MAHOGANY 1975

Diana Ross is one of a kind. No disrespect to the pop stars of today (well, that’s not entirely true. I have plenty of disrespect for the pop stars of today, but this isn't the forum), but take away their wigs, costumes, and multi-million dollar stage pyrotechnics, and Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, and even personal fave, Janet Jackson, all look like suitable candidates for the “&” half of any '60s girl group (à la, Martha & The Vandellas, Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans).

Diana Ross, on the other hand, is nobody’s idea of a backup ANYTHING. She couldn't blend in if she wanted to—which, to hear childhood friend and former Supreme Mary Wilson tell it, is something Diana was incapable of even as a skinny teenager in Detroit’s Brewster projects. Take away Diana Ross’ wigs, makeup, and costumes (unimaginable, I know, but try), and you've still got yourself this thoroughly unique, almost bizarre little lightning rod of a woman with a thoroughly captivating, slightly nasal, honey-coated voice; that extraordinary, CinemaScope smile; enormous, Keane-size eyes; and a body I'd always likened to a satin-draped straight-razor.

In short; an original. Someone so unlike anyone else that she easily stands head-and-shoulders above the crowd…as is…without even trying. Add to all this a genuine talent and charisma capable of holding one’s attention without the need for a phalanx of dancers and laser beams behind her, and you've got yourself Grade A star-quality of the sort conspicuously absent in today’s breed of homogeneous pop music androids culled from TV “talent” competitions and assembly-line image-stylist laboratories.

As someone who grew up with the music of The Supremes and always thought Diana Ross looked and acted like a full-fledged movie star (read: Diva) long before she actually became one; I viewed the Academy Award nomination she received for her film debut in Lady Sings the Blues (1972) as the realization of a professional inevitability and harbinger of things to come in what looked to be an equally successful career as an actress. To some, Lady Sings the Blues was just the successful film debut of another singer/actress along the order of Barbra Streisand's breakout performance in Funny Girl. But to the Black community, Diana Ross making it as a movie star was recognized for the wholly auspicious, thoroughly inspirational landmark it was.

All Bow Down to the Goddess
I love how, in this screencap, she isn't flattered, flustered, or even embarrassed by the hand-kissing. Diana just accepts it as her due. Like the Pope. 

The '70s Black film explosion was a culturally polarizing era in which the gain of increased onscreen visibility for Black women was mitigated by the fact that all too often in these films—specifically those that fit the Blaxploitation paradigm—their participation was limited to that of sassy sexpots or badass kung-fu mamas.

The mainstream success of Lady Sings the Blues signaled a growth and evolution in Black cinema, while Diana Ross' natural crossover appeal (a classy, sophisticated soul that didn't alienate Black audiences; an exotic-yet-familiar Eurocentric glamour that appealed to whites) ushered in a new age for Black actresses in film. Hollywood, after having dropped the ball with Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, Eartha Kitt, and Diahann Carroll, appeared at last ready to bestow upon a Black leading lady, the status of motion picture superstar.

Throwback Stunt Queen / Diana. Doing the Most. Always.
(Someone online described her in these hilarious terms, and I've never forgotten it)

Unfortunately for all but lovers of soap opera, camp, drag queen aesthetics, bad acting, risible dialog, and above all, haute couture excess (i.e., yours truly); Diana Ross’ follow-up to her promising debut film was Mahogany: a problem-plagued production of a creaky "suffering in mink" romantic melodrama that's a virtual 1975 soul-food gumbo of every “women’s picture” cliché of the '30s, '40s, and '50s.

Diana Ross as Tracy Chambers

Anthony Perkins as Sean McAvoy

Billy Dee Williams as Brian Walker

Jean-Pierre Aumont as Christian Rosetti

Mahogany tells the story of Tracy Chambers, an aspiring fashion designer from the slums of Chicago who finds fame and fortune, but not much in the way of happiness, as Mahogany, an international supermodel. Or, as the ads proclaimed, “The woman every woman wants to be—and every man wants to have!” 

