Uncovered: The Dark Family Secret of Whitney Houston in…
Kevin Macdonald, the Oscar-winning director of One Day in September and The Last King of Scotland, did not intend for Whitney, his heartbreaking documentary about Whitney Houston, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, to be a news story. In order to demonstrate how one of the greatest vocal talents of the 20th century—a lovely girl from Newark, New Jersey—self-destructed and died, he needed to remove the depressing, tabloid storyline that damaged the singer’s reputation in her later, drug-addled years.
Macdonald told Vanity Fair on Wednesday that there was “something very disturbed about her, because she was never comfortable in her own skin.” In a weird manner, she appeared to be asexual. She was a gorgeous woman, but she was never really seductive. There was something about her demeanor that reminded me of the shrinking I’ve seen and seen in persons who have had sexual assault as children.
About three-quarters of the way into Whitney, the shocking revelation is made that Dee Dee Warwick, the sister of Dionne Warwick and the niece of Houston’s late mother, Cissy Houston, is accused of molesting both Houston and her half-brother, Gary, when they were little. In the 1950s and 1960s, Dee Dee and Dionne sang as the Gospelaires, occasionally accompanied by Cissy’s gospel group.
In response to Macdonald’s question regarding the origins of his own addiction problems, Gary says, “It was being a child—being seven, eight, or nine years old—and being molested by a female family member of mine.” We resided with four or five different families who looked after us because my mother and father were absent a lot.
Two weeks before to completing the documentary’s edit, Macdonald was able to obtain verbatim confirmation that Houston had also suffered abuse.
The entire movie was recut by Macdonald in order to build to that reveal. During the poignant interview, Jones recounts an encounter she had with the deceased singer, in which Jones disclosed that her sister had experienced childhood sexual abuse.
