Whitney Houston: The Greatest Love of All (FULL MOVIE)

[Music] [Applause] [Music] singer Whitney Houston one of the greatest voices of our generation seen in has gotten confirmation from a representative has died the singer has died at the age of 48 we are waiting to find out the cause of her death on February 12 2012 at around 3 o'clock in the afternoon Whitney Houston was found dead at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills California talks ologist reports claimed that Whitney had died submerged in the bath in her luxury suite the cause of her death accidental drowning with complications stemming from heart disease and drug use prescription drugs were also present in our system a speculation ran riot as to how she had died fans gathered to pay their respects to the voice that had touched the world [Music] The Bodyguard cemented Whitney's role really as an iconic legend that popular music historians wilt study Whitney Houston and the perfect song to study is I will always love you because that is where she just went for it [Music] Oprah Winfrey described listening to to Whitney as listening to to the voice of God I see the way that the media and the public in general responded to the death of Whitney Houston the first response is to immediately a sadness and also on the plus side a celebration of music and we'll just remember the genius that took her to the top of the world and in posterity we'll make sure she stays there you [Music] the dazzling voice of a generation had been silenced forever amidst rumors of drug abuse bisexuality and a torrid marriage to R&B artist Bobby Brown no matter how bad or how ugly the rumors got about her life a lot of people were shocked by it you know just the fact that she was still a very very young woman age 48 a few pop divas were gifted with a voice as glorious and sweeping as Whitney Houston as she showed in one of her most popular hits the greatest love of all [Music] [Applause] [Music] she is absolutely one of the most beautiful women you've ever seen with a voice that could have been given from the Angels [Music] her vocal range and her charisma made her one of music's most glamorous and talented superstars and she sold more records and received more Awards than almost any other female artist of the 20th century she had the style which young women emulated for over a quarter of a century that is amazing [Music] whitney's untimely death shocked Hollywood and the world to its core from what we know at this point Whitney Houston was already deceased when she slipped into that bath she did not die from drowning it's known but there were three serious prescription drugs on the premises to take one of those in itself would be a major commitment for your body Whitney's life and death seemed to tragically mirror her friend Michael Jackson's own incredible story prescription drugs have the veneer of legality so some do use actually addicted to prescription drugs can somehow convince themselves they're not really doing anything wrong when police entered her suite at the Beverly Hilton they did not find any illegal drugs now it should be added that Whitney's entourage was in that hotel suite for a long time that day and prior to the arrival of the paramedics so whether or not there had been illegal drug paraphernalia in that room that was then moved one we'll never know what we do know is that Whitney was taking an awful lot of prescription drugs in fact the police are investigating what doctors were giving Whitney all of these various medicines it's so easy in show business to find a dr. feelgood who will give you legal drugs but he'll give you too many legal drugs and you will use them too frequently and this is what happened to Michael Jackson the day she died Whitney was due to perform that night at a glamorous pre-grammy party thrown by her old mentor and music supremo Clive Davis there was a police investigation currently ongoing and Clive Davis got up and just announced that you know we're with friends I don't have to be you know I don't have to put on a face so simply put Britney would have wanted the music to go on and her family asked that we carry on it was an incredibly bad taste most people believed for Clive to then continue with the bash now of course the caterers have been paid for the food had been bought and was arriving and perhaps he felt he didn't want to you know eat that kind of expense and went ahead with it show business tends to always choose on the side of the money and not on the side of the sentiment the fact that I would have not gone just shows you that I didn't have any money invested in the party Whitney's behavior in the days leading up to her death had been pretty wild one of the last sightings we had of Whitney was her coming out of this nightclub called true she's disheveled she's obviously intoxicated she'd got into an altercation inside the party with another woman that she thought was flirting with Ray J her on-again boyfriend and as she walked out her hair was a mess she was bleeding in her on her leg appeared to not even notice that she was bleeding she was in a real state that night and and really it's unfortunate that that's the last real picture that we have of her on the