CHAPTER 3
Chicago
Broadway to Hollywood
Twenty years from now, they’ll die to see it [Chicago]—but . . . Chicago will be a wild
card already played. It won’t even be in the discard pile. It’s over.
—ETHAN MORDDEN
W
HEN ETHAN MORDDEN MADE HIS DOUR PREDICTION FOR CHIcago,
it was 1983 and the Broadway musical as he had known it
seemed a thing of the past. He could not have imagined that,
twenty-five years later, Chicago would be playing to sold-out houses on
Broadway. Maurine Dallas Watkins’s 1926 play Chicago, the source material
for the musical, is a prescient satire depicting how the press, in collusion with
the American criminal justice, turns criminals into celebrities. Although set
in the twenties, her story is as relevant today as it was seventy-five years ago.
As of this writing, the 1996 Broadway revival of the musical Chicago is still
going strong and has become the longest running revival in Broadway history.
This production inspired the 2003 Miramax film version of the musical,
which garnered three Golden Globes and six Academy Awards, including
best film. The soundtrack of the film went platinum in 2004 and triple platinum
in 2005.
Gwen Verdon provided the impetus for the musical Chicago. She had
wanted to play Roxie Hart, one of two main parts in the play, ever since seeing
the 1942 Warner Brothers film Roxie Hart, which starred Ginger Rogers
78 CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD
and which is loosely based onWatkins’s comedy. In this film, Rogers performs
the Black Bottom for the press and gets them to join in. It is no wonder that
Verdon and Bob Fosse, her husband since 1960, saw musical potential in this
story. Verdon’s tough-dame exterior and inner vulnerability seemed ideal for
the role of Roxie. In the late 1960s, she and Fosse tried to obtain the musical
rights, but Watkins refused to grant them because she felt uneasy about her
journalistic connection to the subject. When her play opened in New York,
she even concealed the fact that she had been a reporter for the Chicago Tribune
in order to defend herself against accusations of having been involved
in the very process that the play mocks. After Watkins died in 1969, her estate
agreed to sell the rights to Fosse, Verdon, and the producer Robert Fryer. By
then, Fosse and Verdon had separated, but they both remained committed
to the project. News of the musical appeared in the New York Times as early
as 1972, but it was another three years before Chicago opened on Broadway.1
Ironically, what has now become one of Kander and Ebb’s biggest successes
was one of their most unpleasant experiences and a project that almost
collapsed. A major setback occurred when Fosse suffered a heart attack,
which precipitated a suspension of rehearsals. In the hope of keeping the
cast intact while Fosse recovered from his now infamous bypass surgery, the
producers scrambled to find temporary jobs for the out-of-work actors and
dancers. With Fosse out of commission, they also made inquiries into the
availability of other directors, including Hal Prince and Jerome Robbins. Rehearsals
resumed as soon as Fosse emerged from the hospital.
Watkins based her play on two real murder cases that she covered while
working as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Belva Gaertner, a cabaret
singer, shot and killed her lover, Walter Law. Although the murder weapon
was shown to be hers, she claimed to have been drunk at the time of the
murder and therefore unable to recall anything about the incident. Shortly
after Gaertner’s arrest, Beulah Annan allegedly murdered her lover, Harry
Kalstedt, and then swore to her husband that he had tried to sexually assault
her. Two days after Annan’s arrival at the Cook County jail, Watkins wrote
an article that forever linked the two purported murderesses, noting their
shared interests: “A man, a woman, liquor and a gun.” Watkins titillated her
readership with her juicy reportage of these cases and her dry sense of humor.
She knew a good quote when she heard one, such as Gaertner’s “Gin
and guns—either one is bad enough, but together they get you in a dickens
of a mess.”2 Nor did it escape Watkins’s attention that Annan’s cover story
underwent several alterations during the lead-up to her trial, and that during
CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD 79
the proceedings she claimed to be pregnant. In the end, the women were
acquitted within ten days of each other.
Shortly after Gaertner and Annan were released from prison, Watkins
abandoned her job at the Tribune foran editorial assignment in NewYork and
to attend the playwriting program at Yale Drama School. She wrote Chicago
in 1926, two years after the conclusion of the Gaertner and Beulah cases, and
the play ran on Broadway for 172 performances.
In the prologue of Watkins’s play, Roxie Hart shoots Fred Casely, an auto
salesman and her latest lover. After the gunshot and a brief blackout signifying
the passage of three and a half hours, her husband, Amos, confesses
to the crime, claiming that he was protecting his wife. The assistant state attorney,
Harrison, punches holes in Amos’s story and informs him of Roxie’s
infidelity. Jake Callahan, a news reporter, is on hand to shape events into
spectacular news copy. Jake predicts that Roxie’s crime will turn her into an
overnight sensation: “lay off men and booze till when you come to trial yuh
look like Miss America . . . Why, you’ll be famous!” He also convinces the
opportunistic lawyer Billy Flynn to represent her.
When act 1 begins, Roxie is already enjoying her public notoriety. She
and Mrs. Morton, the matron of Cook County Jail, collect paper clippings
recounting the murder. Velma Kelly is also in jail, awaiting trial for killing
her philandering husband. Billy Flynn, who has accepted both cases, concocts
a self-defense strategy for Roxie: “you both grabbed for the gun.” As the
curtain rises on act 2, Roxie, who is being upstaged by the arrival of “Go-toHell
Kitty”(Kitty Baxter), who is also accused of killing her husband, gets the
reporters’ attention by announcing that she is pregnant. Roxie’s trial occupies
most of the third act. Her testimony, from the tilt of her head to the tone
of her speeches, is literally staged by Billy Flynn. Toward the climax of the
trial, Flynn dramatically confronts his client: “Roxie Hart, the State charges
you with the murder of Fred Casely . . . guilty or not guilty.” Roxie cries out
that she killed him, yes, but only to defend her “husband’s innocent unborn
child.” The jury returns a not-guilty verdict. When gunshots are heard from
outside the court building, Jake and the rest of the press dash off, leaving
Roxie alone with Billy. “You’re all washed up,” he tells her, but Roxie insists
that she is going to become a famous vaudeville star. The press reemerges
with the new female killer. “Gee, ain’t God good to the papers!” cries Jake.
“Come on, sister, you gotta play ball: this is Chicago!” he adds as flashes go
off and the curtain falls.
