Chita Rivera (left) and Gwen Verdon
June 3, 1975, 50 years ago: The musical Chicago opens at the 46th Street Theatre in Midtown Manhattan.
The background: In 1924, Beulah Annan, cheating on her husband, shot her boyfriend -- she claimed, in self-defense. She was acquitted, but died of tuberculosis in 1928. Also in 1924, Belva Gaertner shot and killed her boyfriend. Each of them was married to someone else. She was also acquitted, and lived on until 1965.
Both crimes, and both trials, occurred in Chicago, and Maurine Dallas Watkins covered both trials for the Chicago Tribune. The novelty of a female reporter covering the murder trials of women caught the public's attention. In 1926, Watkins wrote a play, titled Chicago, with Belva being renamed Velma Kelly and depicted as a successful showgirl, and Beulah being renamed Roxie Hart and depicted as wanting to be one. Watkins lived until 1969.
The play was successful. In 1927, Cecil B. DeMille produced a silent film version, starring Phyllis Haver as Roxie. That was successful, too. Even more successful was the 1942 film Roxie Hart, starring Ginger Rogers. It was successful because the Great Depression, and the start of World War II, had made stories set in the Roaring Twenties, not that long ago, charming period pieces.
This film is, so far, the only version of the story in which Roxie is actually innocent, mainly because of the Hays Code, as she had to be seen as a wronged heroine, not as villainess, however justified. But, for the plot, her innocence didn't matter. In 1924, the joke was that all-male juries would never convict a woman of murder, because that would mean the death penalty. But in the play, a woman who is actually innocent -- an immigrant, of course -- is convicted and hanged, making Roxie's case desperate.
In the 1960s, actress Gwen Verdon read the play, and asked her husband, actor-dancer-choreographer Bob Fosse, to turn it into a Broadway musical. Fosse approached Watkins to buy the rights, but she wouldn't sell. She died in 1969. Once her estate was settled, the rights were sold to the Fosses and producer Richard Fryer. John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote the songs.
On June 3, 1975, over half a century after the original case -- hence, the reference to "fifty years" in the song "Nowadays" -- it finally opened, with Verdon as Roxie and Chita Rivera as Velma. At 50 and 42, respectively, each was already way too old for the part. But, in spite of their ages, both were still so sexy that it didn't matter: The play was a hit.
Notable early in the show is "The Cell Block Tango," clearly a ripoff of the title song sequence of the Elvis Presley film Jailhouse Rock. Six women tell their tales:
* Liz had a husband named Bernie. She hated the sound made when her husband Bernie would pop his bubble gum: "I took a shotgun from the wall and fired two warning shots -- into his head."
* Annie moved in with Ezekiel, who claimed to be single. "Single, my ass!" she says, after finding out he was a Mormon with 6 wives. So, she fixed him a drink: "You know, some guys just can't hold their arsenic."
* June was making dinner when she was accused by her husband Wilbur of screwing the milkman. Was she? She neither admits it nor denies it. She says, "And then, he ran into my knife. He ran into my knife ten times!"
* Katalin Helinszki, a Hungarian ballet dancer, known as "The Hunyak." (Presumably, this is a slur that should not have been allowed by the time the musical was finally filmed in 2002.) She's actually innocent, but, because she's an immigrant who can't speak English -- limited to, when Roxie asks her, "Yeah, but did you do it?" the words, "Uh-uh: Not guilty!" -- she ends up convicted and hanged.
* Velma claims that she caught her husband having sex with her sister, who was also her stage partner. She claims to have blacked out: "I can't remember a thing. It was only later, when I was washing the blood off my hands, that I even knew they were dead."
* Mona married Alvin because he was a sensitive guy, a painter. He said he wanted to "find himself." He ended up finding himself in lovers of both sexes. She says, "I guess you could say we broke up because of creative differences: He saw himself as alive, and I saw him dead!"
Both Velma and Roxie are defended by Billy Flynn, played by Jerry Orbach in the original musical. He plays them off each other, and they use each other for their own purposes as well. Spoiler Alert for an old story: Velma ends up cutting a deal with the State's Attorney, testifying against Roxie in exchange for a plea bargain and an early parole; and Billy finds out about it, and uses it to question the S.A.'s character, and Roxie is acquitted.
But no sooner is she than another murder is committed, and Roxie is no longer the star. Time goes by, the stock market crashes, the Roaring Twenties become the Dirty Thirties, the Coolidge Prosperity becomes the Hoover Great Depression, and Velma and Roxie can't find work -- until they team up. After all, one murderess is a-dime-a-dozen, but two of them together is a hit!
As was the 1975 musical. It was nominated for 11 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Fosse for directing and choreography; and Verdon, Rivera and Orbach, all for acting. Strangely, it won none of those 11 nominations: A Chorus Line took most of the big awards.
Chicago was revived in 1996. Ann Reinking, the dancer-actress that Fosse left Verdon for well before the '75 premiere, had succeeded Verdon as Roxie in that show, and not only reprised the role in '96, but choreographed it as well. She won the Tony for choreography, but not for acting. Bebe Neuwirth, best known for playing Dr Lilith Sternin-Crane on Cheers, played Velma; and James Naughton played Billy. Still running as of June 3, 2002, it became the longest-running revival in Broadway history.
The play won the Tonys for Best Revival of a Musical, Walter Bobbie for Best Director, and Broadway legend Joel Grey won Best Actor for playing Roxie's beleaguered husband, Amos Hart. In the original, Amos was played by Barney Martin, by this point best known for playing Morty, Jerry's father, on Seinfeld.
Fosse had wanted to film Chicago, but his health failed, and he died in 1987. The Broadway revival also revived interest in a film version, but it seemed tricky, due to the vaudeville style of the musical seemingly like it wouldn't translate well tot he big screen. The word "unfilmable" began to be used.
Director Rob Marshall came up with the idea of filming the show scenes in bright lights, making them figments of Roxie's imagination; while filming the "real life" segments with a darker lens, letting both the character and the viewer know that this was real and deadly serious.
It worked: Unlike most recent film musicals -- even A Chorus Line had bombed as a movie -- Chicago was a hit, and was nominated for 13 Academy Awards. At the 2003 "Oscar" ceremony, it won 6, including Best Picture, and Catherine Zeta-Jones won Best Supporting Actress for playing Velma. Zeta-Jones now had an Oscar, to go with the 2 her husband, Michael Douglas, won, for Best Picture for producing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1976, and for Best Actor for Wall Street in 1998. At the time, she was 8 months pregnant with their daughter, Carys. They already had a son, Dylan.
Renée Zellweger was nominated for Best Actress, Marshall for Best Director, John C. Reilly for Best Supporting Actor as Amos, but did not win. Queen Latifah, the rapper who starred in the 1990s Fox sitcom Living Single, was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, for playing Mama Morton, the prison matron, a role expanded for the film version. Richard Gere played Billy Flynn, but was not nominated. Chita Rivera, the original musical's Velma, had a cameo.
As I said, Maurine Dallas Watkins died in 1969, and Bob Fosse in 1987. Gwen Verdon died in 2000, Fred Ebb and Jerry Orbach in 2004, Barney Martin in 2005, Ann Reinking in 2020, and Chita Rivera in 2024. As of June 3, 2025, John Kander, Joel Grey, Bebe Neuwirth, Rob Marshall, Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Queen Latifah, Richard Gere and John C. Reilly are still alive.
The 46th Street Theatre, now the Richard Rodgers Theatre, still stands, at 226 West 46th Street.