night before she died Whitney's final performance singing Jesus loves me with gospel singer Kelly Price was captured on camera phone and circulated around the world on the Internet Witney looks shaky and her beautiful voice almost unrecognizable the last time you ever saw Whitney out in public when she performed and hung out at the Kelly Price Grammy party she brought Bobby with her they were really close obviously Bobbi Kristina was probably exposed to a heartache and a lot of strife that some children probably shouldn't be exposed to do the fact that both her parents had problems with drugs but they seemed to have a very close loving relationship this is a girl who's grown up with parents both of whom are addicts allegedly she's been in rehab allegedly she's been sitting in the back of a car when Whitney and Bobby were using crack cocaine this is a child who whose role models parental role models and models of denial models of addiction Bobbi Kristina is said to be traumatized about her mother's shocking death Bobbi has taken the news extremely hard she was hospitalized twice for anxiety within 24 hours of her mother's death she's really brave for handling in the manner that she has but it clearly can't have a good effect you know in the short term just because of all the media attention and the rumors you know you just kind of have to pray for her even at Whitney's funeral the demons that had dogged her marriage to Bobby Brown seemed to be still hovering on the day of the funeral here comes Bobby Brown with an entourage of nine whereas he had been invited to come plus two so he comes down to the front row of Whitney's funeral with nine people and they were unable to seat them all together in an area reserved for family so Bobby in a fit of pique decided to leave he went to the Friday kissed Whitney's casket and he walked out of the church even before the funeral had begun make no mistake in spite of the destructiveness of their relationship there would have been a bond between them and despite his histrionics at the funeral and despite the fact that he turned the funeral and memorial service into a Bobby Brown show he would have had strong and powerful feelings for her aside from that some of Hollywood's leading lights went on to pay their respects with dignity and grace in a moving eulogy Kevin Costner reveals how he had to fight for Whitney to get the lead role in The Bodyguard I told everyone that I had taken notice what Whitney was black the only problem was I thought she was perfect for what we were trying to do there was a bit of a relief in the room when we found out that Whitney was going to be on tour and she wouldn't be available for our movie the anxiety came right back when I said we should postpone and wait a year he was a fitting and moving farewell to one of the most legendary singers the world has ever known but let's go back to the start of the Whitney Houston story how did it all begin for this one-time all-american sweetheart Whitney Houston from a musical point of view had the upbringing we can only dream about surrounded by some of the greatest talents of our time seemed like her destiny music was preordained by the family she was born into she's the daughter of Cissy Houston they're very respected gospel singer her godmother was Rita Franklin and she was the cousins of DD and Dionne Warwick and so she grew up with music all her life she was exposed to people like Chaka Khan she was singing in solos in church by age 11 so I don't really see if there could have been any other path or with that voice and that pedigree she was yeah music was her was her life the first song that Whitney ever performed was guide me o thou great Jehovah and she performed that at the age of 11 when she was a pupil at a Catholic girls school so she was brought up a Baptist went to a Catholic girls school and also had huge Pentecostal influences on her life and the last song she ever sang was Jesus Loves Me so her her life was framed either side by two songs both of them devotional as she blossomed into a teenager Whitney's stunning looks also let her down another glittering career path in addition to Whitney's extraordinary vocal talents she was also heart-stoppingly beautiful as a young woman she broke all kinds of racial barriers because of her beauty in fact Whitney was the first african-american young woman to be on the cover of Seventeen magazine which had nothing to do with her voice and everything to do with her incredible beauty and presence when her modeling career was in full swing she met Robin Crawford at a summer camp the two became inseparable leading to rumours that Whitney was bisexual it was widely known in show business but Whitney and Robin were together and this was not some kind of scandalous pickup they'd known each other from high school Whitney had called her the sister she never had cuz she had brothers and they just got along so how did whitney's early career as a sinner really take off she was discovered in 1983 by a man named Jerry Griffith who worked at Arista Records and basically tipped her off to Clive Davis after he saw her perform at a club her her relationship with Clive Davis was cemented from that moment forward he pretty much