Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 26. Chapters: Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard, Former Ladies of the Supremes, Scherrie Payne, Cindy Birdsong, Lynda Laurence, Jean Terrell, Susaye Greene, Barbara Martin, Betty McGlown. Excerpt: Diana Ernestine Earle Ross (born March 26, 1944) is an American singer and actress. Ross was lead singer of the Motown group The Supremes during the 1960s. After leaving the group in 1970, Ross began a solo career that included successful ventures into film and Broadway. She received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her role as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues (1972), for which she won a Golden Globe award. She won 8 American Music Awards, garnered twelve Grammy Award nominations, and won a Tony Award for her one-woman show, An Evening with Diana Ross, in 1977. In 1976, Billboard magazine named her the "Female Entertainer of the Century." In 1993, the Guinness Book of World Records declared Diana Ross the most successful female music artist in history due to her success in the United States and United Kingdom for having more hits than any female artist in the charts with a career total of 18 number one records in the United States. Diana Ross has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. Ross is one of the few recording artists to have two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame-one as a solo artist and the other as a member of The Supremes. In December 2007, she received a John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Honors Award. Diana Ross, the daughter of Ernestine (née Moten) (January 27, 1916 - October 9, 1984), a schoolteacher, and Fred Ross, Sr. (July 4, 1920 - November 21, 2007), a former United States Army soldier, was born at Hutzel Women's Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. Ross said she didn't see her father until he returned from serving in World War II. Much has been made of whether her first name ends in an "a" or an "e". According to Ross, her mother actually named her "Diane" but a clerical error resulted in her name being recorded as "Diana" on her birth certificate. She always went by "Diane" at home and at school. Her high school yearbook listed her as "Diana" and as early as 1963, when The Supremes released their first album, she