Watkins enlists sarcasm as her main weapon in the battle against the col-
80 CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD
lusion between the press and the criminal justice system. The play teaches
that in America being a bad celebrity is just as advantageous as being a good
one. Once Roxie learns this lesson and how to “play ball,” the original title of
the play, her acquittal and stardom are practically guaranteed.3 Of course, she
receives plenty of assistance in her rise to fame both from Billy Flynn, who
takes her case on only to secure his own fame, and from Jake Callahan, who
exploits Roxie’s crime in order to catapult his own newspaper career, usurping
true justice in the name of readership. Watkins’s character descriptions
are as wry as her dialogue, and they telegraph her cynical viewpoint about
the subject matter. Roxie is “the prettiest woman ever charged with murder
in Chicago”; in profile, “there’s a hint of a Raphael angel—with a touch of
Medusa.” Her description of the publicity-savvy Billy Flynn is a parody of
the Romantic hero mixed with commentary on the ethnicity suggested by
his features: “a rich voice . . . with a minor undertone that’s Gaelic . . . a little
man, like Napoleon, and he carries himself with the Corporal’s air. A magnificent
iron-gray mane, with a forelock he tugs at to convey the impression
of thought, or tosses back now and then to reveal the Caesarian brow. The
eyes are deep-set and keen; the nose starts out to be Semitic, but ends with
an Irish tilt; the mouth is broad without being generous, and the jaw is pugi-
listic.”4
When Fosse started work on Chicago, he enlisted Fred Ebb to coauthor
the script. Perhaps taking his cue from Roxie’s final lines in Watkins’s play—
“I am not washed up! I’m goin’ in vaudeville—I’m famous”—Ebb decided
to tell the story as a vaudeville show, even though when he had tried to do
the same thing with 70, Girls, 70, the audience had difficulty following the
plot (see Chapter 6).5 70, Girls, 70 proved to be a valuable training ground
for Chicago and illuminated some of the pitfalls of telling a story as a vaudeville.
In 70, Girls, 70 the vaudeville structure was a fun gimmick, but it had
no metaphorical purpose. In Chicago the vaudeville is a metaphor for the
American justice system in which the best performance wins over the press
and the jury. This time Ebb structured the entire musical as a vaudeville
bill, presenting the story through a series of vaudeville songs and vignettes,
each of which evokes a well-known vaudeville act, such as ventriloquism or
the “dumb show,” or a particular performer, such as Sophie Tucker (“When
You’re Good to Mama”). The result was a much more organic and seamless
work than anything Kander and Ebb had written before or have written
since.
The vaudeville concept was perfectly wedded to the theme of Chicago.
CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD 81
After all, vaudeville producers willfully featured notorious, even criminal,
figures and freak acts, such as Lillina Graham and Ethel Conrad, who were
nicknamed the “Shooting Stars” for killing W. E. D. Stokes.6 By superimposing
a vaudeville framework onto Watkins’s comedy, Ebb implicitly linked
showbiz to the tawdry, parasitic practices of the press and the corruption
of the American justice system. The musical literally conflates courtroom
performance and stage performance. Further, the vaudeville format suited
Fosse’s background and aesthetic leanings. He had grown up in Chicago during
the twenties and was a product of vaudeville and burlesque.
Ebb played up the vaudeville concept as much as possible. For example,
he wanted to project vaudeville legends (captions) before each scene to summarize
the action. One of Ebb’s outlines gives the legends for act 1. Eventually,
the legends were replaced with spoken announcements made by
the conductor, Stanley Lebowsky, who can be heard on the original cast re-
cording.
Vaudeville Legends for Act 1
Scene 1 “VELMA O’ROURKE SINGS THE OPENING NUMBER WITH A BRIEF
APPEARANCE BY MISS ROXIE HART”
Scene 2 “MR. AND MRS. AMOS HART PERFORM A LOVE DUET”
Scene 3 “THE COOK COUNTY SEXTETTE, CELL BLOCK FOUR SING A LA-
MENT”
Scene 4 “A PIECE OF THE ACTION”
Scene 5 “VELMA O’ROURKE SINGS OF THE IMPROBABILITIES OF LOVE”
Scene 6 “ALL I REALLY NEED”
Scene 7 “MISS ROXIE HART SINGS OF A GLORIOUS FUTURE”
Scene 8 “THE AMAZING BALLANTINE AND HIS [C]OERCE BALLOON BUST-
ING”
Scene 9 “MISS VELMA O’ROURKE DOES A SELLING JOB”
Scene 10 “MISS ROXIE HART, SONGS, DANCES AND SAD SAYINGS”
Ebb started work on the script in 1973. He elevated the characterof Velma
to leading-role status. Like Belva Gaertner, the person on whom she is based,
Velma is a nightclub entertainer. As soon as Roxie arrives at the jailhouse,
she and Velma become rivals and vie for the attention of the press and their
mutual lawyer. Jealous but not self-defeating, Velma invites Roxie to form a
duo act with her. Roxie tauntingly rejects Velma’s proposition because she
thinks that she can make it on her own, but, after her trial, Roxie comes to
the realization that she has a better crack at vaudeville withVelma than alone.
Ebb replaced the role of Jake with a theatrical agent of his own invention,
82 CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD
Henry Glassman, who is known aptly as “the worm.” Glassman represents
Velma, but because he is having a hard time booking her act, he urges her to
team up with Roxie.
The name Bob Fosse remains closely associated with the musical Chicago,
and the Broadway revival bears his signature finger snaps and hallmark
cynicism. But Chicago is also quintessential Kander and Ebb in that it uses
performance to draw attention to the relationship between theater and everyday
life. Lionel Abel calls this type of theater (theater about theater) “metatheater.”7
Richard Hornby has identified five major types of metatheater that
writers such as Kander and Ebb employ to draw attention to the artifice and
overt theatricalityof their work: 1) the play within the play, 2) performed ceremony,
3) role-playing within the role, 4) literary and real-life references, and
5) self-reference.8 Chicago employs all five: Roxie and Velma’s stage act at the
end of the musical (play within the play); Hunyak’s hanging and Roxie’s trial
(performed ceremony); Roxie’s imitation of a ventriloquist dummy during
“We Both Reached for the Gun” (role-playing within a role); references to
entertainers such as Sophie Tucker (literary and real-life references); musical
calling attention to itself as a musical entertainment (self-reference). The
references to past performers have been called “performative reiterations.”9
Performative reiterations force “the spectator to reevaluate his or her relationship
with the dramatic fiction and to theatre as a whole.”10 Chicago’s selfreferentiality
occurs in the form of asides and direct addresses to the audience
in songs such as “Roxie,” “I Know a Girl,” and “Mister Cellophane”; the
conductor’s announcements; and Roxie and Velma’s ingratiating speech to
the audience at the end of their stage act. The orchestra for Chicago sits not
in a pit but on the stage, in the original production high atop a cylindrical
platform that also served as part of the scenery. This idea, brilliantly realized
by the scenic designer Tony Walton, helped to draw the audience’s attention
to the fact that they were in a theater. (Mendes borrowed this idea for his
version of Cabaret.)