guided her career all the way to the end when Clive would say something she would listen she trusted him she knew that he was the guy so what he said was true when Whitney Houston first appeared on the scene her voice captivated the world you know someone has said before the invention of auto-tune there was Whitney Houston and if you think about how many artists today are helped a bit in the studio and go back to some of those clean pure vocals of Whitney's five-octave voice it is just astounding her gift was undeniable her first album Whitney Houston was released in February 1985 to huge critical acclaim with Rolling Stone calling her one of the most exciting new voices in years well Whitney Houston's album Whitney Houston went to the top of the u.s. charts and stayed there for 14 non-consecutive weeks a phenomenal achievement but who can forget that picture of Whitney on the first very first album she has her hair pulled back and she is absolutely one of the most beautiful women you've ever seen with a voice that could have been given from the Angels the extraordinary talent combined with beauty was an amazing combination [Music] the first single that came out by Whitney Houston on her self-titled debut album of 1985 was you give good love you give good loved you know was kind of a you know a moderate hit into you as it didn't really break her internationally but it did kind of spark her ability to you know do some tours do some nightclubs do you give good love was followed by saving all my love for you both of them were ballads almost with this or jazzy cabaret feel to them [Music] shortly after Whitney's death news broke that her number one hit saving all my love for you had been written with Jermaine Jackson in mind the words are said to have echoed a year long affair Whitney had with Jermaine when he was married to Hazel Gordy rumor has it that Michael Jackson did not approve of the affair hardly surprising considering Jermaine's wife Hazel was the daughter of one of music's most powerful men berry gordy creator of Tamela Motown Records Whitney's first album had proved an extraordinary debut and with it came hit after hit after hit probably the most powerful song to come out of that record was the greatest love of all everyone can picture Whitney Houston in that beautiful video and hear that beautiful chorus probably really anyone born after 1970 can imagine that [Music] she even named her tour the greatest love tour it was such a defining song on that album inand for many probably today still their favorite Whitney Houston song what's ironic is that you know in the greatest love of all she sings about learning to love yourself which unfortunately is something that Whitney clearly never managed to do [Music] how will I know which was Whitney's third us single went to number one and was really the first time that a young african-american woman was all over MTV that video was massively successful it was on constantly and it really cemented Whitney's presence in mainstream America [Music] [Applause] if I go back and while listen to an old Whitney Houston song I listen to how well I know or I want to dance with somebody I guess the vision may be Clive Davis had for her was it's just about the voice it isn't about these MTV gimmicks dancers and crazy outfits you know this is a woman with an incredible voice one of the best voices of all time you could say so let's just give her a mic and give her a ballad and just keep it simple [Music] how will I know it was you know her unquestionable smash-hit and that you know just really was used as a springboard for her to you know become the national figure Whitney's arrival on the eighties music scene also heralded a brave new dawn for many black female performers at the time you know MTV was just kind of coming into its own and there was a lot of criticism that they weren't using enough latina and black faces on the channel I think people forget nowadays how many racial barriers Whitney Houston broke down at her age and her in her time it wasn't a given that black women could be as successful as it is now I mean you look at someone like Rihanna today Rihanna would never be Rihanna without Whitney Houston early on MTV was for the most part playing specifically white rock bands with emphasis on folk fact they were white and they were rock Michael Jackson famously was unable to you know get on MTV for a very long time by the time her second album was released simply entitled witness expectations about the exciting new black singer were hi its first single I want to dance with somebody became a massive global hit and Whitney became an international superstar I think Whitney's song I want to dance with somebody it's probably even today her most catchy tune I think everybody can hum that mostly everybody can hum that it's a great song the critics often gave her mixed reviews about the musical output you know about it being kind of safe or it being kind of conservative or so are being retreads of what she did before a lot of people said that the second album was sort of a retread of the first element but with I want to dance with somebody this was a new Whitney Houston this was a pop singer as opposed to this kind of soulful R&B