Chicago 50 - No. 15 - Music and Lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb

John Kander and Fred Ebb. Photo by Martha Swope.

John Kander and Fred Ebb were a music and lyrics team who had worked together on Flora, The Red Menace (1965), Cabaret (1966), The Happy Time (1968), Zorba (1968) and 70, Girls, 70 (1971).

They joined the creative team for Chicago in with Bob Fosse. John wrote the music, and Fred wrote the lyrics and co-wrote the book with Bob.

After Chicago (1975) they were known for The Act (1978), The Rink (1984), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1992), Steel Pier (1997), Fosse (1999), The Visit (2015).

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From Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz by John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Greg Lawrence:

KANDER: I remember that you [Fred] were extremely enthusiastic from the start, and I was excited to work with Bobby and Gwen as well, but I was concerned at first that Chicago might be another piece that we were writing where show business would be a metaphor for life.

EBB: I was interested in the original play, Chicago. The film adaptation, Roxie Hart, starred Ginger Rogers, but the movie was of no use in writing the book. As I understood it, Bobby and Gwen always wanted to adapt the play Chicago, but they never figured out how to make it into a musical. Bobby and I were close after working on Cabaret and Liza with a Z, and one day he said to me, ‘Can't you find a way to make this Chicago material into a musical? Fred, I think you could write the book.’ When Bob Fosse said you could do something, you somehow felt you could do it. So I made it vaudeville based on the idea that the characters were performers. Every musical moment in the show was loosely modeled on someone else: Roxie was Helen Morgan, Velma was Texas Guinan, Billy Flynn was Ted Lewis, Mama Morton was Sophie Tucker.

EBB: Chicago was an entertainment, but it also said something about celebrity, about our celebrating killers. At the time Squeaky Fromme of the Manson family was on the cover of Time, and that sort of infamy was initially what the show was about. I thought of it this way: ask most Americans who the secretary of state is, and they won't be able to tell you; but ask them who Al Capone is, and they will know right away.

-- Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz by John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Greg Lawrence