Ross plays Tracy, who lives in inner-city Chicago, works in a department store, and dreams of a career in fashion. Along the way, she falls in love with community activist Brian, played by Williams. Discovered by neurotic photographer Sean (Anthony Perkins), Tracy goes to Rome and becomes a successful model, and eventually a designer, but finds that la dolce vita is less than satisfying. As fashion maven Simon Doonan wrote on the occasion of Mahogany's fortieth anniversary in 2015, it's a "rags-to-chiffon-to-self-discovery story." And speaking of chiffon, Ross, who had studied dressmaking and had designed and sewn some of the Supremes' gowns herself, had at one time wanted to be a fashion designer. That dream came true for Ross with Mahogany as she is credited as the costume designer on the film.
British director Tony Richardson, who had made such well-regarded 1960s films as Tom Jones and The Loved One was hired by Gordy to direct. Graham Betts writes in his Motown Encyclopedia that Richardson got into trouble soon after production began because the director "wanted to shoot the film his way whilst Berry, who was putting up all the money, wanted at least some degree of control over how it was being spent." The final blowup happened, according to Betts, over an on-set disagreement about the casting of an actor in a bit part. Gordy took over as director, but he and Ross had their own battles, including a major blowup when she refused to reshoot the movie's final scene. Gordy never again directed a film.
The reviews for Mahogany were mostly negative. The Time magazine critic called it "Frantically bad" and a waste of Ross's talent. Vincent Canby of The New York Times dismissed the film as "a silly fiction." And Ebert's review was among the most scathing: "An unholy alliance between daytime soap opera and Jacqueline Susann," he wrote, referring to the best-selling writer of wildly popular novels based on celebrity scandals. But other critics recognized the potency of Ross's star power. As Molly Haskell wrote in The Village Voice, "If you think Ross and Williams don't have the audiences eating out of their hands, you saw the wrong movie with the wrong audience." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote of Ross, "she is the absolute essence of the star as symbol of enviable escape from the humdrum ordinary ball."
In spite of the critical drubbing for Mahogany, it performed well at the box office and the film's theme song, "Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You're Going To)," did even better on the music charts, briefly holding the number one spot. The song earned the film its only Academy Award® nomination for Best Song. At the televised Oscars® ceremony, Diana Ross appeared live via satellite from Amsterdam, lip-synching the song while riding in a horse-drawn carriage. To no avail--it lost to "I'm Easy," from Nashville. Ross's feature film career fizzled after one more starring role in The Wiz, (1978). After that, she returned to the role she knew best, as a pop music diva, that endured for decades.
Director: Berry Gordy, Jr.
Producer: Rob Cohen, Jack Ballard
Screenplay: John Byrum based on a story by Toni Amber
Cinematography: David Watkin
Editor: Peter Zinner
Costume Design: Diana Ross
Art Direction: Leon Erickson, Aurelio Crugnola
Music: Michael Masser
Principal Cast: Diana Ross (Tracy Chambers), Billy Dee Williams (Brian Walker), Jean-Pierre Aumont (Christian Rosetti), Nin Foch (Miss Evans), Beah Richards (Florence), Marisa Mell (Carlotta Gavina), Anthony Perkins (Sean McEvoy)
110 minutes
by Margarita Landazuri
