3.25.2017

MOTOWN 25:YESTERDAY-TODAY-FOREVER MARCH 25 1983

Highest moment was Michael Jackson's solo perfomance

The landmark television special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever was filmed before a rapturous live audience on March 25, 1983, the Motown 25 special is perhaps best remembered for Michael Jackson’s performance of “Billie Jean,” which brought the house down and introduced much of the world to the “moonwalk.”



There were other great performances that night, too, but there were also moments that revealed cracks in the joyous-reunion image that Motown chief Berry Gordy sought to portray.



The most glaring breakdown in decorum came during what could have been the evening’s greatest triumph: the reunion of Diana Ross and the Supremes. When Ross, Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong performed together that night for the first time in 13 years, they took to the stage with something closer to 20 years’ worth of unresolved resentment among them.



Early in their performance of “Someday We’ll Be Together,” as Diana slowly moved upstage, Mary and Cindy had the audacity to keep stride alongside her. Diana turned around and angrily pushed Mary back—a move that was carefully edited out of the later broadcast but which prompted Smokey Robinson and others to take the stage and form an impromptu chorus/demilitarized zone between the warring Supremes.

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