Madame C.J. Walker was the first self-made millionairess in the world, at least according to the Guinness Book of Records: not bad for a barely literate laundress, the daughter of poverty stricken Black ex-slaves, born three years after the Civil War, married with a child at 14. It began on the kitchen stove in a sharecropper shack; Mrs. C.J. Walker brewed up a batch of ingredients that, with her 'hot comb,' straightened out a kinky hair problem. Before long, Madame C. J. became the first female in America to earn a million dolllars from scratch. The Walker Manufacturing Company developed 23 cosmetic products that appealed to Black women, altering their appearance and habits. Hair-straighteners and skin-lighteners were among these products, and they aroused a debate over racial pride versus futile assimilation. Marcus Garvey, the father of Pan-Africanism, was on the side of beauty: after all, the Walker Co. gave jobs to 3,000 Blacks. Upon Walker's death, her daughter, A'Lelia, inherited the company and became "The joy goddess of Harlem," a legendary patroness of Black American culture. Director Stanley Nelson, grandson of a former Walker Co. manager, had access to a formidable archive of materials, including a promotional film shot in 1928. Using additional period footage and interviews, Two Dollars and a Dream sketches out a lively portrait of a woman who knew that beauty wasn't skin deep.