Hirschfeld made the drawing while Bob Fosse's show was still out of town in Philadelphia. It was published in the  Times  on June 8, 1975 after the Broadway opening. The Hirschfeld illustration has seven Ninas. Illustration of Gwen in her Roxie costume by Mark Cote. (left) Lenora Nemetz as Velma Kelly by Hirschfeld. (right) Illustration by Mark Cote of Fosse's shows. Top left illustration shows Gwen, Jerry and Chita.

Jersey Journal Here you can read several reviews of the opening night of Chicago. Although reviews were mixed, the show ran for 936 performances

Bob and Gwen on opening night. Photos by Martha Swope. Of opening night: “The audience adored it—they even applauded when the lights first went down—and there are things, very very positive things, for everyone to adore, not least the performers. Both the girls dance their hearts out, together, singly, or leading the splendid band of gypsies who make up most of the rest of the cast. Miss Verdon’s voice, all candy innocence and yet somehow naughtily suggestive of untold viciou

"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 t

Chita and Gwen perform the new finale: Nowadays Chita: "Bobby and Freddy 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

Original finale of Chicago 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 a

Mary McCarty and Chita Rivera. Kander: Writing “Class” was fun in that way where we were able to just let go. Ebb: That was a duet for Velma and the prison matron. After we had written it, I remember having serious second thoughts about the number. Ebb: I almost talked myself out of that one. Funny songs actually terrify me. I'm at a loss there because very seldom do I think what I've written is funny. I would have cut "Class" in two minutes from my own fear of it before I

KANDER: I remember when we wrote "Razzle Dazzle," before we took it in and played it for Bob, you said with absolute confidence, "Try adding a couple of finger snaps to it. Bobby will love that." We added them, and then we took it in and played it for Bob, and as soon as he heard the finger snaps, he loved the song. -- Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz by John Kander Fred Ebb, Greg Lawrence Jerry Orbach: "In Razzle Da

“‘When Velma Takes the Stand’ and the entire courtroom scene is an imitation of the many courtroom comedy sketches, a staple of vaudeville and burlesque. ‘When Velma Takes the Stand’ is also modeled on the many vaudeville acts that showcased the latest dance crazes, in this case, the Charleston. Denounced by moralists as the devil’s dance, the dance from hell, and other similar names, the Charleston found its roots in African dance and became popular in the American South aro

"I liked Velma because she was a straight shooter, so to speak, blunt and practical. To give you a flavor, one of my favorite scenes in the musical is when the female inmates are playing a game of cards. One by one, they cheat. June sneaks a card from under her chair. Liz pulls one out from her wig. Annie has one hidden in her cleavage. All this time, Velma is smoking a cigarette. Finally she exhales a puff and deftly extracts the card that's been in her mouth all along. -- C

Barney Martin as Amos Hart on Broadway. Photo by Martha Swope, 1975. Did you know, “Mr. Cellophane” in Bob Fosse’s Chicago  was based performances by Bert Williams?  Williams was the first modern Black entertainment star: the first Black recording artist, one of the earliest Black leading men on film, and the first Black performer to star in a major Broadway production (Ziegfeld Follies) with white actors. His signature song, “Nobody,”  a hauntingly comic lament about being u

The first version of this number featured Gwen doing an Eddie Cantor--style number with the ensemble of men dressed as giant babies dancing behind her. In a conversation I had with Candy Brown, Michon Peacock, Lenora Nemetz, and Pamela Sousa, they said that Gwen hated that number (and they even felt they could see her discomfort in these pictures). What replaced it was "The Strut" which cut the ensemble down to two men dressed in suits and bowler hats dancing behind her. This

The first version of this number featured Gwen doing an Eddie Cantor--style number with the ensemble of men dressed as giant babies dancing behind her. In a conversation I had with Candy Brown, Michon Peacock, Lenora Nemetz, and Pamela Sousa, they said that Gwen hated that number (and they even felt they could see her discomfort in these pictures). What replaced it was "The Strut" which cut the ensemble down to two men dressed in suits and bowler hats dancing behind her. This

Photo by Martha Swope, 1975 “My Own Best Friend” was originally intended to be a solo for Gwen, but Gwen, being a dancer first, didn’t feel her voice had the strength to sustain the audience’s attention with a vocal solo at the end of Act 1, so she requested that it be a duet for her and Chita. When Liza stepped into the role of Roxie while Gwen was out with vocal problems, the number was turned back into a solo for Liza who had a stronger voice, and who the audience wanted t

From Chita Rivera's memoir: "One afternoon, Bobby was choreographing ‘I Can't Do It Alone.’ It's the number in the show when Velma, 'in an act of desperation,' tries to persuade Roxie to take her on as a vaudeville partner once they're sprung from jail. Bobby had me dancing on a chair for what seemed an eternity. The movements were small and subtle. "‘Make it less, Chita, less,’ he kept repeating. At one point, I wondered whether I was moving at all. Finally, on a break an

Gwen in "Roxie" during the out-of-town try-out in Philadelphia. The costume for Gwen in the "Roxie" number changed from a tunic and belt during the out-of-town try-out in Philadelphia, to a black beaded mesh outfit on Broadway. The neon sign used for this set was designed by Tony Walton and after Chicago closed, the sign was reinstalled at Studio 54. To learn more about this, read here. Photos by Martha Swope, 1975. Photos by Martha Swope, 1975. This recording was taken duri

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

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

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

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  racke