"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

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

Gwen Verdon—born 98 years ago today! I hope you enjoy this tiny history lesson I’ve complied for the occasion! Below are excerpts from a...