Being Berry Gordy — Adam White

THE CHAIRMAN, AS PORTRAYED ON STAGE

“Mr. Gordy, they’re really talented, they’re so cute, won’t you just come to the audition?”

“I’m sure they’re talented and I’m sure they’re cute, but they’re kids, and I hate kid acts.”

“What about Stevie Wonder, isn’t he a kid?”

“We got to deal with his mother, his teacher, his lawyer, and the courts. And that’s before we’ve made a record. And just as we get started, he’s got to stop and go to school.”

“But isn’t it worth it?”

“Yeh, well, finally.”

“But these kids sang for me yesterday at Bobby Taylor’s apartment. They are really special.”

“Suzanne, I. Am. A. Busy. Man.”

This purported exchange between Berry Gordy and Suzanne de Passe is a moment in The Jacksons: An American Dream, the 1992 TV dramatisation of the Indiana brothers’ extraordinary rise to fame.

***Brandon Victor Dixon with the chairman***

De Passe was played by singer/actress Vanessa Williams, while the part of Gordy was in the hands (and heart) of Billy Dee Williams. “I thought I was the perfect person for that,” he told Wisconsin Public Radio’s Adam Friedrich a few months ago, “because I knew Berry very well. He has a wonderful take on life, and I wanted to express that. There’s something very whimsical about Berry and I thought I was the only one that could really pull it off.”

Indeed, Williams knew him very well. More than 50 years ago, the actor auditioned for and secured the leading man role in the Gordy-produced Lady Sings The Blues, opposite Diana Ross, and he signed a multi-year management contract with the Motown founder. Given that relationship, it’s curious that Williams’ recently-published autobiography, What Have We Here? Portraits of a Life, makes no mention of his portrayal of Gordy in The Jacksons: The American Dream.

Fortunately, some of the other actors who have played Gordy on stage over the past ten-plus years have recalled the experience, notwithstanding the role’s many challenges.

“The chairman! The founder of Motown and a man who needs no introduction. Strong mover. This is a very featured ensemble track. The character is black.”

Thus, the producers of Ain’t Too Proud put out a casting call for the 2022 touring edition of the Temptations’ musical. And just last year, the team behind Music of the March sought an individual to portray Gordy in a stage tribute to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and the Motown sound. “Berry is slick-talking as well as humourous,” declared the role requirement. “Looking for an actor with a great narration speaking voice, who can be both stern and colourful.”

Billy Dee Williams aside, perhaps the best-known actor who appeared as Gordy is Brandon Victor Dixon: he joined the first cast of the Broadway production of Motown: The Musical when it was unwrapped in 2013 – and had the benefit of spending time with the man himself during rehearsals. “Berry had trusted me and had great respect and admiration for my instincts on stage, and in a lot of respects, [his] were very similar,” Dixon recalled for the TheaterMania website shortly after the musical opened at New York’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. “It was no sweat. I would argue with him at times over the ways to interpret scenes or how things would happen until finally he would be like, ‘How you gonna tell me? I’m the one who lived it!’ ”

Not that Motown: The Musical basked in rave reviews. “For all the richness of its gold-and-platinum-plated soundtrack,” opined New York Times critic Charles Isherwood, “Motown would be a much more satisfying nostalgia trip if Mr. Gordy and his collaborators were more effective curators of both story and song, rather than trying to encompass the whole of the label’s fabled history in two and a half hours.” Of Dixon, Isherwood wrote, “In the central role of Berry – I’m tempted to say the only role – Mr. Dixon sings with passionate fervour, although in the dialogue scenes he’s only as good as his often flat-footed material.”

Flat-footed or not, Motown: The Musical had a decent Broadway run of 775 performances, and in 2014, its first touring production set out with Clifton Oliver in the Gordy part. The result was somewhat different to the New York edition. “There are far less people on the stage,” he told the Kansas City Star. “They cut about 11. The set is completely different and the show has a lighter energy. It’s not as heavy and dark as it was on Broadway.”

‘HE’S ALWAYS AROUND’

As for his role, Oliver said at the time that he, too, benefited from first-hand advice, talking for “hours upon hours” to the Motown master. “Mr. Gordy is the most hands-on celebrity I have ever met. He’s always around. He calls me on my cellphone once a week. I’m very serious. Anything I need or the show needs, he does his best to be there.”

In 2015, Jamarice Daughtry joined the U.S. roadshow. “I was very lucky being that I worked directly with Mr. Gordy,” he told me earlier this year. “My preparation for the role was sitting and talking with him. Getting to view his photos and hear stories from his viewpoint made it very real and tangible. In my opinion, Mr. Gordy is a genius. He was able to see the product as well as the humanity that is his artist. Beyond the relationships we’ve seen and heard of, he shared a true connection with all that were/are part of the Motown family.

“Mr. Gordy reminds me of my uncles and men of my community from that era. Which is what I think makes his success story so special. He was a hard-working everyday man who had a stroke of genius. So playing him is like playing those that I know and grew up [with], watching their experience.”

As if one Motown production wasn’t enough, Daughtry has also appeared in Ain’t Too Proud and is currently depicting Gordy in the first U.S. tour of MJ The Musical. Next year, another actor will be seen in still one more rendering of the Jackson story: Michael, a biopic directed by Antoine (Training Day) Fuqua, whose uncle was…Marvin Gaye’s mentor, Harvey Fuqua. Cast as Gordy in this film is Larenz Tate. “The transformation into Mr. Gordy has been an amazing experience,” Tate declared on Twitter/X recently. Filming on Michael was completed this past May. Fuqua is currently editing it for release in the spring of 2025.

A more unusual Gordy-related stage project this year has been the above-mentioned Music of the March: A Tribute to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and the Motown Sound. It was staged January 13 in California at UC Irvine’s Barclay Theatre, with David Greene as Gordy, narrating the story. “They both became appreciative of what each other was doing,” Debora Wondercheck, who commissioned the production, told the Los Angeles Times about King and Gordy. “MLK respected the fact that Berry’s music was bridging.”

Bridging it certainly was, and the actors who have portrayed this 20th century music titan seem to have been grateful for the opportunity. “I think playing Mr. Gordy actually gives me the most freedom of all in the show,” said Josh Tower, another of those Motown: The Musical players. “Not many people know what he looks like, let alone what he sounds like. The other characters, the stars of Motown, you know what these people sound like, what they look like. There is expectation there.”

But perhaps the last word belongs to the man himself. “When I went to Broadway,” Gordy said in 2015, “they were trying to find out, ‘How are you going to Broadway-ize Motown?’ And so I said, ‘I’m not going to Broadway-ize Motown. I’m going to bring Motown to Broadway.’ I always believe that if you tell the truth in an entertaining way, you’ll win.”

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