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

Sabella in the Cook County Jail Sabella Nitti was an Italian immigrant living outside Chicago in the early 1920s whose story became one of the most striking examples of injustice in American criminal history. When her husband, Francesco Nitti, disappeared from their farm in 1922, Sabella, and a younger farmhand Crudelle were accused of murdering him. With no evidence, they were released. But when her husband's decomposed body was found a year later in a drainage ditch, Sabell

Katherine "Kitty" Malm "Katherine 'Kitty Malm' was nineteen years old with a two year old daughter, estranged from a husband who she claimed verbally abused her. The young, poor, uneducated immigrant entrusted few others with her daughter's care. 'The only one in this whole damn world I'd let take care of her is my mother. She'd be good to her.' "After taking up with convicted murderer Otto Malm, who called her 'Sweetheart,' the two attempted to break into a sweater factory o

Belva Gaertner Belva Gaertner was a 40-year-old 3-time divorcee when she fatally shot her lover, Walter Law, a married man with a toddler at home, in the front seat of a sedan. When taken in to custody she claimed to have been too drunk to know whether or not she had killed the man. Her exact words were, "I don't know. I was drunk." "For three months, automobile salesman Walter Law, and Belva spent their nights together visiting Chicago nightclubs and drinking illegal liquor.

Albert Annan, husband to Buelah Annan , worked as mechanic at an auto garage. They were married in 1920 in Cook County. He worked long hours to earn $60 a week. They shared a small apartment in the 800 block of East Forty-Sixth Street, in today's Bronzeville neighborhood. Top Right to Left: Albert Anan, Buelah Annan, lawyer William Stewart. Bottom: Albert Annan testifies. While Albert was at work, Buelah was having an affair with her co-worker Harry Kalstedt. One evening he

Harry Kalstedt Buelah Annan [Roxie] met Harry Kalstedt [Fred Casely] at Tennant's Modern Laundry where they both worked. "On April 3, 1924, Harry 'invited himself' over to Beulah and Albert’s south-side apartment (Albert was at work). He brought two quarts of wine with him, which he and Beulah proceeded to consume. In this less-than-sober condition, an argument arose. Beulah later told investigators, 'We drank all of it [the wine] and began to quarrel. I taunted Harry with t

"Already twice married and a mother by the age of twenty-four, neither marriage nor motherhood seemed to satisfy Beulah Annan [inspiration for Roxie Hart]. She met Harry Kalstedt [inspiration for Fred Casely]—a married man who had a six-year-old daughter—at work. Walks together quickly progressed to drinks at her apartment while her husband, Albert Annan [Inspiration for Amos Hart], was away working. The pair were intimate on at least three occasions, she would later admit. "

Maurine Dallas Watkins. Photo by Florence Vandamm, 1926. "Maurine Watkins was hired as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune in February 1924--without any previous professional journalism work to her credit. For the next eight months, Maurine covered a string of sensational crimes, headlined by four murder ases perpetrated by women. These women, brought together under the tabloid glare, form the basis for what has become 'Chicago.' "The first time Maurine Watkins name appeared o

To learn about the history of the 1975 musical Chicago, we must actually look back over 100 years to 1924. Our story begins with two real-life murderesses, Buelah Annan (left) and Belva Gaertner (right), who were charged with killing their husbands in Cook County, Chicago. Their stories were sensationalized in the newspapers by journalists, including reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins, whose articles highlighted the women's beauty and the unlikely prospect of either of them bei

From Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe by Boris Kochno: A romantic reverie in one act by Michel Fokine. Music by Frédéric Chopin, seven piano pieces orchestrated for the Ballets Russes production by Sergei Taneyev, Anatole Liadov, Alexander Glazounov, Nicholas. Tcher-epnine, and Igor Stravinsky. Choreography by Michel Fokine. Décor and costumes by Alexandre Benois. (In 1917, a new set by Carlo Sokrate replaced the Benois décor.) First performance by the Ballets Russes: Théâtre

The following is a chapter from Twyla Tharp's book Push Comes to Shove : Twyla Tharp Foundation Shortly after Sue's Leg, I met with Lucia Chase and Oliver Smith, co-directors of American Ballet Theatre, and their associate, Antony Tudor, in a very large, fairly intimidating, sumptuously appointed, and appropriately high-up corner office in a Chase Manhattan Bank building. Wasting no time, Miss Chase asked me to make a ballet for Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gelsey Kirkland, Martine v

Robert La Fosse, Magali Messac, Cynthia Gregory, Fernando Bujones, Martine van Hamel, and Clark Tippet. Photo by Martha Swope, 1983. "Twyla Tharp's Bach Partita is a pure-dance, plotless work. Focused on formal concerns that deal with structure in music and dance, it also explores a host of movement possibilities. [...] This is the conceptual Tharp at her most sophisticated and at her most elegant. Those who climbed aboard the Tharp bandwagon when she went into an overtly po

Sextet  is a virtuosic pure-dance work for three couples. The choreography is fast, flamboyant and technically rigorous. The couples...