Patti LuPone, one of Broadway’s long-standing divas, will perform a one-woman songfest with some talented locals singing backup at the Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center this Friday, Sept. 2. Earlier this summer the Tony Award-winner (Evita, Gypsy) also scored big points at the Goodman Theater in Chicago playing cosmetics titan Helena Rubinstein in a brand new musical, War Paint, which will open on Broadway next spring.

I was there in Chicago too — my body in the audience and my ideas up on stage. The Lord of entertainment does indeed work in mysterious ways.

It all started back in 2003, when my wife and I ducked out of the rain into the New York Historical Society to catch a retrospective of Jules Feiffer’s cartoon drawings. To access the Feiffer exhibit we had to pass through another exhibit called Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business, assembled by the Radcliffe Institute and the Smithsonian. This not only caught my eye, it changed my life. A journalist and documentary filmmaker flirting with retirement, I was hungry for a new sweet idea. That afternoon I felt as if I had just been served a heaping ice cream sundae.

Halfway through the Enterprising Women exhibit stood, several yards apart, the lives and legacies of Helena Rubinstein (1872-1965) and Elizabeth Arden (1881-1966), whose global competition forged what is today the $150 billion health and beauty industry. Before their careers, cosmetics were mainly worn by performers and prostitutes. They were truly pioneers, in a rivalry that lasted more than half a century. Although they lived and worked in the same neighborhoods, there is no evidence they ever met or spoke to one another.

This sounded like a great drama to me. It must have been done before, right? Wrong. I looked everywhere but found no film, play or even literary work on the rivalry. I chatted up my production partner, Ann Carol Grossman, and she agreed to collaborate with me. Now it was just a matter of doing all the research, gathering all the funding, churning out a documentary and finding some organization or distributor to show it. Were there that many years left in my life?

The first promising omen came in the form of that elusive book, which popped up on a best-seller list in London. Author Lindy Woodhead spent six years doing some heavy-duty research for her nonfiction opus, War Paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden, Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry. We decided to bring her on board in an exclusive agreement. One step at a time, we assembled our script, our interview subjects, our production team. All we needed was that basic lifeline called funding.

We pitched our idea to an executive at PBS, who blessed our project and honored us with most of our funding. The operable word here is “most.”

After a year of nickeling and diming through the grant world and selling rights to foreign TV networks, but not exactly completing our budget, we decided it was time to jump in with all our feet. We hired, wrote, edited, produced and directed our way to a finished 86-minute film by the fall of 2007. PBS gave us a premiere date of March, 2009, so before then we played the festival circuit.

PBS feared political incorrectness with our title War Paint, so we changed it to The Powder & the Glory.

My production partner’s teenage daughter thought our film should be a musical too, but we thought she was dreaming. March being Women’s History Month, PBS decided to air our film every March. After the 2010 broadcast, Bob Brustein, Vineyard seasonal resident and university drama guru, saw the film and told us it should be adapted into a musical.

“You’ve got dueling divas, Arnie,” he said.

James Lapine, another Vineyard seasonal resident and Broadway guru, agreed.

“I see what Bob means but I haven’t got time for this,” he said.

Then Mr. Lapine’s friend David Stone, who counts Wicked among his production credits, watched the film and called us.

“This is a musical. Let’s talk.”

We talked, we signed, we received option payments. Mr. Stone hired the creative team behind the musical of Grey Gardens, which also began life as a documentary. Although this does not happen that often, when it does you are basically paid to go away, make no threats to sue but be available for consultation. In short, you have just given your child away to foster parents.

The good news came last November. The musical, now once again called War Paint, would open a 2016 summer run at Chicago’s Goodman Theater, starring Patti LuPone as Madame Rubinstein and Christine Ebersole as Miss Arden. As for fear of political incorrectness, well, let’s just say Broadway and public television have differing views of publicity.

In July, Ann Carol Grossman and I, our spouses and three dozen friends went off to the Goodman Theater to be wowed and proud. We loved the show and loved how lines from our film kicked off songs and situations. In an eight-week run, War Paint became the most successful musical in the theatre’s 94-year history. Our child could now be seen and admired in a new light.

The next light will be on Broadway, where after some autumn-winter tweaking, the show with the same stars will open next spring.

Forget the foster parent reference. Maybe this is more like watching your child leave home to go off to college and when he graduates he becomes dean of the faculty. Or, like someone dropped a big cherry on that ice cream sundae I tasted at the New York Historical Society 13 years ago.

Patti LuPone performs Friday, Sept. 2, at 7:30 p.m. at the performing arts center on the Vineyard as part of Broadway @ The Performing Arts Center. Visit vineyardbroadway.com.