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

(L-R) Michon Peacock, Candy Brown, Graciela Daniele, Chita Rivera, Cheryl Clark, Pamela Sousa. Photo from Patricia Zipprodt's collection at NYPL FRED EBB: As I recall, "Cell Block Tango" was a very difficult number to write. It's not so much a song as a musical scene for six women, and each has to tell her personal story in the course of a musical refrain that keeps repeating. It was difficult because each of the stories had to be entertaining and also meaningful. Each one ha

Lenora Nemetz was the original standby for Gwen and Chita in Chicago. Below she tells the story of her audition, and when she made her Roxie debut during the out-of-town try-out in Philadelphia. “My friend Norman in Pittsburgh sent my picture to Bob Fosse, and he wrote back and told me to come in for an audition. Do you know what happened? I got on the wrong plane. I actually got on a place to Chicago. Then I got off and got a place to New York. Well, I auditioned for Bob and

Gwen Verdon sings "Funny Honey" Photo by Martha Swope, 1975. 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. “Funny Honey” starts out being an homage to torch song queen Helen Morgan's song “Bill” from Show Boat, a song about an ordinary man

Chita Rivera. Photo by Martha Swope, 1975 "At the beginning of almost every performance of Chicago, when the stage manager called ‘Places, please,’ I took my position in an elevator in the basement below the playing area. It would whisk me, standing in a large cylindrical drum, up to center stage to begin the show. Before that, however, I paced the floor, giving myself a pep talk. "Invariably, the stagehands asked, ‘Who you gonna be tonight, Chita?’ Of course, my first obli

The song title, “All That Jazz” as become an everyday expression, used in conversations to mean “and everything else.” But do you know where that phrase came from? Sure its the title of the opening number in Kander & Ebb’s “Chicago,” and later the title of Fosse’s semiautobiographical film, but in interviews, lyricist Fred Ebb has revealed the true origin of the phrase! While he was researching the 1920, he was reading a book from Time-Life series “This Fabulous Century” on t

Photo by Martha Swope, 1975. NYPL Interview by Michael Kantor for PBS, 2003 Jerry Orbach: I played Billy Flynn, the lawyer, and I gave him a certain kind of world-weary insouciance. He was very, very tough, very cold, calculating, but could be very charming. Michael Kantor: How was Chicago untraditional, would you say? You know, you were in a bunch, you saw so many traditional musicals. Wasn't there a sort of almost cynical view that Fosse brought to it? Jerry Orbach: Chicag

"I always thought that I could have made a good criminal defense lawyer. (I'm addicted to watching crime shows on TV.) Velma in Chicago was just the type of person I would have wanted to have as a client. People often asked me if I ever wanted to play Roxie, her rival in the Cook County jail. The short answer is ‘no.' Roxie's cute and conniving, and though I got the chance to play her a couple of times, she will always belong to Gwen. Velma is my kind of girl because she's a

During the number "Roxie" during the out of town try out in Philadelphia before her costume changed. Photo by Martha Swope, 1975 Gwen Verdon was 50 when she starred in Chicago as Roxie Hart. She had wanted to bring the project to life with Fosse for years. In the 1960s they tried to obtain the rights to perform Chicago from Maurine Watkins , but couldn't get permission until after she passed away in 1969. When rehearsals began in 1974 for Chicago , t he progress was stalled

Chris Chadman, Ron Schwinn, Gwen Verdon, Gene Foote, Dick Korthaze rehearse onstage following a musicians’ strike which shut down nine Broadway musicals for 25 days in 1975. Rehearsals began October 26, 1974 at Broadway Arts. After the first table read, Fosse was admitted to the hospital for chest pains. His doctors said he was going to have a heart attack. Fosse's doctors called Broadway Arts to inform Gwen. Gwen was found in a studio alone with Chita, knitting needles in ha

From If the Song Doesn't Work, Change the Dress: The Illustrated Memoirs of Broadway Costume Designer Patricia Zipprodt "My next collaboration with Fosse was Chicago two years later, while Pippin was still running at the Imperial Theatre. He was making the show for Gwen, from whom he had separated in 1971. They had purchased the rights to a 1942 Ginger Rogers film called Roxie Hart and the original 1927 play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins about two vaudeville dancers, Rox

Tony Walton was a set and costume designer who worked on nearly 50 stage productions and over 20 films in his career. For Chicago , he designed the set, and although Patricia Zipprodt designed the costumes, Tony designed one costume for the show... When Tony painted the poster art for Chicago, Fosse liked what the women were wearing so much that he told Patricia that he wanted her to use Tony's illustration as the basis for the costume design. The women wear these costumes

John Kander and Fred Ebb. Photo by Martha Swope. John Kander and Fred Ebb were a music and lyrics team who had worked together on Flora, The Red Menace (1965), Cabaret (1966), The Happy Time (1968), Zorba (1968) and 7 0, Girls, 70 (1971). They joined the creative team for Chicago in with Bob Fosse. John wrote the music, and Fred wrote the lyrics and co-wrote the book with Bob. After Chicago (1975) they were known for The Act (1978), The Rink (1984), Kiss of the Spide

Bob Fosse in the house of the 46th Street Theatre during rehearsals of Chicago, 1975. From Chita Rivera's memoir : "On the first days of a rehearsal for a new Broadway musical, all companies are brimming with hope and nervous energy. The ones for Chicago, in the autumn of 1974, felt different. There was the excitement of a potential hit in the making, and there was loads of laughter as we read through the script written by Freddy. He gave it warmth and wit; Bobby gave it sat

"A musical version of Chicago had been on Gwen's mind since the 1950s when she saw Roxie Hart, the 1942 film with Ginger Rogers. She liked the idea of adapting it even more after she read the 1926 play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins. It had been a hit. The public fell for a pair of devilishly clever young women, Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, who had parlayed their celebrity as murderers into successful vaudeville careers. "When Gwen told Bobby about it, he came quickly on bo

Ginger Rogers as Roxie Hart in 1942 Ginger Roger's writes in her autobiography of starring as the title character in the 1942 film Roxie Hart: "On October 13, 1941, I began work on Roxie Hart for Twentieth Century-Fox. The film was based on the play Chicago, by Maurine Watkins, which in turn was based on newspaper reports of a murder. Roxie Hart was really a satire, and way ahead of its time. William Wellman was the director and Nunnally Johnson was both the producer and sce

Phillys Haver as Roxie. Photo by John Springer The Los Angeles Times loved it Maurine Watkins' play Chicago, which played on tour at Hollywood's Music Box Theatre for 11 weeks. Its drama critic said: 'Bristling with wicked satire ... the public is treated to a caricature of itself as a nation of gum-chewing, sensation-seeking addicts who must incessantly be fed faked pictures and hysterical interviews.' Cecil B. DeMille paid $25,000 for the rights to Chicago and produced the

" Maurine Watkins started writing Chicago, subtitled 'A Satirical Comedy in Three Acts,' as a project for a writing class she was taking at Yale University. The play opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre on December 20, 1926. It was called 'an overnight hit' in New York, where it ran for 127 performances. In an era when theaters tended to turn over shows far more quickly, that was enough to be considered a substantial hit. The show earned as much as $20,000 a week--or

Exterior of the Cook County Jail. Photo found in Bob Fosse's collection at the Library of Congress "Cook County was established by the Illinois State Legislature in 1831. Chicago, an unincorporated settlement with fewer than 60 residents, held the county seat. The first county jail and courthouse was a small wooden stockade built in 1835, outgrown 15 years later. "The county built a larger court and jail on Hubbard Street for offenders awaiting trial for serious crimes [this