One might assume Ms. Crawford would have made an exit soon after the wedding. Instead, she remained for seven years as part of the management team, locked with Mr. Brown in what several people in “Whitney: Can I Be Me” describe as a battle for the ear of Ms. Houston. During that time, Mr. Davis receded somewhat from the picture.

Ms. Houston starred in films that grappled more directly with African-American issues but descended further into her own addiction. Whatever had led Ms. Houston to pick Mr. Brown, their addictions helped make it real. “It may have seemed dysfunctional, but that doesn’t say anything about whether they loved each other,” Mr. Edmonds said. “She loved him like crazy, and he loved her like crazy.”

She suffered an overdose during the making of the 1995 film “Waiting to Exhale.” Then she pulled out of big promotional appearances for “The Preacher’s Wife” because of “throat issues.”

Around that time, Ms. Houston gave a rare interview.

“Money doesn’t make you happy,” she said. “Fame certainly doesn’t make you happy. People will tell you that who are famous. You’ve got to find the happiness within yourself. You’ve got to know who you are before you step into this business, because if you’re trying to find it, you’ll probably wind up being somebody else that you probably don’t even like.”

In 1997, Mr. Davis’s patience ran out.

He wrote her a letter: “Dearest Whitney, you know my love for you goes beyond the professional nature of our relationship, which in and of itself is almost as long as the age you were when I met you. To put it succinctly, I am seriously concerned. I know that I have absolutely no right to reflect on anything but your professional recording career, so let me address that. You have not done a studio album in seven years. You have only recorded a total of seven pop songs during the last five years and those were chosen to integrate into the characters of two motion pictures. So insofar as your position as the number one contemporary recording artist in the world is concerned, you have been practically missing in action.”