Posts tagged The Sapphires

“Sweet Story Set During Vietnam War”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

THE SAPPHIRES is inspired by the unlikely, but true story of four girls from the aboriginal outback of Australia who form a singing group that entertains the American troops in Vietnam during the war.

The movie begins in 1958 in Australia, and we see four little girls who love to sing performing before an audience. Suddenly a group of government officials show up, and one of the little girls, Kay, is taken away from her family by the officials, because she has light skin, and forced to live in a city with a white family.

This was all part of a government program to integrate aborigines into Caucasian society.

Then the movie shifts to 1968, and we meet Dave Lovelace, played by Chris O’Dowd, who is sleeping in his car and arrives late to work in a bar where he is the emcee of a local talent show, and his boss puts him on his last warning.

Dave says to the audience, “I sort of start off slow, and then I slowly peter out.”

Two young aborigine girls, Gail and Cynthia, are singing in the talent show, they announce that they are from “black fella’ country,” and they sing a country song that the audience doesn’t pay much attention to.

But when their younger sister, Julie, suddenly joins them on stage, their singing becomes much better and so does the audience’s appreciation.

After the talent show, the girls approach Dave, show him a newspaper clipping about an audition in Melbourne for singers and dancers to perform for the troops in Vietnam, and ask him to help them go to the audition.

Dave agrees to help, but says they should sing soul music instead of country music and that Julie should sing lead instead of Gail, which doesn’t please Gail one bit.

Also, while they are in Melbourne, they track down their cousin, Kay, who had been abducted 10 years earlier, and she is able to join them for the audition.

Ironically, while Dave is coaching the girls and teaching them choreography, he says that they should sing their soul songs “blacker.”

So, the girls, accompanied by Dave as manager and chaperone, entertain the troops in Vietnam, where there is danger, conflict, and even romance.

The Sapphires is a sweet and mostly true story set during the Vietnam War.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”