Were this a rags-to-riches tale about a male, the predominant conflicts would undoubtedly be of the professional sort…the dramatization of the obstacles impeding the hero’s achievement of his goals. As Mahogany is a film with a female protagonist, it falls into the usual trap of a great many "career woman" movies: it filters all of her professional struggles through the prism of her personal relationships with the men in her life. In Mahogany, Tracy inadequately juggles a trio of suitors, each progressively creepier than the last.

Let’s see what she has to choose from: there’s Brian, the hip Chicago politician who's an old-school chauvinist who thinks everything he is about is the shit, while everything that means anything to Tracy is ethically suspect. There’s controlling, sexually-confused photographer/Svengali, Sean, who resents any attempt by Tracy to achieve independence from him. And last, there’s 60-something Christian, a rather sweetly smarmy Italian Count who financially supports Tracy’s goals so long as she is open to a little hanky-panky payback. She can really pick 'em.

Tracy to Brian: "Something tells me there's more to you than that."
I wish the writers of Mahogany' had felt the same about their title character. In lieu of fleshing out Tracy Chambers' story (what happened to her parents?) or providing deeper insight into what makes her tick, Mahogany is all surface gloss. The film is satisfied with merely presenting Diana Ross as a glamour icon.  

On paper, the casting of Diana Ross as a top fashion model must have seemed like a cinematic slam dunk. Ross had long ago established herself as a thoroughbred clothes-horse whose beauty and flamboyant stage persona had launched a thousand drag shows (and a poorly-made doll by Ideal in 1969). And indeed, had Mahogany been designed as a Vogue photoshoot, all might have gone swimmingly, for when we're asked to gaze upon the luminous Miss Ross, all is right with the world. Lamentably, this being a motion picture and all, it's only when people start to walk and talk that things start to fall apart.

Calgon, Take Me Away
Mahogany, clearly enjoying Sean's fumbling, stranger-in-paradise, amorous attentions

For starters, the script is a disaster. The dialog is tin-eared, and it's hard to fathom the presence of so many post-Valley of the Dolls / The Best of Everything career-girl cliches stockpiled in a film not intentionally conceived as parody or satire. 

Secondly, the performances are all over the map. No two people seem to be appearing in the same film at the same time. The clashing acting styles of Ross (over-modulated), Williams (laid-back), and Perkins (twitchy), have the feel of one of those international productions where each member of the cast speaks in their native language, only to be dubbed later.
This fluctuation in tone is perhaps due to the film's original director, Tony Richardson (A Taste of Honey, Look Back in Anger), abandoning the project—fired or quit, depending on the source—and directing neophyte/veteran control freak Berry Gordy taking over the reins. Ross and Gordy, former lovers, apparently clashed frequently on the set, resulting in Ross staging a walkout of her own.

Everybody's a Critic
Mahogany, here debuting one of her "originals," gets a taste of the kind of
critical drubbing Diana Ross would later receive upon the film's release.

Most grievously, Mahogany fails to make good on any of the opportunities posed by Tracy being an African-American woman daring to dream outside of the narrow social confines of poverty, sexism, and racism with little to rely on but her determination and drive (successful Black models were still rare in 1975). While there are a couple of token scenes broaching the complex and controversial issues of racial authenticity, selling-out, and the European acceptance/eroticization of Black women, the film clearly prefers to spend its time fueling the Diana Ross success myth.
At every juncture, Mahogany invites us to subconsciously blend Tracy's life with that of Diana Ross. Sometimes intentionally: Ross studied fashion design as a teen and grew up in a poor neighborhood. Sometimes unintentionally: Tracy's relationship with the psychotically possessive and controlling Sean McAvoy hits awfully close to home with what's been written about the Ross/Gordy pairing. In its determination to give Diana Ross fans the Diana they love and want to see, Mahogany ultimately avoids being about anything in particular and winds up just being another diva vanity production on par with Streisand's The Mirror Has Two Faces and A Star is Born.

Get used to Diana's throat. You're gonna see a lot of it in this film.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

While Mahogany’s somewhat sour subtext will always prevent it from being one of my top favorites (handsome or not, Billy Dee Williams’ Brian is a genuine jerk. And I can’t get past the film’s “Men are allowed to be passionate about their jobs; women are only allowed to be passionate about men” ideology), I do confess to having grown extremely fond of this movie over the years. For all the wrong reasons, of course, but fond of it, nonetheless.

