This is dedicated to the ones they sue – Dionne Warwick and a surviving member of the Shirelles are taking action against the producers of the new musical “Baby It’s You” for featuring them as characters in the play without their permission.
“Plaintiffs, having been cheated out of their royalties when they were young and popular, are now victimized again. Defendants are cashing in on Plaintiff’s stories and successes, while using plaintiffs’ names, likenesses and biographical without their consent and in violation of the law,” says the suit, which was filed in Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday, mere hours before the show’s opening.
The show tells the story of Florence Greenberg, the New Jersey housewife who discovered the Shirelles – the girl group behind the hits “Dedicated to the One I Love” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” – and formed her own record label, Scepter Records.
“The Shirelles’ success was unprecedented, creating a musical blueprint that had an enduring influence on future generations of female pop singers,” the suit says, and ads for the play have described it as, “The Shirelles” musical. The title of the show comes from one of their best-known hits.
The girl group – which was made of high school friends Beverly Lee, Doris Coley, Addie Harris and Shirley Owens – aren’t the only musicians portrayed in the play.
It also features Warwick and “Any Day Now” singer Chuck Jackson, who were also signed by Greenberg.
The problem with that, the suit says, is that they didn’t have permission to use any of their likenesses for the musical – and they knew they need it.
“Defendants’ actions were undertaken notwithstanding their knowledge that plaintiffs’ written consent was a necessary pre-requisite for defendants’ activities,” the suit says.
Now Warwick, Lee, the estates of Coley and Harris, and Chuck Jackson are suing producers Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures and Broadway Baby LLC for unspecified money damages for the “brazen unauthorized use of their names and likenesses.”
The musicians’ lawyer, Oren Warshavsky, said the feel-good musical hit a particularly sour note with his clients, since they still feel they were never fairly compensated by Greenberg in the first place.
“They did get taken advantage of, and now they have to watch and live through it a second time,” Warshavsky said. “It’s terribly disappointing to see it happen again.”
A rep for Warner Bros. declined comment.
The show was co-authored by Floyd Mutrux, who ran into a similar problem with his last show, the hit “Million Dollar Quartet.” That show – about a jam session with Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis, faced the threat of legal action from Lewis. That dispute was settled with Lewis getting a piece of the show, The Post reported last year. Additional reporting by Michael Riedel