Chicago

Verbal Diorama · Aug 31, 2026 · 48m

Long before Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly had names, they had mugshots. In 1924, Chicago tabloids were consumed by Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, two unrelated women tried for murder and both acquitted; largely because all-male juries of the era were reluctant to convict an attractive woman. Covering both trials was Chicago Tribune reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins, whose ironic dispatches later became a satirical play that folded the two cases into one fictional cell block.

Watkins's 1926 play was a hit, and decades later, Gwen Verdon brought the play to her husband, Bob Fosse, who conceived…