Dreamgirls

Plots: A trio of black female soul singers cross over to the pop charts in the early 1960s, facing their own personal struggles along the way. Detroit, the early 1960s. Curtis Taylor, Jr., a car salesman, breaks into the music business with big dreams. He signs a trio of young women, the Dreamettes, gets them a job backing an R&B performer, James “Thunder” Early, establishes his own record label and starts wheeling and dealing. When Early flames out, Curtis makes the Dreamettes into headliners as the Dreams, but not before demoting their hefty big-voiced lead singer, Effie White, and putting the softer-voiced looker, Deena Jones, in front. Soon after, he fires Effie, sends her into a life of proud poverty, and takes Deena and the Dreams to the top. How long can Curtis stay there, and will Effie ever get her due? It’s the mid-1960s. Detroit-based The Dreamettes, a black girl singing group, is comprised of lead Effie White, and her backup singers Deena Jones and Lorrell Robinson. They are struggling to make a name for themselves despite their talent. At a local talent competition, they are approached by Curtis Taylor Jr., a used car salesman who wants to break into the music business on the management side. He offers them a job singing backup for James “Thunder” Early, a renowned local black performer who has more of a reputation as a married man seducing his backup singers than his onstage actions, hence the reason he is having problems finding those backup singers. The girls reluctantly accept the offer, that reluctance based on Effie in particular not seeing themselves as backups to anyone else. In making a name for himself and the girls, Curtis brings along for the ride Effie’s songwriting brother C.C., and in the process also takes over Jimmy’s career. Despite embarking on a sexual relationship, Curtis and Effie, both strong personalities, begin to have diverging views of what it takes to make it in the business, Curtis who sees them needing to break what is racial barrier by sounding more mainstream or “white”. The others have to decide what to do, and to who their loyalties lie as they try to make it to the top. Those views may change over time with the onset of the seventies and the change of mainstream musical tastes to disco, and as they see the view from the top in trying to stay there as opposed to looking at the top from the bottom.