singer and it was mainstream pop that went to the top of the charts staying at number one all around the world and even now I can picture that music video where she had that kind of big hair and all those bows in her hair and all those happy colors it really was a defining moment in the 1980s full of optimism neon colors and a lot of positivity Whitney Houston in that song did more than just do a great performance she kind of summed up a decade [Music] in 1988 Whitney was nominated for three Grammy Awards including album of the year and she won best female pop vocal performance with I wanna dance with somebody by this stage she was one of the wealthiest black entertainers in the world second only to Bill Cosby and Eddie Murphy she was also a huge supporter of Nelson Mandela and anti-apartheid during her modeling days she had refused to work with any agencies doing business with apartheid South Africa on June 11th 1988 she performed in London's Wembley Stadium to help celebrate event imprisoned Mandela's 70th birthday over a billion viewers tuned in worldwide she was now quite simply one of the biggest stars in the world [Music] there was read from the stage a message from Nelson Mandela who was still in prison in Robben Island in South Africa and he said how grateful he was to all the artists who are participating especially Whitney Houston who has given so much pleasure to my fellow prisoners and I unruffled and I said I was interviewing her for television on television live television and I said well you heard it he singled you out how does that feel and she said words to the effect of it's always wonderful when people in other countries take care music till your heart and you're appreciated abroad of him oh my god she doesn't get it she's missing with the poor she's a part of history and yet she's just thinking it in turn in terms of oh isn't it nice that people everywhere like a year later at the Soul Train Music Awards Whitney was jeered when her name was called out during the nominations it seemed not everyone was happy with her style of music there were black R&B fans had often accused Whitney Houston's selling out of making music primarily for a white audience of not being R&B enough or urban enough when she actually was involved in a lot of causes people would see her live and she was much more of a soul singer as it's you know mostly meant to be understood but people thought that when she was on record or when she was in the public eye she was being more of like a pop star what they neglected to realize is that Whitney was from a very middle class you know very white also neighborhood in fact Whitney's ancestry was not entirely african-american she was also Dutch and she was also Native Americans so she really was even herself a mixture of different races but I think you know for some black people felt she wasn't black enough and white people felt she wasn't white enough and it was a very difficult place for her to be standing it just when she was at the peak of her popularity Whitney's personal life started to hit the headlines she met R&B singer Bobby Brown in 1989 and they became lovers when they started dating a lot of people were shocked they really thought they were like an odd couple like and also a lot of people thought Bobby Brown was corrupting poor sweet innocent Whitney Houston I don't think she was quite as sweet and innocent as maybe people thought and maybe people had different speculations as to why she got with Bobby 1 maybe she was trying to rebel against her image by being like okay I'm gonna go for the bad boy lots of girls like bad boys this was at a time when Bobby Brown was still a multi-platinum musician you know he has had the album Bobby which found a lot of huge MTV hits so it was essentially a you know it was pop royalty the moment I heard that Whitney was with Bobby Brown I just thought well here's where we go south [Applause] her love life may have been going south but Whitney's career continued to fly higher and higher with the release of her third album I'm Your Baby tonight [Music] with um your baby tonight it did show that she kind of recognized what her critics were saying about her that her sound wasn't urban enough that it wasn't tough enough that wasn't soulful enough so what she did was in 1990 she got Luther Vandross la Reed babyface you know if you get those sort of people to toughen up your sound make it a little more urban that just kind of shows what people thought of her earlier work [Music] critical reception was a bit mixed some people weren't buying the whole move to a little bit of more of a rougher sound but nonetheless I'm Your Baby tonight spawn a new batch of hits for Whitney Houston and made her the biggest female pop star at the time [Music] then in 1991 that the Super Bowl came the spellbinding moment in time when Whitney became immortalized across the globe as America's Sweetheart when Whitney sang the star-spangled banner' in 1991 at the Super Bowl this was and is now still one of the greatest moments in NFL history at the time America was in the Gulf War a lot of people had sons and daughters overseas it was a time of great patriotism and at the same time you know anytime you're at war there's a