In the summer of 1968, Diana Sands was singing and dancing and politicizing and loving.
As we recount:
“Sexual jealousy was as good a gauge of Diana’s affections as much as any lover’s. During the Hallelujah, Baby! tour, she demonstrated a possessiveness toward Poussaint that suggests she took their relationship very seriously. Not infrequently she would complain to him that women in the cast were flirting with him. In Poussaint’s recollection, he didn’t quite understand. What made her think that? She would tell him what in no uncertain terms: again, it came down to performance. Call them ruses: body language—she’d demonstrate what she meant—how to be beguilingly ‘on’ – she knew all about it.
“The purported attentions paid Poussaint by a blonde in the cast led to Diana issuing her in his presence a swear-laced rebuke. It was not pleasant. ‘You didn’t like to see her angry,’ he said. “She looked like she might hit you up alongside the head.’ The blonde seemed surprised, and backed off; Diana was, after all, the star of the show. Such an outburst, however, was rare. Diana was customarily cheerful, but nevertheless, ‘I think there were a lot of things, retrospectively, that she probably didn’t talk about because they were painful. She just wanted to let them be. Do her thing.'”