Chicago 50 - No. 13 - Securing the Rights to Chicago

"A musical version of Chicago had been on Gwen's mind since the 1950s when she saw Roxie Hart, the 1942 film with Ginger Rogers. She liked the idea of adapting it even more after she read the 1926 play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins. It had been a hit. The public fell for a pair of devilishly clever young women, Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, who had parlayed their celebrity as murderers into successful vaudeville careers.

"When Gwen told Bobby about it, he came quickly on board and they were finally able to secure the rights in the early seventies. For Gwen, it meant a return to Broadway after an absence of nearly a decade. For me, it would mean working again with Bobby since I'd toured in the national company of Sweet Charity and danced on a rooftop in his movie version. He'd changed a lot in that time. You start out just wanting to be a hoofer like Fred Astaire and then become an international success. How do you cope with that? His answer came in Chicago: ‘Glamor kills.’

--Chita: A Memoir by Chita Rivera

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Maurine Watkins, the author of the play Chicago, who did not want to sell the rights for an adaptation of Chicago.

"For years, Watkins had rejected every offer to adapt her work. The rumor was she had become a superstitious fanatic, reading only tarot cards and Variety and living someplace where not even Sheldon Abend, her agent, could reach her except through a post office box in Jacksonville, Florida. To actually get Watkins in the flesh, Abend had to hire a private detective who tracked her, ultimately, to an address not far from her post office box. But once located, Watkins (now writing Hallmark cards for a living) refused to talk to him. When she died, in 1969, her estate, including the book rights to her plays, transferred to her mother. When her mother died, the rights were transferred to Abend, who, at last, sold Chicago to Fosse's producer Robert Fryer, and the team-building process began.

--FOSSE by Sam Wasson

According to Gwen, it was written in Watkins' will that Gwen had first right of refusal to license Chicago.

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Marsha Bagwell--the original standby for Matron Mama Morton and Mary Sunshine and personal assistant to Gwen Verdon--explained one of the reasons why Maurine Watkins, the author of the play Chicago, delayed giving Bob and Gwen the rights to adapt Chicago into a musical. Marsha said she was told this story directly from Bob and Gwen: When Bob and Gwen talked with Maurine Watkins to secure the rights to adapt Chicago, Maurine made two requests: The first being that she insisted that the actor who would play Mary Sunshine (a reporter based on Maurine herself) should be played by a male, dressed as a woman. She that it was because this is how she felt her entire life, like a man dressed up as a woman, like she was in the wrong body. She felt by presenting as a woman she was always having to dress up and pretend to be something she was not.

Her second request was that the musical not be made until after her death, so that she would not be 'outed' as transgender until after her death. Even now, this is a little known story. Marsha, who told me this story in a interview in October of 2025, said she felt this was important information for directors to know about this character, and for actors playing Mary Sunshine as well. At the end of the show, when Mary Sunshine removes her wig and reveals that she is a man, it is a gimmick, but a revelation about that character's truth.

--Interview with Marsha Bagwell by Lauryn Johnson