deep insecurity and fear and Whitney got up dressed in this tracksuit in red white and blue just the epitome of youth and beauty and opened her mouth and sang to this day I cry every time I hear it the most beautiful rendition of the star-spangled banner that has ever been done before or since she had this image still at that time of being the all-american girl and here she is belting out this song perfectly at the Super Bowl the most viewed TV event in not just America but the world [Applause] she's the only artist ever to have sung a national anthem and to have got it into the top 20 after 9/11 that almost became a second national anthem for the American people this is a woman that the American people took to their heart in the same year that saw Whitney at the peak of her success she married bad boy Bobby Brown it's very hard to underestimate the the scandal and the shock that people had back in 1991 when you have this America's darling singing the star-spangled banner representing the best and brightest of our country marrying somebody who was famous for all these music videos with numerous nearly naked women grinding up on him had a foul attitude was intoxicated all over the place rumored to be doing drugs really this kind of horrendous it was like it was like two opposites attracting and nobody liked the fact that they felt Whitney was being brought down including her family by the way by this guy who was in no way her equal or a good influence it's very unlikely that a star is actually going to be in love for the another star they're far more likely to fall in love with a normal person because stars are normal people and so when you see and I've always used this as a guide when I hear of two stars who are together I tend to think oh this is probably arranged the marriage to Bobby also brought up the subject of Whitney's sexuality again particularly when her friend Robin Crawford left her management team not long after the wedding there were rumors for a long time that she was either gay or bisexual that she was closeted some people went even so far as to accuse the whole Bobby Brown marriage as being a front the main rumor that went around was that she was in a long-term relationship with her assistant Robin Crawford Bobby alluded to this himself when he looked back on the marriage kind of implying that one of the reasons Whitney married him was to combat these lesbian rumors because it wouldn't do at that time for America's Sweetheart to be gay I mean as hard as it was for Whitney Houston to be a black woman you know taking American mainstream by storm imagine if she was a black lesbian woman it's certainly at that time particularly would have been very difficult if not impossible to win over you know the very reactionary Middle America I have no idea if this is true all I do know is it seemed like she did love Bobby Brown a lot at one time and you know I think it's kind of distasteful the source speculate about it now her personal life may have been turbulent but Whitney was about to take the world by storm yet again this time in the movies the same year she married Bobby she landed a role in The Bodyguard co-starring one of Hollywood's leading men at the time Kevin Costner The Bodyguard cemented Whitney's role as an iconic legend you know she'd already kind of been hailed as this extraordinary voice and beauty but with the bodyguard she was a movie star people really don't realize how controversial them a movie like The Bodyguard could have seen back in 1992 there were rumors that in the in the films advertisements that Whitney Houston's base was being hid to kind of downplay the fact that there was you know at its core a movie about an interracial relationship [Music] kevin costner revealed in his eulogy that he did is very touching speech or funeral he actually had to fight together in the film there were execs at the studio who weren't so sure going the interracial romance route was the right way to go that was a lot for the studio to accept and to their credit they did but not without a screen test I wanted to tell her that the game was rigged that I didn't care how the test went that she could fall down and start speaking in tongues that somehow I would find a way to explain it as an extraordinary acting choice and we could expect more to follow and G weren't we lucky to have her he said at her funeral a lot of guys could have played my part but only one person could have been Rachel Marron and it's true there was no one else with her beauty and her undeniable talent in the world can you imagine being the most talented and beautiful woman in the world it's extraordinary that she was Whitney's extraordinary rendition of the bodyguards lead soundtrack was to become one of the most famous love songs in the world and one of the best-selling singles of all time and [Music] it was a 1974 song from Dolly Parton and the Dolly Parton version is great but it's completely different and then Whitney Houston saying it and it is her signature song so good I will always love you as performed by Dolly Parton had already been a number one country song twice was written by Dolly Parton not as a love song as we know romantic or sexual love it was a farewell to her singing