The title says it all: “I’ll Be Damned If …” Nothing was going to stop the ambitious Carlean Gill, a young woman from Detroit’s 8 Mile, from breaking out of her segregated 1950s neighborhood near the city’s economic and racial dividing line with the white suburbs.
Jubilee Theatre is premiering Cherie Williams’ play about the legendary figure, who now lives in Dallas. The play was developed through Jubilee’s New Works program.
Gill joined Arthur Braggs’ Idlewild Revue as a “Fiesta Doll” showgirl at the Paradise Club in the Black resort community of Idlewild, Mich., in 1960. She performed through the early ’70s, touring with the revue during the offseason on the Chitlin’ Circuit.
“I’ll Be Damned If …” focuses on Idlewild and the legacy of Black artists and entrepreneurs who found opportunity in the so-called “Black Eden” or “Motown before Motown.” The club and tours showcased such artists as Stevie Wonder, Sammy Davis Jr., Etta James, Della Reese, Sarah Vaughan and B.B. King.
Gill went on to study cosmetology and open a beauty academy and barber school in Saginaw, Mich., where she also became one of the first African-American horse breeders in the area, a business leader and a humanitarian who worked with the Red Cross after Hurricane Katrina and Habitat for Humanity in Ghana.