Chicago: With the Chicago Tribune Articles That Inspired It
Editat de Thomas H. Pauly Autor Maurine Watkins Cuvânt înainte de Charles H. Cosgroveen Limba Engleză Paperback – 6 aug 2025
In 1924, the murder trials of Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner shocked the world, providing the real-life inspiration for Maurine Watkins’s unforgettable characters, Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly. Now, a century later, this reissue of Watkins’s play offers a fresh look at the origins of the story that has since become a household name.
From the silent film Chicago produced by Cecil B. DeMille in 1927 to the 1942 film Roxie Hart starring Ginger Rogers and the Broadway sensation created by Bob Fosse, Fred Ebb, and John Kander, this play has continuously evolved. It even inspired the 2002 Oscar-winning film Chicago starring Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere. But until recently, as editor Thomas H. Pauly writes in the book’s introduction, the real-life roots of the story were obscured.
While researching for a book on crime-as-entertainment during the 1920s, Pauly came across Maurine Watkins’s play, which was then out of print. After noticing similarities between the play and a series of articles Watkins penned for the Chicago Tribune prior to the creation of her play, Pauly knew he had stumbled upon a revelation: Watkins’s play was based on real people. His republication of the play, alongside substantial background material and a reprinting of Watkins’s news articles, has become an indispensable starting point for all subsequent interest in Watkins and Chicago, whose subject remains as topical as ever.
This special edition includes a new foreword by Charles H. Cosgrove, author of They Both Reached for the Gun: Beulah Annan, Maurine Watkins, and the Trial That Became Chicago. Cosgrove’s extensive research into the real-life cases provides deeper insight into the world that Watkins portrayed with such satirical brilliance. Additionally, the original editor, Thomas H. Pauly, has contributed a new preface, further enhancing understanding of the play and its inspiration, the thrilling true-crime story that captivated a nation and birthed a cultural phenomenon.
From the silent film Chicago produced by Cecil B. DeMille in 1927 to the 1942 film Roxie Hart starring Ginger Rogers and the Broadway sensation created by Bob Fosse, Fred Ebb, and John Kander, this play has continuously evolved. It even inspired the 2002 Oscar-winning film Chicago starring Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere. But until recently, as editor Thomas H. Pauly writes in the book’s introduction, the real-life roots of the story were obscured.
While researching for a book on crime-as-entertainment during the 1920s, Pauly came across Maurine Watkins’s play, which was then out of print. After noticing similarities between the play and a series of articles Watkins penned for the Chicago Tribune prior to the creation of her play, Pauly knew he had stumbled upon a revelation: Watkins’s play was based on real people. His republication of the play, alongside substantial background material and a reprinting of Watkins’s news articles, has become an indispensable starting point for all subsequent interest in Watkins and Chicago, whose subject remains as topical as ever.
This special edition includes a new foreword by Charles H. Cosgrove, author of They Both Reached for the Gun: Beulah Annan, Maurine Watkins, and the Trial That Became Chicago. Cosgrove’s extensive research into the real-life cases provides deeper insight into the world that Watkins portrayed with such satirical brilliance. Additionally, the original editor, Thomas H. Pauly, has contributed a new preface, further enhancing understanding of the play and its inspiration, the thrilling true-crime story that captivated a nation and birthed a cultural phenomenon.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780809339648
ISBN-10: 0809339641
Pagini: 216
Ilustrații: 4
Dimensiuni: 140 x 210 x 13 mm
Greutate: 0.05 kg
Editura: Southern Illinois University Press
Colecția Southern Illinois University Press
ISBN-10: 0809339641
Pagini: 216
Ilustrații: 4
Dimensiuni: 140 x 210 x 13 mm
Greutate: 0.05 kg
Editura: Southern Illinois University Press
Colecția Southern Illinois University Press
Notă biografică
Maurine A. Watkins was a Chicago Tribune reporter whose play was derived from her bright, humorous coverage of the murder trials of two women remarkably like Roxie.
Thomas H. Pauly is the author of a critical study of Elia Kazan, a biography of Zane Grey, and a book on American sport before World War I.
Thomas H. Pauly is the author of a critical study of Elia Kazan, a biography of Zane Grey, and a book on American sport before World War I.
