Her friends and family chose to concentrate on the positive. Whitney was a multifaceted woman, they said, who always loved the Lord. In her final days, she prayed and partied, confident that she was on the brink of another comeback. The handstands by the pool, they said, were not the antics of an addict but proof of her newfound stamina, her dedication to daily exercise, and a vow to quit smoking. She had a new movie, new music, and a new man.
Also, she had reportedly worked again with Warren Boyd, her drug counselor over the years. According to the producer Harvey Mason Jr. Everyone agreed that she was also clean and sober on the set of her upcoming movie, a remake of a film called Sparkle. Winter waited until A. Along came Whitney, rough around the edges, but that could be fixed. If Whitney had arrived in L.
The last days of Whitney Houston began long before her arrival in Los Angeles. There, where her mother, whose name is Cissy, led the choir, Whitney was saved, infused with the Holy Spirit. Baxter Terrace public-housing project, and near that, on Wainwright Street, the house where Houston was born and lived until she was four. From the start, the battle lines of her future were drawn: God on one side, the ghetto on the other. When she was 13, she spent every Saturday for months in the local movie theater, from the matinee to the last show, transfixed by a film called Sparkle, about three young female singers falling prey to hustlers, addicts, and thieves.
For anyone who wanted to pursue their dream and present their gifts. It just appealed to me. Houston helped spearhead the new Sparkle, which is being released this summer, and co-produced it with Debra Martin Chase.
Like the mother in Sparkle, Cissy, who started as a gospel singer, tried to protect her daughter. When talent scouts began to circle the teenage Whitney, Cissy told them it was too soon. By 18, however, after graduating from an all-girls Catholic high school, Whitney was ready.
Whitney was already a successful model, signed to the Click agency and, later, Wilhelmina in New York, and she had appeared on the cover of Seventeen and in several ad campaigns. He tried with Aretha, but she was too defined as the Queen of Soul. He tried with Dionne, but she was in a niche already by the time she came to Arista.
Finally, along came Whitney, who was beautiful, talented, a little rough around the edges, but that could be fixed. Clive made it clear in meetings: this Houston project better be huge. He picked every song on her albums.
The result was Whitney Houston, released in , when Whitney was It sold 25 million copies. Her second album, Whitney, released in , was equally successful.
Robyn Crawford, an all-state basketball star two years older than Whitney, had been her best friend since Whitney was 16, when they both had summer jobs at a community center in East Orange.
All you need is a bunch of straight, macho radio jocks finding out that Whitney wants Robyn on the trip.
Murphy would say they were just friends. In spite of a reported year-long affair with the married Jermaine Jackson in the early s, Whitney remained without a mate, at least publicly. As a child of the projects, Bobby Brown had been shot at and stabbed in the shoulder. When he was 11, he saw a friend stabbed to death.
He became a father at 17 and eventually would have three more children out of wedlock. The night they met, Whitney, whose image had become a little too sticky-sweet for some, was booed and called an Oreo when she was announced as a nominee. She was human, and that hurt.
Bobby Brown, on the other hand, was already bad and on his way to becoming notorious: beating up a man at Walt Disney World, overdosing on heroin, doing time in prison and rehab centers, and eventually venting his rage on the pop diva, who was five years older than he and who, he would insist, made him look like an innocent.
Brown was just what some say Whitney felt she needed for her image. Though a renowned abuser of drugs and booze, Bobby, his friends say, had a nice streak. She believed in herself! She was pounds of raw talent; all she had to do was unleash the thunder from her chest.
But here was this skinny woman with that kind of power. The voice was infectious, intoxicating. Natalie Cole, he adds, was in awe of the Jersey girl with the voice that breathed fire. We talk about her addiction, but when you look at Whitney Houston, you have to realize how much work she did, how much love she put out into the universe.
She would give prayers of gratitude in the recording studio. Soon, though, the voice was tempered by pain and heartache. In , before guests at her New Jersey mansion, she married Bobby Brown. We knew Bobby and the type of guy he was—a street guy. But Whitney was smart enough to handle somebody like Bobby. Having conquered music, Whitney wanted a movie career. She was pregnant when she made The Bodyguard with Kevin Costner, who was riding the success of his Oscar-winning Dances with Wolves, and she had a miscarriage on the set.
Some thought the rough cut of the film was a miss, because there was not enough of Whitney singing. The Bodyguard turned out not only to be a box-office hit but also to have the best-selling soundtrack of all time. She was focused, and she was at the top of her vocal game.