Nearly all of the songs and scenes in Chicago are allusions to real vaudeville
entertainment and performers (table 3.1). For example, “When You’re
Good to Momma” is the type of number that Sophie Tucker sang, and “We
Both Reached for the Gun” is a parody of the vaudeville ventriloquist routine.
Velma’s appearance at the beginning of both acts recalls Texas Guinan,
a woman and owner of a speakeasy who famously greeted her clientele with
the epithet “suckers.”11 At the beginning of act 2, Velma looks at the audience
just back from intermission and says “Hello suckers, welcome back.”
CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD 83
The black performer Bert Williams, the most revered comic of the vaudeville
era, has been described as “a pathetic stage figure, hesitant in its delivery
of lines, executing a song like ‘Nobody’ to the ‘plaintive sound’ of a slide
trombone, which he made ‘apparently desperate efforts to catch up with.’”12
Williams’s rendition of “Nobody” is the model for Amos’s self-deprecating
performance of “Mister Cellophane.” A number of scenes in Chicago feature
a traditional vaudeville routine or sketch: tap dance (act 1, scene 6), ventriloquist
act (act 1, scene 8), card game trick (act 2, scene 3), rope trick (act 2,
scene 4), and courtroom scene (act 2, scene 6).13 These references help to reinforce
the staginess of the proceedings, even for those members of the audience
who know little or nothing about vaudeville. One need not be familiar
with vaudeville to appreciate Chicago, as the current revival, which mutes
the 1920s aura, proves.14
These referential songs draw attention to the artifice of the vaudeville
structure.15 For example, “Funny Honey” evokes the melancholy figure of
Helen Morgan, whose tragic stage persona spilled over into her real life. Morgan,
the famed chanteuse known for singing on top of an upright piano, was
an alcoholic and died of liver disease. In Fosse’s staging of “Funny Honey,”
Roxie, perched atop a piano with a drink in her hand, sings about Amos as he
is being questioned by the district attorney. With each passing verse, Roxie
knocks back another drink.The tone of the song takes a sour turn when Amos
Table 3.1. Vaudeville musical references in Chicago
Songs Vaudeville Associations
“All That Jazz” Texas Guinan (1884–1933) (during prohibition
owned the famous speakeasy called the 300
Club)
“Funny Honey” Helen Morgan (1900–1941) (“Can’t Help
Lovin’ Dat Man,” “Bill,” and “Don’t Ever
Leave Me”)
“When You’re Good to Mama” Sophie Tucker (1884–1966) (“You’ve Got to
See Mama Every Night”)
“All I Care About Is Love” Ted Lewis (“I’m Crazy ’Bout My Baby, And My
Baby’s Crazy ’Bout Me”)
“A Little Bit of Good” Julian Eltinge (1883–1941) and Bert Savoy
(female impersonators)
“We Both Reached for the Gun” Ventriloquist acts
“Me and My Baby” Eddie Cantor (1892–1964) (“Yes Sir, That’s My
Baby” and “My Baby Just Cares for Me”)
“Mister Cellophane” Bert Williams (1876–1922) (“Nobody”)
84 CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD
rats on Roxie, who, now completely inebriated, loses her composure and
lashes out at him. Roxie’s Helen Morgan stylization lulls the audience into
the sentiments of the song (that she feels affection for “that funny, sunny,
honey hubby of mine”), but she negates this effect with her outburst (“that
scummy, crummy, dummy hubby of mine”).
By the end of 1973, Kander and Ebb had completed a draft of the score,
which included a song for Henry Glassman called “Ten Percent,” a countryswing
version of “We Both Reached for the Gun,” “It,” and “Looping the
Loop” (table 3.2).16 When Chicago went into rehearsals in the fall of 1974,
the score contained only a few changes, such as a new version of “We Both
Reached for the Gun.” One of the changes to the score was the result of the
audition of the actor Michael O’Haughey, who sang the “Bell Song” from
Lakme. Fosse was so impressed with O’Haughey’s abilities as a falsettist and
female impersonator that he cast him in the role of Mary Sunshine. Kander
and Ebb replaced Sunshine’s earlier song, the cloying “Rose Colored
Glasses,” with the even more ingratiating and operatic “A Little Bit of Good.”
Billy Flynn de-wigs Mary Sunshine at the climax of his closing arguments
at Roxie’s trial, thus demonstrating that everything that happens in court is
a performance.17 The Playbill listed the actor as M. O’Haughey in order to
conceal his true sexual identity.
The tryout period in Philadelphia was tense for Kander and Ebb. Fosse
was still recovering from his heart attack and the prolonged hospital stay. His
mood had darkened, and he suspected that the producers and writers were
scheming behind his back. He took out his paranoia on the cast and on Ebb.
