Word: whitney
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...first industry angels were Eugene Harvey and Seymour Flics, then concert promoters, now Whitney's zealous managers and jealous protectors. In 1981 the team devised a game plan: they would develop acting and modeling as adjuncts to the music. Soon Whitney was doing a Canada Dry commercial and TV's Silver Spoons and Gimme a Break. She had already been cutting classes at her private Catholic girls' school to model for the Click agency. She later switched to Wilhelmina and appeared in Glamour and Vogue. Meanwhile she was sharing club dates with Cissy. Finally, at 18, she was ready...
...Clive Davis was ready for Whitney. Earlier, he had helped launch the careers of Janis Joplin, Barry Manilow and Billy Joel. Now he would steer Whitney Houston to middle-of-the-road music. Gerry Griffith, then Arista's A.- and-R. chief, had recommended Whitney to Davis and set up an audition. "Clive sat there poker-faced," recalls Flics. "He said thank you and left. The next day we got an enthusiastic offer." In 1983 Arista signed her, with a "key man" clause: if Davis leaves the company, Whitney can go with...
...charts and No. 3 pop. Then Saving All My Love hit No. 1 R. and B. and No. 1 pop. It's ironic, but Top 40 stations give more exposure to ballads by certain black artists than to those by most whites. Whitney is helping to maintain the ballad tradition." The third single, How Will I Know, brought her to the teens and to MTV, which black artists have traditionally found tough to crack. And Greatest Love became Whitney's top-selling single. Says Davis: "It put the album in a totally different category...
Meanwhile, her movers and shapers were working overtime to fix the Whitney magic in her music videos. The first video, You Give Good Love, tells the story of a romance with a cameraman -- and, more tellingly, with his adoring camera. In Saving All My Love, she is a beaming All-American girl shadowed by her secret lover's wife. In Greatest Love, Whitney dazzles in rehearsal rags and in a sequined evening gown that hangs elegantly from the world's creamiest shoulders. For How Will I Know, she wears just a yard or so of slink swank but still upstages...
Perhaps this cool lover will entice her onto the big screen. There is talk of film work -- maybe an adaptation of Toni Morrison's Tar Baby, maybe a movie version of Dreamgirls. Meanwhile, her family will keep Whitney well protected. Her brothers run interference for her on tour; Robyn offers support and palship; John promotes and shields the family star. Still, Dad must wonder when the cocoon becomes a cage. Last year, after a concert in London, Whitney joined the crew at the local Hippodrome. "I was nervous," he recalls. "At one point I spotted her on the dance floor...