and business partner Porter Wagoner with whom she made her first hits [Music] I know I will always love you sounds like a romantic song but because there's no down and dirty in the song the widest possible audience could relate to it everyone knows that song everyone can sing a line from that song and I think the thing that got everybody was you know she starts out so quiet and breathy [Music] and then this powerful voice with this extraordinary range is kind of unleashed the pure emotion and vocal talent in that well it just blows you away [Music] [Music] the soundtrack itself was just Whitney Houston's biggest hit of her entire career which was saying something because her first album sold 13 million copies The Bodyguard is I believe one of the you know one of the biggest selling records of the you know of the entire 90s which was the pika music industry [Music] her Hollywood career continued to flourish with performances in the preacher's wife and Waiting to Exhale in 1995 around the time of the album exhale she seemed at her peak in terms of her beauty and companies it was like she had the world at her feet he said all I need from you is for you to write a list of the women that you do not want well I got my pen and paper [Applause] [Music] but behind the scenes and behind closed doors with Bobby Whitney's personal life was beginning to unravel Whitney had allegedly been a recreational drug user herself years before she met Braun but once they got together Bobby in the drugs seemed to dominate her life there's a phrase in psychology known as cognitive dissonance and this is a problem that's caused when people are one thing when they face the world and another thing when they face themselves so if you were saying like Whitney did that I am a good girl I'm an honest girl I'm an all-american girl I am who I say I am I'm a heterosexual girl when you're saying all those things to the world and the truth might be slightly different that creates all kinds of problems particularly when you have a religious upbringing like she did because what it means is she's not just being dishonest to other people and dishonest to herself she's also being dishonest to God just the association with Bobby Brown in the beginning not even you know her own behavior made it you know the crack started to show a little more people started to see her as well maybe we don't know everything about Whitney Houston maybe there's some things going on behind the scenes when Whitney was having thrown for her a post concert party in London and this was after a very important London show and she didn't show there were so many stars and movers and shakers at that party and she didn't show I was subsequently told you two stayed upstairs and had the people she want to see come up to see her that made me think that well maybe something could happen upstairs at her own party which is a bit different from what's going on at ours Whitney Houston gave some conflicting and contradictory accounts of the drug abuse that went on with her as well with Bobby Brown but it was a relationship that you know they were fighting all the time but they also were madly in love they created what is no doubt a kind of codependency now the thing about codependency is it locks two people together into this world where each one of them thinks the other person is the only person that truly understands them the only person that truly loves them the only person who truly sees them for who they are to the point where Whitney actually said he was my drug in the midst of all the domestic strife with Bobby Whitney's music seemed to take a backseat but after 8 long years in 1998 came the release of an album that reminded everyone what a shining star Whitney Houston really was my love is your love actually took 8 years to make this came after a lot of kind of trainwreck personal life stuff with drug issues fights in the marriage with her and Bobby all kinds of trouble she came out of that recording this album originally it was gonna be a greatest hits album with a couple of new songs but actually once they got in the studio she had great collaborators on this including Missy Elliott some great songs it turned into an album all by itself it was a it was a change for Whitney was a little funkier it was a little more pop it was a little more edgy and I think in some ways it was a reflection of Bobby Brown's influence because it did sound more like that kind of R&B music than the kind of ballads and the kind of very white music that we were used to hearing from Whitney [Music] definitely her most urban leanin album and I feel was when she was probably most proud of at least at that point you know I had Missy Elliott on it had Rodney Jerkins producing it these were not things she wasn't collaborating with rappers back in 1985 [Music] my love is your love was a big hit for Whitney and in 2001 her old mentor Clive Davis helped her sign the biggest record deal in music history with Arista BMG the aim was to deliver six albums and her contract was worth 100 million dollars I'm incredible to think you know that she got signed for that much but he obviously really believed in her but I don't think she ever quite you know measured up to that kind