist's development" etiquette lessons. Under Gordy's tutelage, the Supremes, as they called themselves, turned into the most immaculately coiffured, intricately turned-out trio since the McGuire Sisters. And they were ever so poised. The girls were taught how to sit properly, how to shake hands ("The firmness of the grip," says Diana, "is very important"), and how to climb up on a piano. When they started going out on concert tours, they went with a chaperone. "There has never been an ounce of scandal connected with the Supremes," boasts a Motown executive. "No talk about drugs or anything."

Nicotine. There was, however, considerable talk of their music. After a few forgettable singles, the Supremes hit it big with a tune called Where Did Our Love Go. Florence and Mary sang the background, while Diana did the lead in a voice that was equal parts coyness, sexiness, nicotine and velvet. "Baby, baby, where did our love go?" they purred together, and that little question sent them right to the top.

Inevitably, little frustrations set in. "We were working so constantly we didn't have a chance to spend any money," Diana says. In 1967, Florence split and was replaced by a look-alike named Cindy Birdsong. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was also around this time that the group's billing was changed to "Diana Ross and the Supremes." But the sound stayed the same--in fact, it was beginning to set like concrete.

The tumultuous rock coming from San Francisco and from across the Atlantic began to make the girls sound too smooth. They branched out, adding some show tunes to their repertory. They even tried playing three nuns on the Tarzan TV series. But things weren't the same. Diana felt that "the spirit was gone" from the group and started to make plans for a solo act. Says one Motown executive: "It occurred to us we might have a 2-for-1 stock split."

Static Electricity. The firm found a replacement for Diana ("someone who could live in the clean and wholesome way these girls have lived") in Jean Terrell, a soulful but unknown lead vocalist. Then it invested $100,000 in Diana's solo act, $60,000 of which went for elaborate clothes and new arrangements. Without Diana, though, the Supremes sound more homogenized than ever, and audiences have to memorize their wigs to remember which is which.

Diana, meanwhile, is still all static electricity. She leaps in and out of an assortment of costumes, dances from time to time with two smiling male partners, and makes her way through a repertory of tunes borrowed from the likes of the Beatles, Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee. She even sings a medley of old Supremes hits, but she seems to get through them very quickly.

Diana's solo act does, at last, allow her the leisure to enjoy things material. She owns a Rolls-Royce (a gift from the thrice-wed Gordy) and a new home in Beverly Hills. "I have clothes for every mood," she boasts. Her collection ranges from dungarees and bathing suits to "very classy suits for traveling or teas." Her aim, naturally, is to be an actress. Doris Day advised her that it was not necessary to study acting, and Diana says, "If Jim Brown can do it, I can do it--whatever he's doing." She is especially eager to play the lead in a film biography of the late Billie Holiday, "to sing about blues and sadness." Accordingly, she has set herself to storing up bitter experiences that will help her in the role. Her biggest trauma so far came last year in New Jersey, when someone poisoned her pet dogs.

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