Who is effie in dreamgirls based on

As much as Deena Jones, Beyoncé Knowles' character in "Dreamgirls," was modeled on Diana Ross, the film's main character, Effie White, was based on Etta James, according to composer Henry Krieger. Similarities to Aretha Franklin, however, are also hardly coincidental. In any case, neither Franklin nor James ever belonged to the Supremes. Florence Ballard was the alcoholic member of the Supremes who finally became too much of a problem and was unceremoniously replaced in the trio at the height of their career.

"Dreamgirls" draws its story from the relationship between the Supremes and Motown Records founder Berry Gordy Jr., although the end result is pure fiction, cinema and musical theater.

Gordy did work on the Ford assembly line in his early days (the Gordy figure in the movie, Curtis Taylor Jr., played by Jamie Foxx, runs a car dealership), and he worked his way up in the music business starting as a songwriter for Jackie Wilson. In 1960, he founded Motown Records, which went on to become the most successful black-owned company in the country. Gordy, like his counterpart in the movie, had aspirations of making movies. And he did have a long-standing affair with Ross.

The Supremes were three girls -- Ross, Ballard and Mary Wilson -- who grew up in the projects and originally called themselves the Primettes. Ballard, the group's original lead vocalist, had a rough, grainy and more conventional rhythm and blues voice, as opposed to the light, lithesome sound of Ross' vocals. Their first several singles for the label bombed, but once the group changed lead vocalists and hooked up with songwriters Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland, the Supremes exploded with five consecutive No. 1 hits at the height of Beatlemania.

Ballard never reunited with the other Primettes, unlike the sentimental ending to "Dreamgirls." She died broke, at age 32, in 1976.

Eddie Murphy brilliantly digests the R&B stars of the early '60s in his portrayal of James "Thunder" Early, a key figure in the fictional career of the Dreams, the girl group of the movie. He looks like Ike Turner, borrows his stage moves from Wilson and has some Marvin Gaye hovering over his character. Gaye was not only Motown's chief solo male vocal star, he was married to Gordy's sister. Gordy also packaged Gaye, at one point, as a supper club entertainer -- a common strategy for R&B performers hoping to cross over to white audiences in those days -- a scene repeated in the movie with Early.

The connection between the fictional Dreams and the real-life Supremes is underlined by costume designer Sharen Davis, whose magnificent creations accurately echo the outlandish outfits Ross, Wilson and Ballard used to wriggle into. In the movie, the Dreams' album covers look like specific old Supremes albums. The fantastic wigs look right, too. Early's evolution is also marvelously reflected in his changing tonsorial and sartorial styles. The slogan for the movie's Rainbow Records ("The Sound of Tomorrow") comes right from the old Motown Records ("The Sound of Young America"). There is even a brief appearance by a group resembling the young Jackson Five.

The kind of dance styles employed by R&B acts hardly lend themselves to the choreography commonly found in Broadway productions. Horn players would never run all over the stage as they do in "Dreamgirls" or they would be too out of breath to play the instruments. And gangs of boy dancers are strictly a Broadway convention; the R&B world was far too cash poor to afford such extraneous luxuries.

The most inauthentic part of the whole portrait is the music, which owes as much to such mid-'80s pop dreck as "You Light Up My Life" as to the actual Motown sound. But Krieger has said the songs "are nowhere close to the Motown sound." Instead the score is standard issue Broadway fare, decorated with a few drumbeats and occasional light disco drive, that stays heavy on narrative subtext, allowing the songs to comment on the story line. Outside of the one bunker-buster ballad that closed the play's first act, "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" -- and no song has received a more powerful performance anywhere than the one given this song in the film by its new star, Jennifer Hudson, as White -- the songs are mundane, derivative and not capable of standing on their own outside the context of the musical, or other people might have recorded them in the 25 years since director Michael Bennett made "Dreamgirls" a Broadway smash.

But there are things -- much more important than specific details of time or place -- that the film gets very right, such as record label boss Taylor's cold indifference to the act he now realizes is washed up or Early's heroin overdose death. These dark moments, where shadows fall across the dazzling film, resonated with truth.

The movie is a big, splashy Hollywood/Broadway treatment of the R&B world, a breathtaking panorama of song, dance, personalities and drama tossed into the centrifuge of '60s black pop music. And even if it gets much more right than it does wrong, "Dreamgirls" is still an imagining of the rough and gritty life of the R&B performer, a pop musical divertissement rather than an earthy, true-to-life account.