YouTube is a beautiful thing. Last week a generous member called CoEvi uploaded one of the best videos I've seen in a very long time. La Toya Jackson - The Making Of A Superstar was a two-part special that aired on Entertainment Tonight in 1984. Filmed to promote the impending release of Heart Don't Lie, the footage offers an intriguing glimpse into the world of my favourite Jackson before severe mismanagement and the husband-from-hell derailed her career and turned her into a laughing-stock. In that regard, it's like a documentary about the Titanic. Filmed the day before it sank.
The first thing you notice is how genuinely adorable La Toya is. The reporter asks her about growing up in the Jackson shadow and she replies that she simply doesn't know anything else. She comes across as grounded, smart and realistic - a far cry from the woman who would make a spectacle of herself on talk-shows around the world just a couple of years later. It's heartbreaking that Jack Gordon could break her spirit to the extent that she literally transformed into a different human-being. She deserves so much credit for escaping his clutches and re-establishing herself as the most successful living Jackson in the early noughties.
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