Introducing Dorothy Dandridge is a 1999 American biographical drama television film directed by Martha Coolidge from a screenplay by Shonda Rhimes and Scott Abbott, based on the biography Dorothy Dandridge by Earl Mills. Filmed over a span of a few weeks in early 1998, the film stars Halle Berry as actress and singer Dorothy Dandridge and premiered on HBO on August 21, 1999. The teleplay is drawn exclusively from the biography of Dorothy Dandridge by Earl Mills. The original music score was composed by Elmer Bernstein, who had known Dandridge and Otto Preminger.