Extras
Preface: Will the Real Maurine Watkins Please Stand Up
Over the 1950s and through the 1960s, a period which spanned the later years of Maurine Watkins’s life, Americans, energized by the surging popularity of television, flocked to panel shows which featured guests of varying renown and a group of likewise distinguished examiners. Their questions sought to uncover the guests’ withheld identity or some unusual or little known aspect of their personal lives. “To Tell the Truth” introduced its audience to three visitors, two impersonators and the actual person, each of whom claimed to be the person described in an introductory sketch like: ”I am Maurine Watkins and the author of a successful Broadway play that ran for 172 performances and was converted into two popular films.” The panel would question the three visitors and decide which one they believed to be the actual person. When time ran out, the moderator would call for the panel’s decisions and then speak the show’s signature command, “Would the real…please stand up.” “I’ve Got a Secret” varied this formula by offering a similar sketch and having its guest go over to the moderator and whisper a secret into his ear. Afterwards the panel would ask questions to uncover the secret. Maurine Watkins certainly possessed appropriate qualifications for these shows, but few in the viewing audience still remembered Watkins and her Chicago (1926) and even worse, she would never have agreed to divulge “her secret.”
Watkins the Humorist
Over twenty-five years ago when I initiated my research on Watkins, I was toying with the possibility of a book to be entitled “Crime As Entertainment During the 1920s”. Having taught several university courses on the social history of this period, I realized how the unfolding prosperity and commercial innovation of metropolitan centers were generating a vibrant vitality and provoking a huge flight from rural areas that left them cut-off and in decline. The urban sophistication that arose from these developments encouraged writers there to develop a fresh outlook on crime that differentiated their work from that of the earlier “muckrakers” who exploited crime as a toxic by-product of factory expansion and ghetto sprawl–a glaring problem that demanded recognition and reform. By the 1920s this kind of presentation was appearing over done and old-fashioned.
As I searched for books, plays, and films which might support this assessment, I came upon Maurine Watkins’s Chicago. Although the play’s original luster had faded long ago, I perceived it as having exceptional promise for my needs. However, my investigation of this possibility yielded such paltry information, I decided to visit the Research Library of the Performing Arts in New York’s Lincoln Center whose clipping files had been so helpful with my book on Elia Kazan.
The Library’s numerous folders on Chicago provided important basics–Watkins’s youth in Crawfordsville, Indiana, her minister father, her enrollment at several colleges nearby, her graduate work at Radcliffe and Yale’s School of Drama as well as her ensuing work as a journalist in Chicago. Unfortunately, these bareboned revelations soon became repetitious and left me wondering what was being skimmed or left out entirely. As a journalist did Watkins ever write anything other than her frequently mentioned articles on the notorious Leopold and Loeb trial? Even the vast coverage of the original Fosse musical wasn’t helpful. However my research did turn up a valuable clipping from an unidentified Chicago newspaper that contained only a date. It was so small and so jumbled with other materials that I could easily have overlooked it. Luckily, I didn’t. This article reported a boisterous celebration of Chicago’s original opening in the Windy City and the participation of several well-known locals who closely resembled characters in the play. Why had I not seen any other mention of these people so far and why were they so well-known before Watkin’s play opened there?
The most likely answer, I conjectured, was because most of the material I was seeing originated in New York and the popularity of her play there was so brief. Nonetheless, I decided that these questions were important and my best chance of answering them would be found in microfilm of the Chicago Tribune that extended back to 1920. After I located a library that could fulfill my need, I requested pertinent reels and quickly scrolled through issues from 1925. Nothing.
However, the reels for 1924 yielded a brief notice of a woman who had been arrested for murder. Additional scrolling furnished more coverage of this case. Then Eureka! I came upon one that carried a byline identification of Maurine Watkins.
My discovery of these articles inspired me to rework my original plans. I would create an edition that would combine a gathering of Watkins’s Tribune articles with her play, which was originally published in 1927 but quickly went out of print and remained so ever since. Preparation of this edition necessitated a laborious job of photocopying her articles from microfilm and converting them into a readable format. My plan was to support these materials with an introduction offering pertinent background and an analysis of the various ways Watkins deployed her humor to make her presentation appealing and entertaining.
