Chicago 50 - No. 49 - Liza Minelli as Roxie

Lauryn Johnson
11 minutes ago
4 min read

“When you love people, I think you help out, if you can.” — Liza on joining “Chicago”

Just two months after Chicago opened in June of 1975, Gwen lost her voice. Marsha Bagwell relates the story that she took Gwen to her own renowned ENT where he recommended surgery to explore the issue. During surgery, the ENT found a single piece of confetti that had landed on her vocal chord and adhered to it, causing a blister. Marsha explained that during the finale when confetti fell from the flies, Gwen and Chita would sing, tilting their heads back creating an opportunity for the confetti to invade. After the piece was removed, Gwen was required to rest her voice.

This was terrible news for a show that was newly open, received mixed reviews, and relied on its star to pull an audience. There was concern the show would close without Gwen. But then, Liza Minelli offered to step in, as a favorite to Bob, after having worked with him in the hugely successful Cabaret and Liza with a Z. She learned the show in just one week, in the meantime, standby Lenora Nemetz held down the fort.

There was no advance publicity about Liza appearance in the show. The night of her opening, they got special permission from Actors Equity to forgo the Playbill substitution slips. The audience sat in their seats and an announcement was given: “In this evening’s performance, the role usually played by Gwen Verdon” [groans from the audience] “will be played by Liza Minnelli” [ecstatic cheers from the audience]. For the next 8 weeks, box office lines wrapped around the block and performances were sold out.

There were a few changes made to the role for Liza, one being that the “Me and My Baby” strut was changed back to its original form, and that “My Own Best Friend” was sung solo by Roxie, as originally intended, rather than as a duet with Velma.

KANDER: When Gwen was sick during Chicago, Liza took over for eight weeks and she came close to making the show a hit.

EB: She did all of Gwen's blocking.

KANDER: She learned that show in a week.

Евв: I guess I should confess this. I had been with Liza in California, and when we were on our way back to New York on the plane, when I knew Liza was going to do Chicago, I was egging her on to get little things back into the show that I lost during my collaboration with Fosse. I desperately wanted "My Own Best Friend" to be a song just for Roxie. That was the way it was originally supposed to be done. But Bobby took that song and added Chita as Velma. He had them at the edge of the stage, obviously mocking the high-end cabaret singers with their phony Oh-look-at-me attitude. He hated songs like —

KANDER: "I Did It My Way."

EBB: And "I Gotta Be Me." He hated them. And this was his take on how you would sing "My Own Best Friend" if you were that kind of performer. I thought what he did belittled the song.

But Liza knew she had power coming into the show, and on the plane she told me, "I'll get it back." During a rehearsal, she said, "Bobby, I would like to sing this number by myself." That meant having Chita not come out, which was fine with Chita. The first night that Liza sang it, she got a tremendous hand, and she whispered into the microphone, "How about that, Bobby!" I don't know who heard her. To me it was like she had yelled it out.

KANDER: I never heard that.

EBB: I was frightened that she said it. "How about that, Bobby." But she idolized him.

KANDER: During the Chicago run, there was no publicity for Liza replacing Gwen, no sign in front of the theater. Every night the stage manager would say, "Tonight the role of Roxie Hart, usually played by Miss Gwen Verdon, will be played by Liza Minnelli." We weren't doing well before Liza came into the show. Our reviews had been very mixed.

EBB: Oh, I think the show was going to close. Liza was the one who made it a hit, right?

KANDER: It wasn't really a hit. It never paid back. What happened was that people began thinking of the show as a hit with Liza, so when Gwen came back, business was good. That was Liza at her most amazing.

EB: I remember Brooks Atkinson's review of Chicago basically said something like, "It is too slight a piece to sustain its atmosphere."

KANDER: Many critics thought it was just too mean.

EBB: Yes, sardonic wasn't in that year.

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

PHOTOS* OF LIZA IN CHICAGO

*Most are by Martha Swope, or found in Patricia Zipprodt's archive in the New York Public Library