of phenomenal record deal which was unprecedented at the time she appeared on the 30th anniversary of Michael Jackson's special not long after that and there were even more red flags she looked really really skinny [Applause] [Music] the gossip about her drug you started up again her publicist again went into spin control and said she's under stress and she's not eating maybe that was true but you know it was kind of obvious that something was not right with her that's let's just put it that way by 2002 around the release of her just whitney album Whitney was in the grip of drug addiction rumors were rife that she was reduced to doing crack cocaine something she strenuously denied in an interview with us anchorwoman Diane Sawyer that's not just then oh is it Diane tell me do you know anorexia no way they've written it no way that it's because of drugs no Whitney dying crack rehab fails first of all let's get one thing straight crack is cheap I've made too much money to ever so let's get that straight okay we don't do crack we don't do that crack is wack crack is wack it's one of the most viewed YouTube clips of her career and it's a disaster she's before she says anything clearly not in the best condition her eyes are a bit glazed and then she goes into that let me tell you something crack is cheap I make too much money to ever use crack crack is wack I mean no not only a terrible attitude towards poor people be wait a minute where'd you get all this expertise on drugs two years later Whitney finally admitted her drug addiction and entered rehab upon the advice of her mother Cissy and close friends Bobby however remained very firmly on the scene the key thing to remember about addict is addicts don't exist in isolation addicts are part of a network of relationships addicts have families they have friends they have lovers they have husbands they have wives and the the people those the people an addict chooses to surround herself with or himself with they're going to determine the success or failure of their recovery process if you look at what Whitney did who did she go - she went to a co addict she went to somebody else who effectively to a greater or lesser degree was a mirror of her so far from helping her to recover he could give her the illusion that behavior was kind of acceptable because he was doing it - and therein lies the road to ruin in 2005 Whitney's dysfunctional marriage was savagely crystallized when Bobby got his own series on US cable channel Bravo being Bobby Brown was a shocking indictment of their relationship notice it wasn't even a Whitney Houston reality series she was a supporting person in an attempt to relaunch the career of Bobby Brown who is so far beneath her that we need deep-sea diving gear to look at him the executives at the channel would not even consider the show unless Whitney agreed to appear Bobby was desperate to get some fame on his own apart from his wife so he persuaded her to be on the show when Whitney agreed to be filmed the show got the green light but it was one of the worst decisions she ever made just watch too much TV I'm a true American I've been to jail before that's America if you look at the dynamic between Whitney and Bobby over the years again and again you see a woman who is trying to bring her self down to the level of someone else so that he doesn't feel threatened and he feels comfortable through a man who was allegedly an alpha male like Bobby to suddenly find himself playing second fiddle to his wife where he could almost have been mr. Houston rather than her being mrs. Braun it's enough front to his ego and maybe much of what he did in his marriage was to try and redress that sense of powerlessness after years of controversy and high-profile turmoil whitney eventually filed for divorce from bobby in 2006 a year later they were no longer husband and wife and Whitney had gained custody of Bobby Kris if she never met Bobby Brown would she have turned out differently would she still be alive now would she have done drugs I mean if people have demons and it's yeah I kind of feel like he was more like the catalyst as opposed to the person who like forced her to do drugs even with the fact that like both clearly had some sort of codependent relationship with each other there was a lot of unresolved things that were going on with drug abuse all sorts of things that just weren't solved by the divorce in 2009 Whitney released her final album I look to you which was part written by Eric Ellie it was her first album to reach number one since The Bodyguard the studio recordings were strong I can be strong but at her live performances the truth sadly Shawn through Whitney's voice which had once had a five octave range now seemed unable to soar to its once glorious heights the record sounded fine on record but when she started to do public appearances to promote the album it became really obvious that she no longer could hit those notes and she could not create that album live which was it was really tragic I mean watching some of these performances like The Good Morning America performance how was she to know when she goes on tour that we had entered the year of the mobile phone camera and so anybody at a gig could