When Ebb would go off to work on a lyric, he would return to rehearsals
only to find entirely new scenes improvised without his approval.18 Kander remembers
going back to his hotel room, flopping on the bed, and thinking, “I
could die right here.” He once physically had to drag Ebb out of the rehearsal
hall, lest his partner and the enfant terrible director come to blows. Fosse’s
1979 movie All That Jazz is a fictional account of his own experience working
on Chicago. The single composer-lyricist character in the movie is allegedly
a composite of Kander and Ebb, although on the surface he is much more
Ebb than Kander. In any case, the depiction offended Ebb.19 Many people,
including Kander and Ebb, found Fosse’s postoperative frame of mind to be
darker than it had been before, and it started to adversely affect the tone of
the musical. Jerry Orbach observed that “There was no room in Bobby’s concept
of the show for real sentiment. He wanted something with an undertone
of corruption.” Fosse’s original staging of “Razzle Dazzle” was “orgiastic”: he
Table 3.2. Preliminary and final score of Chicago
Original Score Final Version of Score
Song Character(s) Song Character(s)
Act One Act One
“All That Jazz”* Velma and boys “All That Jazz” Velma and boys
“Funny Honey” Roxie “Funny Honey” Roxie
“When You’re
Good to
Momma”
Matron Morton
“Cell Block Tango”* The girls “Cell Block
Tango”
The girls
“Ten Percent”* Henry and Velma
“No”* Male quartet
“All I Really Need” Billy and chorus “All I Really Need” Billy and girls
“Rose Colored
Glasses”*
Mary Sunshine “A Little Bit of
Good”
Mary Sunshine
“We Both Reached
for the Gun”*
(first versions)
Roxie, Billy,
Mary, and
chorus
“We Both
Reached for
the Gun” (third
version)
Roxie, Billy,
Mary and
chorus
“Roxie”* Roxie and boys “Roxie” Roxie and boys
“Pansy Eyes”* Male quartet
“I Can’t Do It
Alone”*
Velma “I Can’t Do It
Alone”
Velma
“My Own Best
Friend”*
Roxie and chorus “My Own Best
Friend”
Roxie and Velma
(with chorus)
Act Two Act Two
“I Know a Girl”* Velma “I Know a Girl” Velma
“Me and My Baby” Roxie and boys “Me and My
Baby”
Roxie and boys
“Mister Cello-
phane”*
Amos “Mister Cello-
phane”
Amos
“When Velma Takes
the Stand”
Orchestra and
quartet
“When Velma
Takes the
Stand”
Orchestra and
quartet
“Razzle Dazzle”* Billy, Roxie, Mary
Sunshine,
judge, jurors,
and chorus
“Razzle Dazzle” Billy and com-
pany
“Class” Velma and
Matron
“Class” Velma and
Matron
“It”* Roxie and Velma “Nowadays” Roxie and Velma
“Loopin’ the Loop”* Roxie and Velma “Hot Honey Rag” Roxie and Velma
*Included on Kander and Ebb’s demo recording.
86 CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD
had the chorus members copulating on the spiral staircases leading up to the
orchestra platform above the cylindrical set.20 The producers hated it, but
Fosse agreed to restage the scene only when Orbach convinced him that he
was missing the Brechtian subtlety intrinsic in the number.
The reviews in Philadelphia were devastating, sending the creative team
back to the drawing board. They made many changes, but the hardest choice
they had to make was to cut the character of Harry Glassman and his song
“Ten Percent,” which had been well received during performances. Since
Glassman and Mama Morton were both parasitic characters, Fosse and the
writers realized that one of them should be cut. After much deliberation,
they decided to keep Matron Morton because she was a more integral part
of the story.21 It was at this point that Kander and Ebb composed the song
“When You’re Good to Mama,” which offset the loss of “Ten Percent.” Before
Chicago reached Broadway, several other good numbers were cut in the
service of the overall flow of the musical. In Philadelphia, Chicago featured a
barbershop quartet, which sang “No, No, No”—a waltz in close harmony—
while Roxie pleaded with Amos to put up $5,000 for her legal defense. The
quartet returned later and sang “Pansy Eyes” as Roxie posed for a series of
photographs arranged by Billy: one while embracing a group of nuns, another
while accepting a bouquet from a boy on crutches, and another while
accepting a puppy from a lonely lady.22
In Philadelphia, Roxie and Velma’s double act, which constitutes the finale
of Chicago, was not coming off as Fosse had hoped. They sang a wellmatched
pair of songs, “Loopin’ the Loop”—which featured Gwen Verdon
on saxophone and Chita Rivera on drums—and “It.”23 Despite the excellent
music and lyrics of these numbers, the scene seemed too much like an amateur
act, so Fosse asked for something more “glamorous in pretty gowns and
kinda like the toast of the town.” Kander and Ebb went back to their hotel
and wrote “Nowadays.” Ebb proudly recalled, “He loved us and loved the
song, and everyone loved the song. . . . That’s when we became heroes.” A
short dance section occurs in the middle of “Nowadays,” sometimes called
“R.S.V.P.” The band conductor whistles a debonair melody, and Roxie and
Velma sing “wa-wa” vocals, a holdover from “It.” “Nowadays” segues into an
upbeat dance routine entitled “Hot Honey Rag.” Peter Howard, the rehearsal
pianist and dance arranger for Chicago, composed “Hot Honey Rag” over
the harmonic foundation of “Funny Honey.”24 Kander, Ebb, and Fosse salvaged
“Loopin’ the Loop” by using it for the overture to Chicago.25
Chicago opened at the 46th Street Theater on June 1, 1975, with Gwen
CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD 87
Verdon as Roxie, Chita Rivera as Velma Kelly, and Jerry Orbach as Billy
Flynn. Barney Martin, best known as Morty Seinfeld, Jerry’s father on Seinfeld,
gave a strong performance as Amos, Roxie’s hum-drum husband. The
reviews were generally favorable, although many critics had trouble with
the show’s bleakness and cynicism. The most insightful statement about the
musical appeared in a review by Stephen Farber: “Bob Fosse’s love-hate letter
to Broadway razzle dazzle—a valentine engraved in acid.” Farber interprets
Fosse’s invective against the American tendency to treat criminals like celebrities
as tantamount to accusing entertainers of being like killers: “The show
blasts the ruthlessness, egomania and duplicity of performers, the coldbloodedness
and opportunism of the promoters who merchandize and exploit
them, as well as the fickleness and brutality of the vampire-like fans who feed
on celebrities. . . . the intensity of the musical seemed to enjoy the form over
content.”26 Walter Kerr failed to appreciate the vaudeville concept and felt
that, unlike Cabaret, Chicago lacked the evil force to justify its gloomy point
of view: “Al Capone wasn’t Hitler and Cicero wasn’t Munich.” Clive Barnes
dismissed the premise out of hand: “A comedy melodrama of a girl who
shoots her lover and is then acquitted through the chicaneries of the Chicago
criminal system—you can only wonder who ever thought it was suitable for
a musical.”27 However, Barnes had a change of heart when Liza Minnelli
later substituted for Verdon, describing this version as “Bob Fosse’s Brechtian
outpost of glamour, squalor and sublime discontent.”28 Chicago could not
compete with A Chorus Line, which was playing two blocks away. It is ironic
that the 1996 Broadway revival of Chicago is still running. In the fall of 2006,
Chorus Line returned to Broadway for the first time. It will have to stay nearly
as long as the original production to overtake Chicago’s record.
Kander and Ebb’s Score
Kander and Ebb’s score for Chicago has a singular sense of purpose, and
the songs seem to be cut from the same cloth. The jazzy style of the score
provides a metaphor for the corruption on display as well as creates a sense of
time and place. A few musical features in particular suggest the 1920s: “blue”
notes, minor mode inflections, melodies centering on the 6th scale degree,
and syncopated rhythms. The bluesiest song in the score, “Funny Honey,”
reserves the evocative lowered 3rd of the blues scale for the cadence on “that
funny honey of mine” right before the bridge. The first phrase, a rising chromatic
line embedded into a repeated melodic fragment, drives toward the
Example 3.1. The 6th scale degree as melodic focal point in songs from Chicago:
(a) “All I Care About Is Love”; (b) “We Both Reached for the Gun”
(chorus); (c) “I Can’t Do It Alone” (vamp); (d) “I Know a Girl” (verse);
(e) “Me and My Baby”; (f) “Class”
CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD 89
lowered 7th scale degree, which pushes the music in a subdominant direction.