As movies grow increasingly dumber, blander, and more market-researched, good camp is becoming increasingly hard to find. Most bad movies today are bad because they are unimaginative and lazy. Give me an old-school trash movie that jumps the track because it’s carrying a full cargo of ego, pretension, hubris, and delusion. Mahogany has plenty of the aforementioned to spare, plus the added bonus of a lead actress who never really knows when to tone it down, and a parade of ghastly, gaudy, gorgeous fashions. 

A few of my favorite Mahogany moments-

The Kabuki Finale

Mahogany's "stressed out" face

The homoerotic gun battle

These Extras

The Nip Slip

The Interview

Sean playing "Dunk the Diva"

PERFORMANCES

What makes Mahogany so enjoyable for me is, first and foremost, Diana Ross, who I'd be happy to watch if all she was doing was a crossword puzzle. And it's a good thing I feel that way, because, for whatever reason, the sensitive, compellingly natural actress from Lady Sings the Blues (or The Wiz, for that matter) is nowhere to be seen in Mahogany. In its place are scenes of self-conscious, Great Lady suffering and moments that feel as though she's lampooning her own image by behaving like a Diana Ross impersonator. There are a few moments where Ross is actually very good (she has a good, relaxed rapport with Williams in their scenes), but for the most part, I get the impression she's creating her own performance without a lot of directorial guidance.

Always a favorite is the late-great actress and Oscar nominee (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) Beah Richards, who appears oh-so-briefly as Tracy's Aunt Florence

When it first came out, I was just disappointed in Mahogany and its waste of a one-of-a-kind natural resource like Ross. Now, given that she has made so very few films, I find myself grateful that there exists at least one film where Diana Ross gets to delve into Joan Crawford/Faye Dunaway territory and give her fans exactly the kind of excessive, camp-tastic drag show her recording artist persona has always played upon.

Miss Ross  - Killin' it.
Beyonce, JLo, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry...the whole lot. They should be thankful as hell that young Diana isn't around.  They'd all be eating her dust and chilling in her shade.

Anthony Perkins, playing to type (once again), gives the second most enjoyable performance in the film. As the psycho photographer Sean McAvoy, I think he's supposed to suggest Francesco Scavullo, but he's more Z-Man Barzell from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. His scenes are fun because they have a suitably electric, edgy, unpredictability to them. And though he sometimes comes off hammy as hell, in this corny and cheesy cinema casserole chronicle, he's just the spice this film needs. 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

There are two bits of perfection in Mahogany beyond 8th Wonder of the World, Diana Ross: The Oscar-nominated theme song, "Do You Know Where You're Going To?" and the amazing, much-imitated fashion montage sequence that accompanies the instrumental rendition. The montage is credited to Jack Cole, and it's literally the most striking bit of filmmaking ingenuity in the entire movie. It could have been released as a stand-alone film or music video. It's brilliant, it's exhilarating, and I just love everything about it. (Maybe Jack Cole should have directed the whole film!)

Because the full title of the song is Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You're Going To?) I always assumed it was composed for the film. While researching this post, I found out that Thelma Houston actually recorded the song first (with slightly different lyrics) back in 1973! You can listen to it HERE. 

Diana Ross in Mahogany (top left) and Barbra Streisand in Funny Lady (bottom left) channel Modern Dance legend Martha Graham's 1930 dance piece, "Lamentation" (right).

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Representation matters. And if a film as seriously flawed and inherently silly as Mahogany matters at all (and it does), it's as an alternative vision of African-Americans onscreen. I always like thinking back on how powerful and inspiring the glamorous images in Mahogany must have appeared to young people in the '70s, young Black girls in particular, who rarely got the opportunity to see someone who looked like them onscreen revered for their beauty.  That's why I always give this movie a great deal of credit even while not considering it to be very good. 

And yet, while I greatly admire Diana Ross as a role model, Mahogany has never earned any points for the double-sided message it sends to young women. 

