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