A minor subdominant in the next measure sets up the “blues” cadence.
The bridge, which starts, “He ain’t no sheik,” is in the relative minor.29 The 6th
scale degree is the melodic focal point of no fewer than six songs in Chicago
(see example 3.1a–f) plus three new songs that Kander and Ebb composed
for the film. Most of the excerpts in example 3.1 also incorporate syncopated
rhythm. For instance, “We Both Reached for the Gun (example 3.1b) is a
variation of a common figure in rags around 1925.30 The secondary rag, as it
is called, superimposes a group of three notes of equal duration over a steady
beat in duple meter, the result being a constantly shifting accent pattern:
> > > > >
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
An example of secondary rag is found in the B section of Scott Joplin’s Pine
Apple Rag.31 In “We Both Reached for the Gun,” the pattern is displaced
and truncated, starting on the third reiteration of “oh yes.” The first beat of
each triple eighth-note grouping is subdivided into sixteenth notes, the second
of which is tied over the beat.The melody simply alternates between two
pitches, which, coupled with the syncopated rhythmic, gives the impression
that the ventriloquist dummy (Roxie) is mouthing to a broken record.
Over half of the seventeen songs in Chicago—as well as most of the cutout
songs and the numbers written for the film—either are in a minor key or
incorporate pitches from the blues scale or minor scale.
Broadway Score
Overture (“Loopin’ the shift from major to minor in the A phrase
Loop”) (mm. 5–8); bridge starts in relative
minor
“All That Jazz” lowered 3rd on final cadence of refrain
90 CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD
“Funny Honey” lowered 3rd on final cadence of refrain;
bridge in relative minor
“Cell Block Tango” introduction in minor key; oscillation
between major and minor harmonies
“When You’re Good to refrain begins in major but cadences in
Mama” the parallel minor
“All I Care About” bridge begins in minor subdominant
“Roxie” lowered 3rd (blue note) on final cadence
of the refrain
“I Can’t Do It Alone” minor inflection during the bridge
“Mister Cellophane” shift to minor key mediant in verse;
lowered 3rd on “never know I’m
there”; final cadence on minor tonic
“Class” shift to parallel minor in refrain; lowered
6th scale degree and minor iv on “ass”
“R.S.V.P.” (dance break in lowered 3rd and 7th scale degrees (blue
“Nowadays”) notes)
“Honey Rag” minor inflected chord (based on
harmonic progression of “Funny
Honey”)
Cutout Songs
“Ten Percent” verse in minor key
“No, No, No” bridge in minor key; minor inflection on
“live”
Verse to “Roxie” verse in minor key
Songs Written for the Film
“It’s a Criminal Thing” in minor key
“In Other Words . . . Chicago” minor bridge
“WhenYou’re Good to Mama” and “Cell BlockTango” are full-fledged minor
songs. Both have the tendency, however, to slip into the major mode. Occurring
back to back early in act 1, they introduce the audience and Roxie to the
prison world in which most of the story takes place. “Cell Block Tango” begins
with a sultry introduction in the minor key, but the song starts in the parallel
major key (example 3.2). The opening line moves along an axis stretching
from the “blue” A-flat down to A-natural. The cross-relationship between
CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD 91
A-flat and A-natural creates a high degree of tonal ambiguity, but the chorus
cadences definitely in F minor. The refrain starts out like a real blues number—four
measures on the tonic chord followed by two measures in the subdominant—although
it does not fully complete the twelve-bar-blues pattern.
Kander and Ebb might have had W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” (1914) in
mind, which Bessie Smith recorded in 1925. Like Handy’s song, the refrain
of “Cell Block Tango” incorporates the habanera rhythm (“Spanish Tinge”)
discussed in reference to Scott Joplin’s “Solace” in Chapter 1.
Example 3.2. “Cell Block Tango”
92 CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD
The introduction to “When You’re Good to Mama,” an orchestral fanfare
in A major, accompanies Mama Morton’s first entrance. The verse starts in
the parallel minor and ends on a half cadence. A burlesque bump-and-grind
vamp follows, but the first phrase of the song—a two-measure theme occurring
three times in a descending sequence—starts out in the parallel major
key (example 3.3). The melody quickly shifts back to the minor key, and, on
the aphoristic ending of the line “Mama’s good to you,” the voice traces the
bottom six notes of the F-sharp minor scale, skipping over B.
The unusual emphasis on the minor mode in Chicago is not just connected
to the influence of the blues. It also carries implicit ethnic associations
(Latino, African-American, and Jewish), which lie just beneath the surface
of the story. Even before the twenties,Tin Pan Alley composers regularly
wrote songs in the minor key. Jack Gottlieb has shown that this tendency derived
from Jewish and Yiddish musical traditions.The identification of minor
melodies with Jewish music was so strong that Cole Porter, the only nonJewish
Golden Era composer to conquer Broadway, confessed to Richard
Rodgers that he consciously tried to write “Jewish music,” by which Rodgers
and Porter understood to mean languid minor melodies. Porter must have
meant it, for he composed some of the greatest minor ballads in the musical
theater repertory—for example, “So in Love” from Kiss Me, Kate, and “I
Love Paris” from Can-Can. Broadway composers occasionally used minor
keys to denote ethnicity, race, and otherness (forexample, “Can’t Help Lovin’
That Man” from Show Boat and “Wintergreen for President” from Of Thee I
Sing). In Cabaret (especially the film version) and Chicago, Kander and Ebb
adopted the old practice.
It should be noted that Ebb’s early drafts portray racial tension among
the inmates, especially between Roxie and Velma. Roxie’s lines are laced
with racial epitaphs, a trait also found in Watkins’s play, albeit to a lesser degree.
