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

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

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...