Since my original introduction offers ample exploration of Watkins’s humor and is included in this updated edition; further discussion of that matter is unnecessary here. However, my preparation of this account has caused me to realize another way in which Watkins’s presentation departed from that of the earlier muckrakers. Although her play offers a social problem similar to the ones they exploited, her objective is decidedly not reform. She presents the situation facing Belva and Beulah as solidly entrenched and impervious to correction. These characters must learn that they are the ones who must change; they need to learn how to “Play Ball”, as she entitled an early draft of her play. This necessary lesson pressures them to develop an outlook and behavior like those around them who cynically exploit the prevailing conditions and selfishly don’t want change.
Back when I neared completion of my original edition, I circulated proposals to multiple presses. All of them quickly passed with unanimous agreement that there was no market for such outdated material. Fortunately for me, SIU press, which had a strong line of books about theater, judged my edition to be unusual and charming and agreed to publish it.
Equally lucky for me, the original publication of Watkins’s articles placed them in the public domain. However, her play was still under copyright protection and required permission. This need carried me to Sheldon Abend who then controlled those rights. Over many weeks of letters and phone calls, he admitted to me his own prolonged quest for these rights from Watkins, who politely listened to his proposals, several times agreed to sell them, but reneged at the last minute. Consequently she retained them until her death and her estate was left to handle their sale.
Mere weeks after securing Abend’s permission, I learned that a revival of Fosse’s musical was being prepared. The clouds overhanging my prolonged adventure had lifted and the timing could not have been better. I rushed to obtain a ticket to one of the “rehearsals” which ran for a month before the show's official opening. I was so impressed with what I saw that I decided to prepare a condensation of my introduction and submit it to the New York Times. As the number of rehearsals dwindled and I had heard nothing back, I stoically accepted that my offering had failed.
Then out of the blue, I received a phone call from a member of the Times’s editorial staff who informed me that her fellow editors liked my piece, but would not decide on it until the impending reviews had appeared. Needless to say, those reviews were raves and my offering ran in the Sunday December 22, 1996 issue of the Times and became the first major revelation that Watkins’s play was based upon real people and her forgotten newspaper articles about them.
[end of excerpt]
Over the 1950s and through the 1960s, a period which spanned the later years of Maurine Watkins’s life, Americans, energized by the surging popularity of television, flocked to panel shows which featured guests of varying renown and a group of likewise distinguished examiners. Their questions sought to uncover the guests’ withheld identity or some unusual or little known aspect of their personal lives. “To Tell the Truth” introduced its audience to three visitors, two impersonators and the actual person, each of whom claimed to be the person described in an introductory sketch like: ”I am Maurine Watkins and the author of a successful Broadway play that ran for 172 performances and was converted into two popular films.” The panel would question the three visitors and decide which one they believed to be the actual person. When time ran out, the moderator would call for the panel’s decisions and then speak the show’s signature command, “Would the real…please stand up.” “I’ve Got a Secret” varied this formula by offering a similar sketch and having its guest go over to the moderator and whisper a secret into his ear. Afterwards the panel would ask questions to uncover the secret. Maurine Watkins certainly possessed appropriate qualifications for these shows, but few in the viewing audience still remembered Watkins and her Chicago (1926) and even worse, she would never have agreed to divulge “her secret.”
Watkins the Humorist
Over twenty-five years ago when I initiated my research on Watkins, I was toying with the possibility of a book to be entitled “Crime As Entertainment During the 1920s”. Having taught several university courses on the social history of this period, I realized how the unfolding prosperity and commercial innovation of metropolitan centers were generating a vibrant vitality and provoking a huge flight from rural areas that left them cut-off and in decline. The urban sophistication that arose from these developments encouraged writers there to develop a fresh outlook on crime that differentiated their work from that of the earlier “muckrakers” who exploited crime as a toxic by-product of factory expansion and ghetto sprawl–a glaring problem that demanded recognition and reform. By the 1920s this kind of presentation was appearing over done and old-fashioned.
As I searched for books, plays, and films which might support this assessment, I came upon Maurine Watkins’s Chicago. Although the play’s original luster had faded long ago, I perceived it as having exceptional promise for my needs. However, my investigation of this possibility yielded such paltry information, I decided to visit the Research Library of the Performing Arts in New York’s Lincoln Center whose clipping files had been so helpful with my book on Elia Kazan.