Because Ebb had Chita Rivera in mind for Velma, he used her LatinAmerican
ethnicity as the main target for Roxie’s bigoted slurs (even though
Velma’s last name is Irish). For example, while feasting on the dinner sent to
her by a secret admirer, Roxie goes out of her way to provoke Velma: “I’d offer
ya some, but it ain’t one of it [sic] enchiladas. . . . Don’t you know anybody
could send you dinner from the Palmer House? Some nice . . . bull fighter
or somethin’?” Later, in the presence of Mary Sunshine, Roxie continues to
antagonize Velma: “I find people of . . . Spanish origin very . . . jealous, don’t
you? It must be that hot climate. And all them bananas.” These lines were
CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD 93
eliminated during tryouts in Philadelphia, perhaps because they would have
squelched any sympathy that the audience might have for Roxie.
The song “Ten Percent,” although cut from the show after Philadelphia,
provides a good case study of how Kander and Ebb subtly slipped traces of
ethnic stereotypes into the score, as Watkins did with her character descriptions.
It also sheds additional light on the composition of “WhenYou’re Good
to Mama.” Harry Glassman, the character who sings “Ten Percent,” can be
read as Jewish, if only because of his name and theatrical profession. In addiExample
3.3. “When You’re Good to Mama”
94 CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD
tion, musical details of “Ten Percent” mark him as a Jew. As Glassman first
enters the stage, the orchestra plays an ethnically tinged vamp in the minor
mode, with strong offbeat accents (example 3.4). Kander probably modeled
the vamp for “When You’re Good to Mama” on this vamp. It is closely related
to the opening measures of the “Money Song” from the film version of
Cabaret, sounding like a cross between Eastern European Klezmer music
and burlesque. Henry’s opening melody outlines an inverted G minor triad,
with an emphasis on the minor sixth interval between D and B-flat. A figure
reminiscent of a cantorial trope on “The worm is here” centers on the interval
of a diminished third formed between the upper neighbor E-flat and C-sharp.
Example 3.4. “Ten Percent”
CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD 95
Such a melodic gesture has its roots in popular Yiddish song. The C-sharp in
this example is borrowed from one of two prominent melodic types of Jewish
folk music that contain an augmented second. This version contains a raised
4th scale degree, which forms the augmented second with the lowered 3rd of
the minor scale.32 An abrupt modulation to the major key and a broadening
of the tempo occur during a grandiose melody on “I’m a theatrical agent,”
at which point Glassman performs an Italianate recitative. The refrain that
follows is in the relative major and is evocative of the Charleston.
There is a historical precedent for the minor verse–major refrain structure
of “Ten Percent.” This harmonic relationship between verse and refrain
was common in early popular Jewish-American music and reflects the process
of acculturation of Jewish musicians: as Jack Gottlieb notes, “For while
this [minor] verse portrayed the Jew in traditional garb, the chorus in major
showed him off in American Cloth.”33 The syncopated rhythms (a symbol of
the American vernacular and modernity, and the cause, as Watkins’s Mary
Sunshine suggests, of Roxie’s crime) simultaneously reflect Glassman’s theatrical
vocation and his self-consciousness about his Jewish roots. The end
of the chorus (on “ten percent”) features a pre-cadential cantorial melisma
crowned by a flat third, here intended as a “blue” note, as opposed to a borrowed
pitch from Eastern European music.
With its verse in the minor key and jazzy refrain in the major, “Ten Percent”
also epitomizes the cross-pollination of Jewish and African-American
music in vernacular song in the twenties. Jewish Tin Pan Alley composers,
none more important than George Gershwin, incorporated jazz elements
into their music. There is, of course, an exploitative aspect to this sort of
ethnic borrowing. As Samson Raphaelson claimed in his preface to the stage
version of The Jazz Singer, “Jews are determining the nature and scope of jazz
more than any other race—more than the Negroes, from whom they have
stolen jazz and given it a new color and meaning.”34 When the role of Harry
Glassman was excised from Chicago, the writers transferred the exploitative
aspect of his character onto the role of Mama Morton. It is important to bear
in mind that Sophie Tucker, the model for Matron Morton, was Jewish and
performed in blackface. Thus, “When You’re Good to Mama,” which mixes
jazz and features associated with Jewish music, reflects the exploitive practices
of blackface singers like Tucker, Al Jolson, and Eddie Cantor—as well
as Jewish composers. By association, Mama Morton is a thinly veiled stereotype
of the avaricious Jewish businessman. Glassman’s music acknowledges
his ethnic roots, but Mama Morton sings what is intended as a jazz number
96 CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD
disassociated from its African-American roots. Such a relationship is less pronounced
when a black actress plays the role of Mama Morton, which is often
the case in the current Broadway revival and which is the case in the film,
which stars Queen Latifa as Morton.What remains strongly in place in these
versions is the vaudeville associations with the part.
The Broadway Revival and Film
The City Center “Encores!” series has been one of the darlings of the New
York theater establishment since its inception in 1991. It has presented semistaged
versions of musicals from the past with their original orchestrations,
including Fiorello!, The Boys from Syracuse, On a Clear Day You Can See
Forever, Carnival, Damn Yankees, and The Apple Tree. None of these shows
generated the excitement surrounding the production of Chicago, which
took place in May 1996. As Kander and Ebb entered the theater, “the atmosphere
was all of a sudden electric. You could sense it almost before the show
started.” Ebb joked, “It was like we had invited everyone in the audience.”
Ann Reinking appeared as Roxie, a role she had played during the original
Broadway run, Bebe Neuwirth asVelma, James Naughton as Billy Flynn, and
Joel Grey as Amos.
The Encores’s production spawned the Broadway revival, now in its
tenth year, which in turn inspired the Academy-Award-winning film version
in 2002. Reinking, Neuwirth, Naughton, and Grey all signed on to repeat
their respective parts on Broadway, Walter Bobbie directed, and Reinking
re-created Fosse’s original choreography, thereby introducing his style to a
new generation. Ironically, Kander and Ebb were happy but not surprised
that their 1975 musical still had some relevance. Not lost on Ebb were the
headlines that made their “jaundiced worldview” seem almost fashionable,
like the O. J. Simpson trial and the Monica Lewinsky scandal.35 Kander humorously
noted that the revival proved that “corruption never goes out of
fashion,” and saw a historical connection to the successful revival of Pal Joey,
which was first considered “just too mean.”
