Chicago 50 - No. 14 - Bob Fosse Choreographer/Director

Bob Fosse in the house of the 46th Street Theatre during rehearsals of Chicago, 1975.

From Chita Rivera's memoir:

"On the first days of a rehearsal for a new Broadway musical, all companies are brimming with hope and nervous energy. The ones for Chicago, in the autumn of 1974, felt different. There was the excitement of a potential hit in the making, and there was loads of laughter as we read through the script written by Freddy. He gave it warmth and wit; Bobby gave it satire and cynicism. John and Freddy's songs were a Broadway pastiche within a 1920s vaudeville frame. They were hilarious and presentational, such as when an unseen emcee announces the song ‘My Own Best Friend’: ‘And now Miss Roxie Hart and Miss Velma Kelly sing a song of unrelenting determination and unmitigated ego.’ Bobby was asking the audience to be complicit in blindly loving the famous, even if they were two cold-blooded murderers. ‘Would the public buy it?’ was a question that was forever hovering over the show.

"‘A Valentine to show business, etched in acid,’ is how a writer described Chicago later. Throughout the development, there was a tension between the push and pull of these two perspectives. The optimism of Freddy clashed with the pessimism of Bobby, who carried within him a sense of dread. He was mercurial. Happy one day, miserable the next, even though Chicago was coming in the wake of a series of triumphs and critical, if not commercial, successes.

"Though it got good reviews, the film of Sweet Charity was a flop. That didn't make Bobby any more unhappy than if it had been a success. He was a brilliant and complicated artist, and for me to try to figure him out would be a fool's errand. However, I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to say that he was always a bit more comfortable with failure than with success. Three years after making his film debut with Charity, he won an Oscar for directing Cabaret, a Tony Award for Pippin, and an Emmy for Liza with a Z. You'd think winning the triple crown would have driven anybody into leaps of ecstasy. Not Bobby. He checked into Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic to cope with all his good news.

"‘The one thing that Bobby can hold on to is sorrow,’ said Gwen.

"Chicago was obviously a valentine to the woman who'd put up with Bobby for most of their adult lives. At age fifty, Gwen was looking at the show as a passion project for one more hurrah on Broadway. For Bobby, it was a mea culpa for his infidelities. Their twelve-year marriage had ended three years before, and Gwen let on to me that he had since taken up with Ann Reinking, a tall, young dancer whom he'd met on the set of Pippin.

Ann Reinking replaced Gwen as Roxie in Chicago in 1976. Photo by Bob Deutsch.

"Annie was talented and had expert technique, but she lacked softness. Nor could she ever fill the niche Gwen occupied in Bobby's life as muse, wife, and mother of Nicole. They never divorced, and she remained the wife, the keeper of the flame, and his closest confidant. I never saw an ounce of resentment in Gwen, on the set of either Charity or Chicago. That's just how she operated in the world. To Gwen, what mattered was the project at hand. That never changed. During Chicago, Bobby may have played around with the dancers in the chorus, but that never stopped him from believing, with good reason, that the sexiest dancer on that stage was his wife.

"The professional reunion of Bobby and Gwen, on top of his recent accolades, added to the expectations for Chicago. You could see them weighing heavily on him when he walked into the Broadway Arts for that first week of rehearsals. He didn't look well. A steady diet of amphetamines, junk food, sleepless nights, countless cigarettes, and the never-ending quest for perfection can do that to a guy. I've worked with many directors who were less self-destructive than Bobby but no less obsessive. In my entire career, I have yet to collaborate with a director and/or choreographer who was completely satisfied. As the saying goes, ‘Shows are never finished. They just open.’

Rehearsal schedule for Chicago. Fosse/Verdon collection at the Library of Congress.

"Once Bobby recuperated from his heart attack, we went to work. It took me a while to get used to his style, which was much more contained and intense than it had been in Charity. It didn't help that Bobby wasn't one to give a lot. Forever dressed in black— one day he showed up in blue and I excused myself to get my sunglasses — he was available but not very demonstrative. I love to fly across the stage, so at first I found his choreography for Chicago strange, restrictive, and difficult to learn. Tremendous focus and constant repetition were needed to get it right. And it helped to watch the other dancers. At times, rehearsals looked like a hall of mirrors.

"I was looking at myself while watching them, and they were watching me looking at them while watching themselves. When Bobby saw what we were doing, a rare smile would pass his lips. That is, if there wasn't a cigarette in his mouth. Even after his brush with death, he couldn't bring himself to stop smoking. Out of concern, friends were forever slapping cigarettes out of his lips. I once had the temerity to tell him, ‘I'll walk off the stage if you don't put that out.’

--Chita: A Memoir by Chita Rivera