Chicago 50 - No. 43 - Loopin the Loop

Lauryn Johnson
3 days ago
5 min read

Chita: "Bobby [Fosse] and Freddy [Ebb] had always struggled with how to end Chicago. After Roxie is acquitted in her trial and Velma in hers (offstage), they put together a vaudeville act to take advantage of their notoriety. When Velma suggests the merger, Roxie has a ready answer: 'You're forgetting one thing. We hate each other.' Velma replies, 'Yeah, but there's only one business where that doesn't matter.' True. Like I said, Bobby was so good at something he had so much contempt for.

"In Philly, the finale had Gwen honking on a sax and me banging on drums as part of a song medley of Loopin de Loop and It (If a girl doesn't have 'it' she can fuggedaboutit. Drawing attention to the show's cynical theme, a guy in the audience then jumps up and attacks us as two no-talent murdering 'floozies' with a cheesy act. 'Why should we cheer for the likes of youse?' It was a sour end to a sour show and nobody was satisfied, particularly Gwen, who wanted Roxie to triumph in the end.

"John and Freddy offered to write a new song but Bobby was obsessed with trying to get it right. Finally, in desperation, the producers persuaded him to give in and they approached John and Freddy to ask if they wouldn't mind writing something a bit more sophisticated. They went off and within an hour had composed a new song, 'Nowadays.' They wrote it so fast that they didn't deliver it until the next day so nobody would think they hadn't worked hard enough on it.

"'Nowadays' was a miracle of a song. Its bright optimism reinvigorated the entire show. 'You can like the life you're living, you can live the life you like...' The sheer brilliance of John Kander and Fred Ebb. Velma and Roxie figured out that if you don't take responsibility for your actions, then how can you be blamed? The absurdity of it all! Somebody up there may love us, but that Somebody up there is also laughing at us. We're just a bunch of flawed, crazy people trying to make our way out of unforced errors as best we can.

"Gwen and I had a ball dancing to 'Nowadays,' along with 'Hot Honey Rag' In our sequined white minishorts, top hats, and canes, lit to reflect every color of the rainbow, we were the personification of the Jazz Age.

"Bobby had the audacity to present us as 'poetry in motion, two moving as one.' Each of our movements was perfectly matched to the microsecond. We went all-out on 'Hot Honey Rag,' as the emcee announced: 'Okay, let's pick up the pace, let's shake the blues away, let's make the party longer, the skirts shorter and shorter, let's make the music hotter. Let's all go to town in a fast car and keep it hot!'

"And we did, changing into fringed skirts that whipped around in time to the music. I was proud to be next to Gwen. The proximity made me feel caller, iger, and more accomplished than I had ever felt before in my life. It was, simply, exhilarating. We apparently conveyed that to the audiences as well because they began to like the show."

--Chita: A Memoir by Chita Rivera

Patricia Zipprodt: "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 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."

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

KANDER: Life around the Chicago production was never pleasant. When we were out of town, the ending of the show had two songs in it for the girls, and they just didn't quite work, though we liked them.

EBB: Right. We had a finale in which Roxie and Velma come together to do their club act, and the act that we decided to do was a rather cheesy club act where Chita played the drums and Gwen played the saxophone. They sang a song called "It" and another called "Loopin' de Loop." They were very amusing, but mostly to us, the sight of Chita banging the drums -

KANDER: And Gwen honking on the saxophone. I remember we were rehearsing in a hotel ballroom. Fosse and Stuart Ostrow, who was assisting him, came to us much more politely than usual and said, "Would you mind going off and reconsidering the ending and writing another song for it?" They were terribly apologetic.

EBB: Bobby thought the girls should have a more sophisticated club act, so he wanted us to scotch those two songs and replace them with one song to accommodate the club act.

KANDER: We said we would try, reluctantly, with an attitude that we would do it just to be cooperative. I will always remember the face we put on for them. As we left, we didn't even look at each other. We went out the ballroom door and started skipping down the hallway, laughing gleefully.

EBB: It was like they gave us a vacation in Florida.

KANDER: We went out to where the piano was and wrote the song "Nowadays" in a very short time.

EBB: No more than an hour.

KANDER: We took the day off and then brought in the song so it would seem like we had done a lot of work to come up with the new number.

EB: We spent the entire day away just to make it look hard, and then Bobby and Stuart liked the song, and it went into the show.

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

Gwen and her sax, and her saxophone scales book from which she learned to play!