'And I Am Telling You,' it lives on

Memory. The Impossible Dream. All That Jazz.

Just about every Broadway musical worth its bugle beads has that one signature tune. The one that brings down the house. The one that eventually drones in doctors' offices. The one that you know the name of, or the words to, even if you don't know what show it came from.

Then there is And I Am Telling You (I'm Not Going) from Dreamgirls.

Much as when musical whiz kid Michael Bennett staged the Act 1 closer on Broadway back in 1981, the movie version (which expands to 800 screens Monday) of the glitzy showbiz opera about a '60s girl group has its seminal spellbinding moment. The volcanic Effie, dismissed by her soul sisters and Curtis, the man she adores, pleads and wails in protest before she ultimately faces the audience alone and dares them not to love her.

Love her, they do. Even movie audiences regularly break into applause.

"It's so rare to see someone rip their heart out and bang it against the stage," says Paul Wontorek, editor in chief of Broadway.com. "To drop someone all alone on center stage like that shows the genius of Michael Bennett's staging."

On opening night a quarter century ago, then-21-year-old Jennifer Holliday became a theatrical legend, a gay icon of triumph over adversity and, like Effie, often a victim of her own unique gifts, demanding nature and immense presence.

Today, her one-of-a-kind performance continues to haunt: A famous clip from the 1982 Tony Awards broadcast on YouTube that captures all 8 1/2 minutes of Holliday in her stomping Godzilla-like glory has been watched more than 340,000 times since it was posted in February.

"Theater people have always held onto that Tony Awards performance," says Wontorek of the never-equaled live sequence that has been regularly shown in gay bars for years. "Everyone obsesses over that broadcast. They've passed along copies from generation to generation."

And now another Jennifer, American Idol castoff Jennifer Hudson, is on the brink of similar success as she redefines Effie, Hollywood-style.

"I never met anyone who didn't love that song," says Hudson, 25, who first heard it when Will Smith lip-synched along to Holliday on his '90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and has since performed it herself several times.

But not as an actress navigating through And I Am Telling You's tricky hills and valleys. Hudson gets what other singers, who try to blast their way through the volatile ode, don't: "It's not about the vocal gymnastics, but the emotion."

Like athletes attempting the Ironman Triathlon, those with a similar octave range as Hudson and Holliday can't resist the challenge to stretch their vocal muscles. "I know a lot of talented singers who are frustrated they aren't overweight black women," Wontorek says.

Recent attempts that are found on YouTube include American Idol contestants Frenchie Davis and Tamyra Gray as well as Bianca Ryan, the 11-year-old winner of TV's America's Got Talent.

"Some can do it and some people shouldn't even try," says Henry Krieger, who wrote the melody to accompany the late Tom Eyen's words. Men have even given it a shot. "Jim Carrey sang it on the last episode of The Garry Shandling Show. I'm not kidding. It was amazing. Sammy Davis did it on The Tonight Show in 1982, but didn't do it as well as Jim Carrey."

One singing superstar who has never attempted to scale the heights of And I Am Telling You is Beyonce Knowles, normally an exuberant artist who goes demure as Effie's rival Deena in the movie.

"I really don't do many cover songs," says the nine-time Grammy winner. "I would love to sing it, though. The track alone is so dramatic. It tells the story even without the lyrics. Then on top of that, the words are so vulnerable. Everybody feels like that at one time. I am telling you, you're going to love me."

Krieger initially was stumped by the first line, though. "And I am telling you I'm not going? It ain't normal. It was a strange way to begin a song. I suffered through that." Fortunately, once he got over that hurdle, the melody "wrote itself. It came right through me."

Bill Condon, director and writer of the movie version of Dreamgirls, witnessed firsthand Holliday's electrifying opening-night debut of the song on Broadway.

"I was in the back row of this big theater, and it was just as strong back there. You were cheering because you were seeing something you had never seen before."

He says a killer solo closing the first act comes along on Broadway about every 20 years. "There's Everything's Coming Up Roses sung by Mama Rose in Gypsy," says Condon of the tune made famous in 1959 by Ethel Merman. "In this generation, there is Defying Gravity in Wicked."

The filmmaker, who wrote the script for 2002's best-picture winner Chicago, borrowed freely from Bennett's original conception of And I Am Telling You. But with one major switch. The setting.

"Onstage, it takes place in Effie's dressing room," says producer Laurence Mark. "Which is fine, because it is already on a stage anyway. But for the movie, Bill said, 'She has to have her own stage to do this number.' Hence, we are on an empty nightclub stage."

One testament of just how mesmerizing a moment it is: a bit of theatrical artifice that goes unnoticed.

"Curtis is gone, she is doing her thing, and the lighting changes," Mark says. "Somehow the audience is fine with that. You just give into the song and her performance, and if you want a lighting change even though there is not another human at the nightclub, you'll be fine."

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