Chicago 50 - No. 31 - A Little Bit of Good

Michael O'Haughey. Photo from the collection of Patricia Zipprodt, NYPL.

"Mary Sunshine, played by a man in drag in the original 1975 production, and her terribly optimistic 'A Little Bit of Good in Everyone' was (in that production) an imitation of Julian Eltinge, a famous turn-of-the-century drag queen and vaudeville star.

Julian Eltinge

"...she parodies the many 'sob sister' reporters of the 1920s. And even without the drag, Mary Sunshine still has her models in vaudeville. Legitimate opera singers like Rosa Ponselle frequently appeared on vaudeville stages singing arias from famous operas and operettas, in an attempt to lend some class to the proceedings. 'A Little Bit of Good' is a parody of over-wrought operatic singing."

--Inside CHICAGO Background and Analysis by Scott Miller

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According to Marsha Bagwell, the original standby for Mary Sunshine, she said that she heard directly from Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon that when Maurine Watkins promised the rights for the play to Gwen, she insisted that the role of "Mary Sunshine" be played by a man. The role Mary Sunshine is a reporter, and represents who Maurine was in a real life. Maurine said she had always felt like a man dressed in women's clothing, and that by having this character be played by a man, it would more accurately represent how she felt. With this stipulation, she also only agreed under the condition that that the show not be made until until after she was dead, so as not to out her as transgender. Although she never transitioned socially or physically, she always felt that she was in the wrong body during her life.

So at the end of the musical, when it is revealed that Mary Sunshine is a man dressed in drag, it was not conceived of as a gimmick, but as a statement on reality. As the link goes, "things are not always as they seem."