The Library’s numerous folders on Chicago provided important basics–Watkins’s youth in Crawfordsville, Indiana, her minister father, her enrollment at several colleges nearby, her graduate work at Radcliffe and Yale’s School of Drama as well as her ensuing work as a journalist in Chicago. Unfortunately, these bareboned revelations soon became repetitious and left me wondering what was being skimmed or left out entirely. As a journalist did Watkins ever write anything other than her frequently mentioned articles on the notorious Leopold and Loeb trial? Even the vast coverage of the original Fosse musical wasn’t helpful. However my research did turn up a valuable clipping from an unidentified Chicago newspaper that contained only a date. It was so small and so jumbled with other materials that I could easily have overlooked it. Luckily, I didn’t. This article reported a boisterous celebration of Chicago’s original opening in the Windy City and the participation of several well-known locals who closely resembled characters in the play. Why had I not seen any other mention of these people so far and why were they so well-known before Watkin’s play opened there?
The most likely answer, I conjectured, was because most of the material I was seeing originated in New York and the popularity of her play there was so brief. Nonetheless, I decided that these questions were important and my best chance of answering them would be found in microfilm of the Chicago Tribune that extended back to 1920. After I located a library that could fulfill my need, I requested pertinent reels and quickly scrolled through issues from 1925. Nothing.
However, the reels for 1924 yielded a brief notice of a woman who had been arrested for murder. Additional scrolling furnished more coverage of this case. Then Eureka! I came upon one that carried a byline identification of Maurine Watkins.
My discovery of these articles inspired me to rework my original plans. I would create an edition that would combine a gathering of Watkins’s Tribune articles with her play, which was originally published in 1927 but quickly went out of print and remained so ever since. Preparation of this edition necessitated a laborious job of photocopying her articles from microfilm and converting them into a readable format. My plan was to support these materials with an introduction offering pertinent background and an analysis of the various ways Watkins deployed her humor to make her presentation appealing and entertaining.
Since my original introduction offers ample exploration of Watkins’s humor and is included in this updated edition; further discussion of that matter is unnecessary here. However, my preparation of this account has caused me to realize another way in which Watkins’s presentation departed from that of the earlier muckrakers. Although her play offers a social problem similar to the ones they exploited, her objective is decidedly not reform. She presents the situation facing Belva and Beulah as solidly entrenched and impervious to correction. These characters must learn that they are the ones who must change; they need to learn how to “Play Ball”, as she entitled an early draft of her play. This necessary lesson pressures them to develop an outlook and behavior like those around them who cynically exploit the prevailing conditions and selfishly don’t want change.
Back when I neared completion of my original edition, I circulated proposals to multiple presses. All of them quickly passed with unanimous agreement that there was no market for such outdated material. Fortunately for me, SIU press, which had a strong line of books about theater, judged my edition to be unusual and charming and agreed to publish it.
Equally lucky for me, the original publication of Watkins’s articles placed them in the public domain. However, her play was still under copyright protection and required permission. This need carried me to Sheldon Abend who then controlled those rights. Over many weeks of letters and phone calls, he admitted to me his own prolonged quest for these rights from Watkins, who politely listened to his proposals, several times agreed to sell them, but reneged at the last minute. Consequently she retained them until her death and her estate was left to handle their sale.
Mere weeks after securing Abend’s permission, I learned that a revival of Fosse’s musical was being prepared. The clouds overhanging my prolonged adventure had lifted and the timing could not have been better. I rushed to obtain a ticket to one of the “rehearsals” which ran for a month before the show's official opening. I was so impressed with what I saw that I decided to prepare a condensation of my introduction and submit it to the New York Times. As the number of rehearsals dwindled and I had heard nothing back, I stoically accepted that my offering had failed.
Then out of the blue, I received a phone call from a member of the Times’s editorial staff who informed me that her fellow editors liked my piece, but would not decide on it until the impending reviews had appeared. Needless to say, those reviews were raves and my offering ran in the Sunday December 22, 1996 issue of the Times and became the first major revelation that Watkins’s play was based upon real people and her forgotten newspaper articles about them.
[end of excerpt]
Recenzii
“Tom Pauly, UD professor of English, traces the history of the Tony Award-winning revival of Chicago back to Maurine Watkins, a young Chicago Tribune reporter, who made media darlings of the women on Chicago's Murderess' Row in the 1920s and penned a 1926 Broadway comedy as a result.”—Beth Thomas, University of Delaware
Descriere
In 1924, the murder trials of Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner shocked the world, providing the real-life inspiration for Maurine Watkins’s unforgettable characters, Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly. Now, a century later, this reissue of Watkins’s play offers a fresh look at the origins of the story that has since become a household name.