Chicago 50 - No. 17 - Costumes by Patricia Zipprodt

From If the Song Doesn't Work, Change the Dress: The Illustrated Memoirs of Broadway Costume Designer Patricia Zipprodt

"My next collaboration with Fosse was Chicago two years later, while Pippin was still running at the Imperial Theatre. He was making the show for Gwen, from whom he had separated in 1971. They had purchased the rights to a 1942 Ginger Rogers film called Roxie Hart and the original 1927 play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins about two vaudeville dancers, Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, who become celebrities after they murder their lovers and are acquitted.

Patricia's sketches for Roxie and Velma

"Fosse took the project to Kander and Ebb, composer and lyricist for Cabaret. All three of them envisioned an acerbic musical reflecting the tone of corruption in the Watergate era. For his costume and scenic designers, Fosse brought back me and Tony Walton.

"Tony showed me a set model that was all black vinyl and chrome. It perfectly set the Art Deco look of the 1920s and the sinister world that Bobby was trying to create. Although he and the lighting designer Jules Fisher, who had also done Pippin, used some brilliant splashes of neon tubing, Tony's essentially monochrome design allowed me a free hand with color.

"Bobby wanted to have his Greek chorus of dancers surrounding Roxie and Velma just put things on and take things off of sophisticated leotards, an extension of the little hat-and-cane way of life that was so vital to him.

"For my research I looked at clothes of the 1920s, but I really found my goodies in the small artifacts of the period: buckles, cigarette lighters, compacts—museum-quality pieces of exquisite design. From those small pieces and from wallpapers and furniture of the period, I developed a look which was one of my favorite things I'd done in a long time.

"When I first did the chorus, I wanted to make a prototypical statement for Bobby to explain how the hats and the gloves would go over the body garment and how we could change the character looks of everyone as the evening progressed without changing their underlook. I sketched him a set of girls with their little skirts, little hats, little feather boas, all very rough and watery, just a thought-sketch, and he was really quite taken by it.

"Later, as I began to solidify the chorus look, I had to do front views and back views, because it was very three-dimensional designing. These drawings were very detailed, painted to the edge, because they had to serve for patternmakers and painters.

Patricia's costume sketches for the ensemble

"Bobby would look at these sketches and say, 'Well, they're very nice. But where's the one I like?' He meant that funny, rough, watery thought-sketch. I'd explain that these new drawings were what the shop needed to get the feeling he liked. 'Are you sure?' 'Yes, I promise you,' although I knew better than to promise. I couldn't go to a meeting without that first drawing because that was his security sketch.

"He was very nervous about the visuals. Bobby had to have control in an area he was not comfortable in. He wasn't like George Abbott, who would say, 'Draw me some sketches. I'll see the sets and costumes in New Haven.' Fosse just bled over every line drawing. He had to monkey around with models. He was very demanding of his designers in that sense, which is good. Once he felt secure enough, he would use us collaboratively.

"For Velma and Roxie's finale costumes, I originally did some marvelous hoochie-coochie-looking things out of silver glittery fabric and rhinestones, with stars for bras, hearts on their pubic bones, and big headpieces with cutout letters in rhinestones that spelled out 'Velma' and 'Roxie.' They played in these for quite a while during dress rehearsals, tryouts in Philadelphia, and previews in New York. Then Bobby decided

The original "hoochie-coochie" finale costumes for "Loopin de Loop" and "It"

the ending wasn't upbeat enough, so I redesigned them in white tail coats with beaded lapels and white leotards trimmed with rhinestones. They had white top hats with sparkles on them saying 'Velma' and 'Roxie' with big angora balls in green and purple.

"Everyone thought these were very pretty and a lot of fun, but the raunchy ones had been photographed so much that when all the reviews came out, those were the ones that were printed: Velma and Roxie in these hearts and shiny stars on their tits, instead of the grand showbusiness ending. I love to compare the photographs.

The new finale costumes for "Nowadays" and "Hot Honey Rag"

"In my endless quest to integrate the costumes with Tony and Jules's black vinyl, chrome pipe, and neon tubing scenery and lights, I decided to put the girls in the 'Cell Block Tango'--Bobby's jailhouse rock number—in robes made of a cotton fishnet dyed what I call jail khaki with black vinyl stripes an inch wide sewn on. The seamstresses sat for hours stitching these on a dozen robes, but they looked absolutely smashing over their Art Deco leotards. You could see the image of show working through all the time.

"For Jerry Orbach's look when Billy Flynn went to court with Roxie, I used Clarence Darrow's outfit as my image: blue suit, red tie, white shirt, and suspenders, so he would be red-white-and-blue.

"The production was halted two weeks into rehearsal in November 1974 by Fosse's near-fatal heart attack, which he later dramatized so brilliantly in his film All That Jazz. We were just starting to get into the heavy work in the shop, with fabrics coming in and things being put up on the dress forms in muslin. We were going full blast.

"The management worked very hard to keep the cast together and help them stay solvent with temporary work in television commercials and industrials. I don't think we lost anyone. For the designers, however, it just meant that the little money we got in the first place had to cover a longer period of time. I don't remember that they ran out and got us any television commercials.

"I visited Bobby several times in the hospital, as did everybody who knew him. It was possibly the busiest hospital room in the entire history of New York Hospital. The nurses were absolutely transfixed by all these gorgeous women floating around the bed of this bypass surgery patient.

--From If the Song Doesn't Work, Change the Dress: The Illustrated Memoirs of Broadway Costume Designer Patricia Zipprodt