Three sisters start out singing in their church choir in Harlem in the late 1950s and become a successful girl group in | dG1fYU1jaWczRDFwVDg
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hello and welcome back to TCM.
00:13 I'm Jacqueline Stewart.
00:14 We are winding down our afternoon now
00:16 with a cult favorite, a musical drama inspired
00:19 by the popular black female singing groups of the 1960s,
00:23 especially Diana Ross and the Supremes.
00:25 From 1976, the movie is "Sparkle."
00:29 Set in Harlem in the 1950s and 60s,
00:32 the story follows a trio of sisters
00:34 who try to make it big as a singing group,
00:36 despite personal issues that threaten to tear them apart.
00:39 The sisters are played by Lonnette McKee,
00:41 Dwan Smith, and Irene Cara,
00:44 who plays the title character, Sparkle.
00:46 She's the one destined to be the biggest star.
00:50 The cast also includes Mary Alice
00:52 as the matriarch of the family,
00:54 a single mom raising her three daughters.
00:57 Mary Alice had been a school teacher in Chicago
00:59 before she moved to New York
01:01 and began pursuing a second career as an actor
01:03 in the late 1960s.
01:05 In 1987, she won a Tony Award for her performance
01:09 as Rose Maxson, a character she helped create
01:12 in the original Broadway production
01:14 of August Wilson's "Fences."
01:16 She also earned back-to-back Emmy nominations
01:19 in 1992 and 1993.
01:22 "Sparkle" premiered in 1976,
01:24 and years later, Whitney Houston became interested
01:27 in mounting a remake of the film.
01:29 But it took more than a decade
01:31 to get that production off the ground.
01:33 When Houston finally produced her remake in 2012,
01:36 she stepped into the role Mary Alice had played
01:38 as the girl's mother.
01:40 It turned out to be Whitney Houston's final movie role.
01:44 From 1976, also featuring future "Miami Vice" star,
01:48 Philip Michael Thomas, as well as a soundtrack
01:50 written and produced by the great Curtis Mayfield,
01:53 here is "Sparkle."
01:55 The songs in "Sparkle" were written by Curtis Mayfield,
01:59 one of the most important soul singers and songwriters
02:02 of the 1960s and '70s.
02:04 The movie's soundtrack was a hit when it was released,
02:07 with Mayfield's songs performed and recorded
02:09 by none other than Aretha Franklin.
02:12 But in the film, the actors did their own singing,
02:14 including Lonnette McKee.
02:17 McKee had gotten her start working in the music industry
02:20 in Detroit when she was a child.
02:22 Irene Cara, who played Sparkle,
02:24 was just 16 years old at the time,
02:26 but already a seasoned musical performer.
02:29 Within a few years, Cara was belting out the title tracks
02:32 of two of the most popular movie musicals of the 1980s,
02:36 "Flashdance" and "Fame."
02:38 "Fame" was released in 1980,
02:40 and Cara also starred in the film as Coco Hernandez,
02:44 one of the students at the Performing Arts High School
02:46 in New York.
02:47 Three years later, she sang and also co-wrote the song
02:50 "Flashdance, What a Feeling."
02:53 It earned her an Academy Award and a Golden Globe,
02:56 and her vocal performance won her a Grammy.
02:58 Up next, Forrest Whitaker stars
03:02 as jazz legend Charlie "Bird" Parker
03:04 in a biopic from 1988, directed by Clint Eastwood.
03:08 - Next on TCM, Bird, then Lady Sings the Blues,
03:15 and later, Body and Soul.
03:18 TCM goes on with the ma-show tonight.
03:21 (upbeat music)