Marty Richards, one of the original Broadway producers of Chicago, was
the driving force behind the film. He had purchased the movie rights for
about $500,000 during the final months of the original Broadway run. What
followed was an arduous, twenty-seven-year period of ups and downs leading
to the 2003 Academy Award for best motion picture.36 So many directors,
actors, and writers were considered for the film that its success is nothing
CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD 97
short of a miracle. Richards knew that turning Chicago into an effective film
was not just a simple matter of reconfiguring the songs in cinematic terms
and opening up the physical space of the Broadway version. To successfully
transfer Chicago to film, the writer and director would have to find a filmic
equivalent for Fosse and Ebb’s concept. They would have to find, to quote
Scott McMillin, “its own version of the theatre’s fixed space.” The Broadway
version of Chicago draws attention to itself as a theatrical experience framed
inside the proscenium of a vaudeville theater. Film can go anywhere, and the
audience is willing to go along.37
Richards’s first choice for director was Fosse, who agreed only after much
arm-twisting. When Fosse died of a heart attack in 1987, Richards lost all
hope of getting the film made, but, a few years later, he got a call from Harvey
Weinstein, the co-chairman of Miramax Films, whowas interested in reviving
the project. They signed an agreement in 1994.38 Finding a new director who
was agreeable to all parties was a long and arduous process. Richards wanted
Baz Luhrmann, the director of Strictly Ballroom, but Luhrmann turned him
down for fear of being compared to Fosse. Herbert Ross agreed to direct the
film and stuck with the project for over a year, until he saw the Broadway revival.
During this period, Larry Gelbart agreed to write the screenplay. In 1998
Richards turned to the director Nicholaus Hytner and sent him Gelbart’s
screenplay. Hytner in turn asked Wendy Wasserstein to write a new screenplay.
Miramax did not like either one. Word spread at the time that Goldie
Hawn would play Roxie and Madonna Velma,39 but Hytner felt that Hawn
was too old for the part. He wanted Nicole Kidman for Roxie, but he soon
left the project. Richards considered several other directors, including Milos
Forman, Martin Scorsese, Alan Parker, David Fincher, and Robert Iscove,
but eventually the studio hired Rob Marshall to direct and choreograph the
film.
Ironically, Miramax courted Marshall for Rent, but he had his hopes
pinned on Chicago and won over the studio with his concept for the film.
Marshall brought a contemporary vision to the musical. More importantly, he
came up with a filmic analogy for the vaudeville concept: all the songs occur
in Roxie’s imagination.The film medium allowed him to shift back and forth
fluidly between the reality of the prison and a world of fantasy. Richards,
who admired the use of this technique in the television series Ally McBeal,
was confident that it would work for the film.40 With Marshall signed, the
studio and Richards still had to find a screenwriter, and Miramax suggested
Bill Condon, the writer of Gods and Monsters and The Usual Suspects.
98 CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD
Marshall and Condon understood that the postmodern Hollywood
musical needed to incorporate music more realistically than did its Broadway
counterpart, and that one does not hear, or listen to, songs in film in the
same way as one does in a Broadway musical.The different medium reorients
the listener’s relationship to music.41 As Fosse had done for Cabaret, Marshall
and Condon established “a diegetic world in which the audience can recognize
that song and dance are valid modes of expression.”42 The film rests on
the premise that Roxie imagines all of the musical numbers as a showbiz fantasy
in which she is the star. This format maintained the performative framework
of vaudeville but also provided the verisimilitude demanded by the film
medium. Although a brilliant application of the film medium, this idea, as
McMillin claims, “is a far cry from the metaphorical use of the stage in the
musical as a space that stands for the places of the Chicago justice system.”43
What is lost in the new interpretation is the Brechtian disorienting effect of
the stage version, which constantly draws attention to the artifice of theater.
But the film succeeded in dealing with the reluctance of average filmgoers
to accept the innate staginess of Broadway musicals and to overlook the fact
that people do not break into song in real life. Marshall and Condon deconstructed
Fosse and Ebb’s material and humanized Roxie in a way that the
stage musical never attempted. In effect, they focused on Roxie as the pointof-view
character, whereas Fosse himself provided the point of view for the
Broadway version.
An overview of Larry Gelbart’s and Wendy Wasserstein’s screenplays for
the film illustrates why Marshall and Condon’s works so well. Gelbart purposely
avoided a film equivalent for the vaudeville framework and in general
was not comfortable devising fantasy sequences. He sought cinematic realism,
an aesthetic stance that kept him from fully embracing the proper frame
of mind for the project. For instance, the female inmates in his version are
scantily clad not to create a steamy sexuality with metaphorical potential, as
Fosse did, but rather to reflect the insufferably hot conditions of the prison.
Gelbart felt that the style should have a hard, cynical edge—not the sort for
which Fosse was famous but more like that found in the films Public Enemy
and Little Caesar. Whereas Marshall and Condon’s version imparts a modern
attitude about the topic without making any contemporary references,
Gelbart wanted explicitly to link the theme of the story to modern times by
starting with “Nowadays,” the last song in the Broadway version, heard as
underscoring during an opening montage made up of news clippings from
the trials of O. J. Simpson, Lorena Bobbit, Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson,
CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD 99
and the Menendez brothers. Segments from television tabloid news shows,
such as “A Current Affair” and “Entertainment Tonight,” are interspersed
throughout. The bandleader counts out the beats “5, 6, 7, 8,” taking us back
to Chicago of the 1920s.44 Another change that he made to the story involves
the Hungarian convict Hunyak, the only unequivocally innocent prisoner
in the story. She dies not by hanging as in the Broadway version but in the
electric chair. This change epitomizes the flatness of Gelbart’s version. On
Broadway (and ultimately in the film), Hunyak’s hanging, witnessed by her
sister inmates, is a powerful visual image, and it marks a turning point for
Roxie, who finally takes seriously the possibility of her own execution.
Gelbart’s approach to the music was too literal, and it limited the ways
in which he incorporated the songs, which have surprisingly little dramatic
effect. For instance, in his second treatment, Billy Flynn, for whom he envisioned
John Travolta, sings “All I Care About Is Love” after we already know
all that there is to know about his character.45 “Roxie” is reduced to a conventional
wanting song, which Roxie sings between signing her confession and
going to prison. “Cell Block Tango” occurs after Roxie and Velma meet, thus
providing no suspense about the prison world into which Roxie is about to
enter. Matron Mama sings “When You’re Good to Mama” directly to Roxie
while squeezing her for money, thus robbing the song of its metaphorical
value. In “We Both Reached for the Gun” Roxie, now nobody’s dummy,
simply answers the barrage of questions from the reporters herself. By way
of contrast, Marshall and Condon found an effective way to incorporate the
majority of the songs from the Broadway score.46
Wendy Wasserstein’s version is no more effective than Gelbart’s. It is a
movie-within-a-movie told by Velma in an interview with Frankie Callahan,
a female reporter who covered the trial and built her reputation thereupon.
