Chicago 50 - No. 32 - We Both Reached for the Gun

Jerry Orbach and Gwen Verdon

Fosse knew vaudeville. Though he wasn't born until 1927, when he came of age as a performer in his teens, the people he learned from were all vaudeville veterans, and he danced old vaudeville numbers himself. Almost every song in the show is modeled on an actual vaudeville act or star.

“They Both Reached for the Gun” recalls vaudeville's requisite ventriloquist specialty acts, while pointing out how celebrities are just puppets that can be made to say anything by the hand in their back (the people with money).

--Inside CHICAGO Background and Analysis by Scott Miller

Above is a page from the transcript of Beulah Annan's testimony in court in 1924 where her defense is that they "both reached for the gun. But I got it first."

Pamela Sousa, Michael Gendell, Paul Solen, Michael Vita, Graciela Daniele. Photo from Patricia Zipprodt's collection at NYPL.