De Passe, Suzanne

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

De Passe, Suzanne

(b. 1948),
music, television, and film producer.

Suzanne de Passe learned from her mentor, Berry Gordy, that “a business based on principles is more important than a business based on revenue.” She has held true to that motto. Amazingly, in the cutthroat, white-male-dominated world of Hollywood, she has not only survived but succeeded magnificently.

One of the first and still one of the only African American women powerbrokers in the television and film businesses, Suzanne Celeste de Passe grew up middle-class in Harlem. Her parents, both West Indian, were divorced when she was three. Her mother was a schoolteacher and her father worked for Seagrams. He remarried six years after the divorce and is credited with providing de Passe with a strong role model. De Passe attended an elite, integrated private school in Manhattan, the New Lincoln School. While still young, she began modeling clothes designed by DeVera Edwards.

De Passe entered Syracuse University as an English major. However, she spent most of her time at Syracuse partying and was asked to leave after nine months. Undeterred by this setback, she transferred to Manhattan Community College. While there she got a job as the talent coordinator for the Cheetah Disco, a hot New York nightclub. She moved from there to a position as the talent coordinator for the Howard Stein talent agency. In 1968 Berry Gordy hired the gifted young woman as his creative assistant. She went on to sign and/or develop such performers and groups as Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, Lionel Richie and the Commodores, The Four Seasons, Thelma Houston, and the Temptations. When Motown moved its headquarters from Detroit to Los Angeles, de Passe moved with it.

Suzanne de Passe has won numerous awards including Emmys, Peabodys, and Golden Globes. She is so well known for her managerial abilities that Harvard Business School has conducted two studies of her management style.

Austin/Thompson Collection, by permission of De Passe Entertainment

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De Passe rose rapidly in the company. She became the director of Motown's West Coast creative division, then vice president of the division before becoming a vice president of all of Motown Industries. In 1970 she wrote two television specials, Diana, with Diana Ross, and the Jacksons's Goin' Home to Indiana. In 1972 she came to national attention with the film Lady Sings the Blues, an immensely successful film biography of Billie Holiday starring Diana Ross. De Passe co-wrote the screenplay with Chris Carter and was nominated for an Academy Award for her efforts. In 1981 Gordy named de Passe president of Motown Productions—the television, movie, and theater division of the company—gave her a budget of $10 million, and let her go to work. Among her many successful projects as head of Motown Productions, she produced the television special Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, which received both an Emmy and an NAACP Image Award.

De Passe finally left Motown in 1988. The following year, she made history again when she produced the eight-hour miniseries Lonesome Dove. She had read an unpublished manuscript of Larry McMurtry's novel in 1985. At the time conventional wisdom believed the western was dead, and no one else would touch the book. But de Passe was unconventional. She had the foresight to buy the television and film rights for $50,000, and her gamble paid off. Lonesome Dove was a huge success. It won Peabody, Golden Globe, and Emmy awards and was named Program of the Year by the Television Critics Association.

In 1992 de Passe founded her own company, de Passe Entertainment. She continued to produce Motown specials into the early twenty-first century, including Motown Returns to the Apollo, which won her another Emmy and another NAACP Image Award. She also produced the miniseries sequel Return to Lonesome Dove and Lonesome Dove the television series. Among her many other television projects, de Passe was responsible for the Peabody Award–winning miniseries Small Sacrifices (1989), as well as The Jacksons: An American Dream (1992) and Buffalo Girls (1995), which were both nominated for a number of Emmy Awards.

Her efforts in weekly programming include Smart Guy and Sister, Sister. The latter premiered in 1993 and quickly became the WB Network's most popular comedy. By the 1997–1998 season, the show was the second-most popular comedy on television among teenage viewers. In 1998 she created and produced the biopic The Temptations, which won an NAACP Image Award for outstanding miniseries and an Emmy Award for best director. In 2000 she was the executive producer of the critically acclaimed HBO movie Cheaters.

De Passe and her company remained busy into the twenty-first century. In 2002 she became executive producer of the Heritage Networks' syndicated show Showtime at the Apollo. In 2004 she kept her hand in the music business by managing the Latin pop group Soluna and was the executive producer of both the NAACP Image Awards and the Essence Awards. Added to her full schedule was her position as the AOL-Time Warner Professor of Communications at Howard University.

Married in 1978 to actor Paul Le Mat, de Passe was so well known for her ability to manage her clients and her business that Harvard Business School conducted two studies of her management style. She won numerous awards beyond her Emmys, Peabodys, and Golden Globes. In 1972 she was among twelve Women of the Year named by Ms. magazine. She won the Women in Film Crystal Award in 1988. She was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1990 and into the Legacy of Women in Film and Television in 1992. In 1993 she received the Turner Broadcasting Trumpet Award and the Achievement Award from the Executive Leadership Council. She was honored by the Los Angeles Urban League with the Whitney M. Young Award. In addition to sitting on the boards of the New York City Ballet, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the Los Angeles Opera, de Passe was the first woman to serve on the board of Morehouse College. She has also been a member of the Hollywood Radio and Television Society.

With a strong reputation in Hollywood for creativity and integrity, de Passe has been known to accept lower fees if it ensures that a production comes to life with its creative integrity intact. She once told Newsweek magazine, “In this business, if you believe in something enough, sometimes it requires a gesture to get other people involved.” Over the years, she has made the gestures. She has stood behind her work and stuck with her beliefs. Her ethics have benefited both the audience and future generations of African Americans who wish to work behind the scenes in Hollywood.

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