In she canceled five concerts. In she was caught with marijuana in the Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, airport. By the late 90s, however, her voice would begin to betray her, and she would have to lower the keys in live performances. She started lacing her joints with cocaine, as she later told Oprah Winfrey.
The pop diva was reverting to the New Jersey street kid. At first, the marriage was passionate and loving, but things turned sour as the decade progressed. Both Brown and Houston battled substance abuse and increasingly erratic behavior, with Houston later alluding to emotional abuse from Brown and domestic violence. In spite of these growing personal troubles, Houston continued to progress in her career, crossing over successfully into acting in by starring opposite Kevin Costner in the wildly popular movie The Bodyguard.
With this project, she set a trend for her films to follow: For each movie she also released hit singles, creating sensational record sales for the soundtracks. Later in the s, Houston also starred in Waiting to Exhale and The Preacher's Wife , both accompanied by hit soundtracks as well. In the late s and early s, Houston's increasingly rocky marriage, struggles with drugs and health problems threatened to derail her career.
Several concert cancellations and a notorious TV interview with Sawyer in , in which Houston appeared far too thin and in poor health, led many to speculate that she was on the verge of a breakdown.
The show aired during the worst years of the couple's crumbling marriage; drug use, lifestyle excess and bad behavior were all caught on tape and Houston's reputation sunk to new lows. Houston tried to ignore the controversy, charging ahead with her music by releasing Just Whitney… to combat her detractors, but it did not match the success of her earlier works.
In spite of her troubled relationship, Houston was still celebrated as a singer, being named the most-awarded female artist of all time by Guinness World Records in Over the next few years, Houston attempted to repair her marriage and to break her drug habit, but after several relapses, Cissy had to step in.
As Houston explained to Oprah Winfrey in "[My mother] walks in with the sheriff and she says: 'I have a court injunction here. You do it my way or we're not going to do this at all. You're going to go on TV, and you're going to retire. And say you're going to give this up because it's not worth it. After almost a decade of struggling with her personal life, Houston seemed to be pulling herself together. She released a new album, I Look To You , in The recording received a warm welcome from music fans, making it to the top of album charts.
Her live shows, however, garnered mixed reviews, with some complaining about the quality of her voice. In early , Houston was rumored to be experiencing financial trouble, but she denied this claim.
Indeed, the artist seemed poised for a career upswing: Houston worked on the musical film Sparkle with Jordin Sparks, a remake of the movie about an all-girl musical group similar to The Supremes, and also reportedly had been approached to join the singing competition series The X Factor as a judge. Unfortunately, Houston did not live long enough to see the latest comeback reach fruition.
Houston died at the age of 48 on February 11, , in Los Angeles at a Beverly Hilton hotel where a Grammy party was being held by Davis. Houston had been seen out in the days before her death, including at one of the pre-Grammy parties. According to a report released by the Los Angeles County coroner's office on March 22, , the official cause of her death was an accidental drowning. The effects of heart disease and cocaine found in her system were contributing factors as well.
Goldberger described the level of prescription drugs in her system as "mild" and said Xanax did not contribute to her death. An open bottle of champagne also sat on the mini-bar and an open can of beer was on a table.
There was also a bottle of beer on a nightstand and several loose tablets. Houston's family has expressed surprise that she was using drugs again. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, sister-in-law Pat Houston attributed Whitney's downfall to a lifestyle change where she saw Whitney "chasing a dream While admitting she was concerned about the singer's behavior at a party two nights before her death, Pat Houston told Winfrey that she didn't think the star was abusing drugs in her final days.
But after the initial toxicology report was released, Houston wrote in a statement to The Associated Press: "We are saddened to learn of the toxicology results, although we are glad to now have closure.
The coroner reported that when found in her room at the Beverly Hilton, Houston's purse contained her wallet, but the "decedent's California driver's license had been removed from the wallet, which was inside the purse, prior to my arrival. It is unclear how many plastic surgeries Houston underwent throughout her life, but it now seems clear that she did at some point undergo breast-augmentation surgery.
The coroner's report described and "small scars" on her breasts "associated with breast implants. According to the coroner's report, "there was a defibrillator patch on the upper right side of her chest and there was another defibrillator patch on the upper right side of her torso.
This does not likely indicate therapeutic treatment for Houston's heart, but shows that part of the life-saving efforts administered by paramedics was likely the use of a defibrillator to establish normal sinus rhythm to Houston's heart. Another piece of new information from Wednesday's report is that Houston wore a brown wig, which was tightly affixed to her head at the time of her death.
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