capture her in performance it's not just a TV crew and so we had these viral clips of Whitney not making the high notes unable to sing some of her greatest hits it was like I would liken it to watching Eric Clapton try to play now that he has arthritis and he just can't do it anymore it was just horrible it was sad it was like oh my god this voice of a generation has been lost the beginning of her tour in Australia when people were actually walking out and asking for refunds nothing more disappointing than getting to that big ending of I will always love you and she can't do it anymore [Applause] no one seems to have had the courage or decency to say to her wait a minute don't go on camera in this condition and so we had this incredible series of appearances which turned out to be viral sensations of a negative kind what Whitney did over the years with her smoking first of cigarettes and then she's to do marijuana laced with cocaine destroyed the very instrument that brought her her fame and fortune in the first place it was almost textbook self-destruction some people might say that some way she might have wanted her voice to be destroyed because actually the voice was the mechanism it's put her in front of the world and put this person before the world it wasn't really the person that the world thought they were looking at and so by destroying the voice she actually breaks that illusion and and you know that's you know well-documented with people who who sometimes are thrust into the public eye and find themselves in the public eye and find themselves in the public eye is someone or something they can't actually reconcile with who they really are they want to sabotage her and they want it all to end Whitney confirmed this struggle with her public image and her private life when she gave the Oprah Winfrey Show one of its most memorable interviews in 2009 you really were given the voice Wow how could you not know that that that was to be treasured when I became when Houston and this other stuff happened my life became the world's my private business who I was with whom I married who I you know and I was like that's not fair she belonged to America Americans are her brothers and sisters but she couldn't really belong to them because it didn't really know who she was and she couldn't really be the person that she would need to be to be accepted by them and that kind of created created a crisis that's one of the factors that would have driven her into addiction [Music] when the terrible news broke about Whitney's death all around the world fans came out to mourn the passing of one of music's most glittering stars her music really touches your heart touching just so she was a great person and she's one of us and we just love her she's up there with Michael Jackson in any of these other big artists my mother and father knew how much she meant to me they called me and told me that she had passed away and I was devastated I am very heartbroken because she was my angel she was my agent Manning fortunately she left the ocean the great and the good of Hollywood came out to celebrate the life and career of one of their best what people seem to take away most from her funeral was the Kevin Costner speech I actually wasn't aware until recently that they had stayed very good friends since they were in The Bodyguard together in 1992 so off you go Whitney off you go escorted by an army of angels to your heavenly Father and when you sing before him don't you worry you'll be good enough we must never forget the Whitney was one of the greatest talents and most soulful talents the music industry is produced in a lot of part of the 20th century [Music] the song didn't we almost have it all it could be about Whitney's life because she had the voice yard all the talent but didn't quite have enough to survive everything that live through it [Music] it was Whitney Houston's vocal style which was the template for young female vocalists for over a quarter of a century young girls just thought I've got to do this so everybody who came afterwards from Mariah Carey through Christina Aguilera all tried to sing like Whitney used [Music] her audience was broad you know was it was white it was black it was mainstream it was R&B fans it was pop fans it was grandmas it was kids this is a woman with an incredible voice one of the best voices of all time I think what people will definitely remember is that beautiful bright girl with a voice from an angel very touching Lee in the memorial service funeral program Whitney's mother Cissy had written a note about her daughter and she said in there when you were born the Holy Spirit told me I wouldn't have you for very long and she didn't [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: FREE MOVIES

Views: 712,177

Rating: 4.7193894 out of 5

Keywords: Whitney, Houston, whitneyhouston, music, documentary, whitney houston, whitney houston documentary, whitney houston 2017, rags to riches whitney houston, whitney houston greatest love of all, white houston tribute, the greatest love of all, full movie, full documentary, free movie, free documentary

Id: aNndmuv0S04

Length: 56min 22sec (3382 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 14 2017