Chicago (play)

Chicago is a play written by Maurine Dallas Watkins. The play, while fiction, is a satire based on two unrelated 1924 court cases involving two women, Beulah Annan (the inspiration for Roxie Hart) and Belva Gaertner (the inspiration for Velma), who were both suspected and later acquitted of murder, whom Watkins had covered for the Chicago Tribune as a reporter.

Watkins wrote the script (originally titled Brave Little Woman) as a class assignment while attending the Yale Drama School.^[1] Produced by Sam H. Harris, the play debuted on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre on December 30, 1926, directed by George Abbott, where it ran for 172 performances.^[2]

The play serves as the inspiration for the stage musical of the same name. To avoid confusion between the two and to maintain the musical's playwrights held by the show producers and creators, the play is now titled Play Ball when it is performed.^[3]

Annan, the model for the character of Roxie Hart, was 23 when she was accused of the April 3, 1924,^[4] murder of Harry Kalstedt. The Tribune reported that Annan had played the foxtrot record "Hula Lou" over and over for two hours before calling her husband to say she killed a man who "tried to make love to her". She was found not guilty on May 25, 1924. Annan's husband Albert, a car mechanic who emptied his bank accounts to pay for her defense only to be publicly dumped the day after the trial, served as the basis for Amos Hart. Kalstedt served as the model for Fred Casely. Velma is based on Gaertner (also known as Belle Brown), who was a cabaret singer. The body of Walter Law was discovered slumped over the steering wheel of Gaertner's abandoned car on March 12, 1924. Two police officers testified that they had seen a woman getting into the car and shortly thereafter heard gunshots. A bottle of gin and an automatic pistol were found on the floor of the car. Gaertner was acquitted on June 6, 1924. Lawyers William Scott Stewart and W. W. O'Brien were models for a composite character in Chicago, "Billy Flynn".^[5]

Roxie Hart shoots and kills Fred Casely after the latter attempts to break off an affair with her. She convinces her husband Amos to confess to the crime by convincing him that the victim was attempting a robbery; he confesses at interrogation, seeing nothing wrong with self-defense. When Amos learns that Casely was the victim, he recants, and Roxie, in a fit of anger, confesses herself. She is booked into the Cook County Jail for holding; terrified of her potential fate, Jake, a crime reporter for The Morning Gazette newspaper, reminds her that the Chicago justice system is relatively easy on women and that she faces minimal risk of the death penalty and substantial opportunity for brief fame, intriguing Roxie.

At the jail, she falls under the influence of Mrs. Morton, a fellow inmate who serves as matron of the women's inmate population, who regularly takes bribes. Roxie also forms rivalries with two other inmates, Velma and Liz. Jake and Mrs. Morton hook Roxie up with Chicago's most effective defense attorney, Billy Flynn. She convinces Amos to cover the expenses, but he lacks the funds, prompting Billy to threaten to delay Roxie's trial, and thus keep her held in jail, until he gets his fee. A suggestion from Jake to auction Roxie's personal effects, coupled with Amos's newfound name recognition earning him a raise at work, raises the necessary money and then some. As the funds are being raised, Billy begins crafting a narrative and shaping Roxie's court presence, while having her feed this new narrative to the sob sister Mary Sunshine to gain public sympathy. Roxie begins stealing from Velma and Liz, both figuratively (she co-opts Velma's plan to plead temporary insanity by claiming she was drunk) and literally (intercepting and taking Velma's Marshall Field's dress). When another new inmate, Kitty, takes the spotlight away for the time being, Roxie comes up with a new idea: she takes a baby's outfit that Maggie, a Hungarian woman who apparently was framed for selling poison moonshine but was jailed because her attorney would not put up a proper defense, had knitted in hopes of reunion with her child, and Roxie begins feigning illness and weakness—stating that she is now pregnant and risks having the baby in jail, creating a new sensational story.

Calculating that he could not possibly be the father, Amos gives serious thought to divorcing Roxie, playing into Billy's ploy to make Roxie look even more like an innocent victim. Tensions rise between Roxie and Billy as the trial approaches, with Roxie upset with Billy's approach to demonize the prosecutor because it does not give Roxie enough attention and focuses mainly on Billy's orations. The tensions cease when the date of trial arrives, and Billy sets into motion his plan. He and Roxie convince Amos, who has divorced Roxie, that Amos is indeed the father of her child, then allow Roxie to take the stand, acting out Billy's narrative as prescribed. After an impassioned closing argument, the jury deliberates. They find Roxie not guilty, but within seconds of the verdict, the entire courtroom is drawn away by yet another crime, leaving Roxie and Amos. Amos offers a new, expensive wedding ring to make amends, but she runs off with the ring, confesses there was no child, and leaves him, noting that she is on her way to a ten-week vaudeville tour.

As the play closes, Jake is pulling a reluctant Roxie in for a picture with Machine Gun Rosie, the Cicero Kid—Flynn's next client, and the subject of Jake's new story.

Cecil B. DeMille produced a silent film version, Chicago (1927), starring former Mack Sennett bathing beauty Phyllis Haver as Roxie Hart. In comparing the play to the silent movie, critic Michael Phillips writes, "Watkins' play is harsh, satirical and cynical; the movie, less so. It's more of a melodrama, and to appease the censor boards, producer DeMille meted out punishment to his sinning characters where none existed previously."^[1]

The story was adapted again as the 1942 film Roxie Hart starring Ginger Rogers; but in this version, Roxie was innocent of the murder charge against her.

In the 1960s, Gwen Verdon read the play and asked her husband, Bob Fosse, about the possibility of creating a musical adaptation. Fosse approached playwright Watkins numerous times to buy the rights, but she repeatedly declined. However, upon her death in 1969, her estate sold the rights to producer Richard Fryer, Verdon, and Fosse.^[4] John Kander and Fred Ebb began work on the musical score, modeling each number on a traditional vaudeville number or a vaudeville performer. This format made explicit the play and musical's comparison between "justice", "show-business", and contemporary society. Ebb and Fosse penned the book of the musical, and Fosse also directed and choreographed. The musical version in turn was adapted as the 2002 film Chicago, starring Renee Zellweger, Richard Gere and Catherine Zeta-Jones; this adaptation won the Academy Award for Best Picture at the 75th Academy Awards.

• Machinal, another play from the 1920s, inspired by a real-life case of a woman convicted of murder
• The Front Page, another play from the 1920s, inspired by news coverage of the Chicago criminal justice system

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Chicago (play).

• Full text of Chicago at the Internet Archive
• ​Chicago​ at the Internet Broadway Database
• Chicago public domain audiobook at LibriVox