In the '70s, feminism in the movies liked to talk a good game, but when it came to love stories, a great many films ended with the female characters doing all the adapting, while the males pretty much retained the lives they led when we first met them. In 1974s Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Ellen Burstyn’s character makes a very good point when she declares, “It’s my life!  It’s not some man’s life that I’m here to help him out with!” Yet by fade-out, Kris Kristofferson still has his ranch and horses and no immediate plans to move to Monterey, while Alice, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily table her dream of becoming a professional singer, but not in Monterey, her goal throughout the film. The not-so-subtle implication being that her dreams of Monterey were the fantasy of a young girl; her relationship with Kristofferson is the real (grown-up) thing. 

That's comedy writer Bruce Vilanch under all that hair

In Mahogany, Tracy Chambers dreams of being a fashion designer. Although her behavior in every sequence suggests a professional ambition backed by considerable drive (she devotes every free moment to working on her designs, attends night classes, and takes her sketches to dress manufacturers), the screenplay seizes every opportunity to minimize her goals, subtly characterizing them as the superficial dreams of a socially unenlightened woman. 

Especially when compared to the lofty, “uplift the race” ambitions of smug, self-satisfied defender of the downtrodden, small-time politician Brian Walker. A man who, when not reproaching Tracy for actually having thoughts and ideas that are not specifically his own, spends his time using one arm to pat himself on the back for his altruistic impulses, the other to start brawls with political hecklers. Instead of Brian and his dismissal of her dreams representing the kind of narrow-minded people Tracy needs to get away from, Brian is presented as the savior of her literal and figurative "soul." And so, at the film's fade-out, Tracy, having left behind Rome and her successful career, is (I can only assume) to be applauded for being mature enough to choose love over a job, and for taking Brian’s Curse of the Cat People proclamation: “Success is nothing without someone you love to share it with!” to heart. 

Despite the fact that Brian has experienced, by film's end, nothing in his own career that comes close to the level of success Tracy has achieved, everything ends on a note of things being "righted" when Tracy returns to his side, vowing to " put her imagination to work” for the cause both she and her man believe in. The message is clear: Women have fantasies and dreams that are self-centered and superficial, while men have ambitions that are righteous and benevolent.

I guess, in a way, it's kind of good that Mahogany isn't a better film. Were it a movie people took seriously, they might actually have paid attention to its message. As it stands, Mahogany is much like a great many real-life fashion models: exciting, beautiful, stylish, a tad overdressed, but without too much to say that's of substance. 

BONUS MATERIAL
A fun and informative review of Mahogany can be found here at Poseidon's Underworld

Diana Ross plays a haughty, arrogant nightclub performer (surprise!) harboring a dark secret in the 1971 Danny Thomas sitcom, Make Room for Grand-Daddy. (She's very good.)

Mahogany lip reading: There are a couple of re-dubbed scenes in Mahogany that, thanks to the wonders of HD TV, one can now easily make out. In the big argument scene between Tracy and Brian (in which Brian subtly tells her that she needs to face the fact that she has no career and is unlikely ever to have one) Diana Ross's voice says, "Forget You, Brian!" while her lips reveal "Fuck you, Brian!" (My thoughts, exactly.) This allowed the film to get a PG rating instead of an R.

Similarly, in a scene set in Rome where Tracy buys Brian a snug-fitting Italian suit, Brian can be heard complaining (in long shot), "I feel like an old sissy in these clothes!" Moments later when Brian mimics Tracy's high-pitched voice, Diana Ross can be heard saying, "Now, you sound like a sissy!" but a look at her mouth reveals she is actually saying, "Now, you sound like a faggot!" Clearly repeating the word Billy Dee Williams said (and later re-dubbed) in long shot.
Shame on you, Mahogany!

Ever the professional, Diana practices her dialog from The Wiz...three years early

When Mahogany was released wide, the original poster art got a Linda Blair head-turning makeover. The aloof, "Get a load of this" Diana was now (after the reviews had come in) all smiles and even more over-emphatic with the self-aggrandizing accolades

Mahogany opened in San Francisco on Wednesday, October 22, 1975, at the Alhambra 1 Theater on Polk Street. I was in high school and worked there as an usher, so I saw this movie a lot. I was in heaven!

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2013