Chicago 50 - No. 3 - Buelah Annan (Roxie Hart)

"Already twice married and a mother by the age of twenty-four, neither marriage nor motherhood seemed to satisfy Beulah Annan [inspiration for Roxie Hart]. She met Harry Kalstedt [inspiration for Fred Casely]—a married man who had a six-year-old daughter—at work. Walks together quickly progressed to drinks at her apartment while her husband, Albert Annan [Inspiration for Amos Hart], was away working. The pair were intimate on at least three occasions, she would later admit.

"During a daytime rendezvous at the apartment on April 3, 1924, Beulah shot Kalstedt with her husband's revolver, causing newcomer Chicago Tribune reporter Maurine Watkins to name her 'the prettiest woman ever accused of murder in Chicago.'

"After the shooting, Beulah couldn't get her story

straight. Maybe that's why she waited hours to call her husband. Did she realize her phonograph was playing the same Hawaiian-inspired tune, 'Hula Lou,' over and over again while she contemplated her next steps? Unclear. Just before 6 p.m., she phoned the garage where her husband worked, saying, 'I've shot a man, Albert. He tried to make love to me.' Annan rushed home in a taxi, found his wife covered in blood and called the police-despite her urging him not to. But it was too late; Sergeant John O'Grady at the Wabash Avenue station was already on the other end of the line.

"'I've just killed my husband!' Beulah shrieked into the receiver, then hung up the phone.

To speed up her trial, Beulah made an announcement a little more than a month following her arrest: She was pregnant. Was there any way a jury composed of all white men would convict a pregnant woman? Not likely, and she knew it. Her plan worked. She was found not guilty. And a baby never materialized.

Beulah's infidelity would lead to Prohibition-era notoriety. Maurine used her real exploits— the affair, the shooting, the trial, the aftermath —to craft the character of Roxie Hart and provide the basis for Chicago."

Read more from:

He Had It Coming: Four Murerous Women and the Reporter Who Immortalized Their Stories by Kori Rumore and Marianne Mather

(left) Buelah Annan on the witness stand, May 24, 1924.

(right) Buelah with her attorneys William Scott Stewart (L) and WW. O'Brien (R)

[In the play, Roxie has a lawyer named Billy Flynn]

Buelah thanks the jury for finding her not-guilty. Standing to her right is husband Albert Annan, and to her left is attorney William Stewart.

In the musical, Chicago, Roxie never gets her picture in the paper after she is found not-guilty because another murder takes place outside of the courthouse.

Transcript from the police station the night that Buelah Annan (Roxie Hart) shot Harry Kalstedt (Fred Casely)

Transcripts from Buelah's trial, her confessions, and her husband's statements. The play and musical Chicago take so many direct quotes from Buelah's trial!

Buelah's lawyer, William Scott Stewart [Billy Flynn]. Chicago Daily News, 1926.