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Whatever the critics say about Mahogany—and they have few compliments—the film has just broken Broadway theater records held by Jaws and The Godfather. The receipts have made Berry Gordy Jr., 45, the most powerful new director in the business. That power derives from his triple role as founder, chairman and 95% owner of Motown Industries. The company was founded in 1960, shortly after Gordy quit the Ford assembly line in Detroit. The ex-professional featherweight boxer started with $800 borrowed from his father, a Georgia-born plasterer. Motown grossed $48 million last year on the combined earnings of its record label, one of the country's largest music-publishing companies, an artists' management concern and a TV and movie production arm, whose only previous theatrical release was the immensely profitable Lady Sings the Blues, also starring Gordy's close friend and protegee Diana Ross.
Director Gordy arranged his debut by talking the producer of Mahogany —one Berry Gordy—into firing Tony Richardson (Tom Jones) ten days after shooting began. Richardson, complained Producer-Critic-Sociologist Gordy, was "losing all the subtleties" of ghetto life and humor. The not-so-sub-tleties were supplied—at inflationary prices. Did Ross, doubling as her own clothes designer, require more yard goods and seamstresses to realize her visions? She got them. Did the film maker require an outdoor theater for a few atmospheric shots? He hired the 17th century theater at Spoleto for a week and transported the whole cast and crew thither in pursuit of the desired images. Was the script not quite right? Gordy took pen in hand and wrote the line that he says encapsulates Mahogany's philosophical essence: "Success is nothing without someone you love to share it with." Such creativity sent Mahogany $1.25 million over its original $2.5 million budget.
White Listeners. One should not dismiss too lightly any of the director's musings on success. It is one subject that he knows all about. Students of the Motown sound have long contended that it was Gordy's basic gimmick—the smoothing and packaging of rhythm and blues—that drew white listeners to his label. Essentially, he applied the same formula to his profitable production of Lady Sings the Blues, turning the hard life and times of Singer Billie Holiday into a muzzy backstage love story. It is also what happens in Mahogany. "I wanted to bring the same romantic feeling that movies used to have," says Gordy.
Gordy is disdainful of all criticism, personal and professional. The harsh reviews? They are merely "attacks on an uppity black." As for frequent rumors that Motown is Mob financed, Gordy counters: "We have a choice of suing people for such stories or ignoring them." Employee resentment over his dictatorial managerial style is not so easily dismissed. "If I ever wrote a book," says one Motown staffer, "I'd call it God Is on Extension 274—that's Berry's."