Throughout the film, we hear Velma introducing the scenes, starting with
“The night it all started, I was playing a joint called Butch O’Malley’s.” Only
at the end of the film is it revealed that Velma is giving an interview. Wasserstein
tried unnecessarily to strengthen the connection between the action
and the characters’ motivation. She invented a district attorney named Felix
Fingerman, a son of Russian immigrants who wants to rid the city of corruption.
Fingerman goes after Roxie’s conviction in order to set an example to
other potential murderesses, and he believes he has an open-and-shut case.
However, the mayor, who plays golf with Billy Flynn, pressures him to lay
off the case. Once he realizes that pursuing Roxie is not in his best interest,
he goes after Hunyak because he anticipates another easy conviction.
100 CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD
Mama Morton, an ex-theatrical agent, helps Roxie because she sees her as
her ticket back into show business. During the end credits Wasserstein revives
the old film convention of providing summaries about the ultimate fate
of each character. Frankie (“Francine”) Callahan wins the Pulitzer Prize for
her book, Chicago, which is the story told to her by Velma.The movie version
of her book, the one we are watching, is a big hit. Roxie attends the premiere
of the film with Cary Grant, Velma with Clark Gable. Mama Morton purchases
the William Morris Talent Agency. Flynn wins in his bid to become
mayor of Chicago. Felix Fingerman is arrested and exposed as a communist
infiltrator.
Casting of the film was as difficult as signing a director and coming up
with a workable screenplay. Back when Hytner was working on the project,
both Bette Midler and Pam Grier were considered for Morton. At one point,
the trio of Rosie O’Donnell, JohnTravolta, and Nathan Lanewere envisioned
in the roles of Mama Morton, Billy Flynn, and Amos Hart, respectively.Toni
Collette was a contender for Roxie, and Kathy Bates for Morton. Miramax
tried to get Brittany Spears to play a small part, but Marshall and Richards
vehementlyobjected.When casting began in earnest, Richards wanted Kevin
Kline to play the role of Billy Flynn, but the actor was unwilling to take on
any negative roles. Richards’s second choice, Kevin Spacey, also turned down
the role. Richard Gere agreed to play the role but would not audition, as was
also the case for Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger.47
In the buildup to the release of the film, the press made much of the fact
that Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renée Zellweger, and Richard Gere were appearing
in a musical. However, only Zellweger lacked significant stage musical
experience. Raymond Knapp has argued that her lack of any musical theater
experience was one of the film’s strengths. “The strategic casting shakes the
characters loose from the glib dance-based personae of the stage versions,
allowing then—particularly Roxie—to achieve a kind of reality that the
highly stylized Broadway mounting categorically denies them, for the ‘real
world’ of more naturalistic film is where they most seem to belong for audiences
familiar with their other work.”48 Not only was Zellweger’s inexperience
effective in the role of Roxie, but it also allowed for the film to find itself
in cinematic terms. The brilliant editing of the film makes Zellweger’s dancing
appear seamless and polished, as no single shot takes in enough movement
to reveal her lack of dancing experience.
Kander and Ebb were generally pleased with the film. However, Ebb had
one major complaint regarding the opening setup.
CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD 101
There’s a terrific mistake in the movie. I kept quiet about it . . . it makes me
crazy, but it’s there. It doesn’t make any sense. She [Velma] gets out of her car.
She walks into a nightclub. She washes her hands. She tears a sheet. I mean,
obviously you’re supposed to think that she just committed the crime. He
says, “where’s your sister?” “Oh, I’m gonna do it alone tonight.” Another spotlight
comes on. She comes out and sings “All That Jazz.” Where did that act
come from? This is Velma. And all the boys appear. Where the hell are you?
Who is that girl? Later, you hear in “Cell Block Tango,” “I was in Cicero with
my sister. I went out . . . I came back and shot em.” So what’s that beginning
[“All that Jazz”]? Where was she then? It makes no sense. . . . And then John
writes reams about what a wonderful opening that is. It’s not. I mean, it is. It’s
a wonderful number, but it’s not dramatically sound. It’s not logical. It’s not
true. It’s not right. And it drove me nuts.
Despite this objection, Ebb, like Kander, was happy that the film was
such a big hit. Kander and Ebb did not participate in the development or
shooting of the film, but they did retain control of the musical material. Late
in the process, Miramax Studio hired Janet Jackson to write and record a song
to play during the credits, hoping to snag an Academy-Award nomination for
best song. Harvey Weinstein was so determined to use Jackson that he even
asked Kander and Ebb to collaborate with her, an indignity reminiscent of
what the writers suffered during the filming of Funny Lady (see Appendix).
They flatly refused and wrote “I Move On,” which, in the final cut of the
film, the two divas sing during the credits. (Sony did include Jackson’s song,
“Love Is a Crime,” recorded by Anastacia, on the soundtrack, and Kander
and Ebb were powerless to do anything about it.)49 “I Move On” received
an Academy-Award nomination, although it lost to “Lose Yourself” from the
film 8 Mile.50
Chicago is one of the most unsympathetic musicals ever written, second
only to The Threepenny Opera in its cynical view of humanity. It takes great
pleasure in attacking the mythology of fame in America. It has no love story,
and every attempt to include one, such as a request by Miramax Studio, was
ultimately rejected.The darkness of Chicago mayaccount for why ticket sales
for the original production paled in comparison with those for A Chorus Line.
It is ironic that A Chorus Line, which recently returned to Broadway, comes
off today like a period piece, whereas Chicago seems timely. A Chorus Line
is about feeling, and we sympathize with each of the young dancers. Chicago
lacks the warmth of A Chorus Line. Only Amos and Hunyak are honest
human beings, and they alone deserve our sympathy, but the system destroys
102 CHICAGO: BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD
them.51 The film, as Knapp claims, “performs a major act of rescue, making
the reality of Roxie’s limited perspective and resultant pain sufficiently vivid,
through montage, that we can take her seriously as someone who suffers and
may not be discounted as merely cynical.” Ebb probably never looked at the
film in these terms, and if he did he probably would not have approved of the
change. Of course, the film offers a healthy dose of cynicism mainly through
the realistic scenes when Roxie is not imagining herself a star.
The success of the film spurred the making of other movie musicals, such
as Dream Girls, Hairspray, and Sweeney Todd. Chicago had a relatively small
budget of $45 million, but it grossed over $450 million. Kander and Ebb received
little actual revenue from the film, though, and Richards claims that
Miramax owes him money, for which he has initiated legal proceedings.52
Despite this unpleasantness, Richards has few regrets. He has confessed,
“This picture has been like a present, a joy, but it’s always come with a little
bit of heartache.”