Lauryn Johnson

Jerry Orbach. Bottom right Susan Stroman Jerry Orbach: You know, "All I Care About is Love", which is a sort of classic hat and cane number with the girls with all the feathers. That’s Billy’s entrance. And he’s saying all he cares about is his love. He doesn’t want fancy cars or diamond rings or big cigars. And as he does it, he does a strip tease down to his shorts and t-shirt. And when I finished. I threw in Crosby imitations, Jolson imitations. A whistling chorus. It was total...

In the scene that leads up to Matron Mama Morton’s song, “When You’re Good to Mama,”  Velma says, “Mama, I always wanted to play Big Jim Colisimo’s. Could you get me that?” Matron: “Big Jim’s! Well now, that’s another story,. That might take another phone call.” Have you ever wondered who Big Jim Colisimo is? Well he was real! Big Jim Colisimo Colisimo was an Italian-American Mafia crime boss who built a criminal empire in  Chicago  based on prostitution, gambling and  racketeering .  In...

Mary McCarty as Matron Mama Morton 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. A working script of Chicago with lyric changes. Fosee Verdon Collection at Library of Congress. Almost every song in the show is modeled on an actual vaudeville act or star. When Matron Mama Morton enters, with a big ring and a fur, she’s playing one of...