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| Laura Anne Kenney Candy Thornton/Easel Photography |
by Laura Anne Kenney
At the risk of sounding like a nerd - When preparing for a role, I first look for any source material on which the production is based. It wasn’t until I started digging for information on Chicago: The Musical, (I play Velma Kelly in Mesa Encore Theatre's production) that I found out most of the characters we know and love are actually inspired by real people!
Roxie Hart, Velma Kelly, Billy Flynn, Amos Hart, Mary Sunshine, Hunyak, and even Go-To-Hell Kitty all have real-life counterparts. But as I started reading about their cases and stories, found in "The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago" by Douglas Perry and "Ugly Prey: An Innocent Woman and the Death Sentence That Scandalized Jazz Age Chicago" by Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, the show began to take on a much deeper meaning for me.
Maurine Watkins
Probably the most fascinating character in the story of Chicago is one that never appears in the script: The Writer. Maurine Dallas Watkins was a reporter who covered most of the cases we see in Chicago, and she was the author of the original 1926 play of the same name. Being the daughter of a minister in a conservative Southern home, it was odd that she would want to expose herself to such depraved criminals. But Maurine wanted life experience in order to become a good playwright. She believed she could change the world with her ideas. In some ways I think she was successful. Although we still have sensationalized court coverage today, I think juries are much more impartial towards female defendants. In 1920s Chicago, if you were white, female, and pretty, then you got acquitted almost every time.
I think the point of telling the story through satire was to highlight the ridiculous bias in public opinion. The audacious melodrama that was Beulah Annan’s (“Roxie Hart”, in Chicago) witness testimony was comical enough on its own, and some of Roxie’s lines in Chicago are taken directly from court! Maurine knew that none of Beulah’s ever-changing stories were true, and yet she watched as an entire city gave a murderer the benefit of the doubt. Even now, every audience member who applauds Roxie and Velma’s onstage performance each night is doing the same thing as those Chicago Tribune readers – they are cheering for murderers, fictional or not! When Velma is first seen at the top of Act 2 of the musical, she calls the audience “Suckers”. I think that is the voice of Maurine Watkins coming through to all of us!
Hunyak
The story I was most drawn to through my research was actually not Belva Gaertner’s (AKA “Velma Kelly” - the part I play in MET's production), but Hunyak’s, who is portrayed in our production by the lovely and talented Misty West. In real life, she was an Italian woman named Sabella Nitti. Just like in the musical, she spoke no English and was railroaded in court. Many things were wrong with Sabella’s case: the prosecution was unable to identify the body they claimed was her husband’s, her appointed defense attorney was an incompetent loon who accused the prosecution of stealing the victim’s underwear, and her own son was coerced into making a false confession that Sabella agreed was true, but only because she thought her son was a good boy who told the truth and she had no idea he had just thrown her under the bus.
In addition, Sabella Nitti was faulted for being an immigrant. The case was being heard in 1924, the same year as the Johnson-Reed Act, which limited immigration for people from Southern & Eastern Europe. Even sob-sister reporters like Genevieve Forbes (AKA “Mary Sunshine”) joined in on the attacks, calling her “greasy” and focusing on her weathered and dirty appearance. When Sabella Nitti was found guilty and sentenced to hang, she didn’t even understand what happened until she was brought back to the Cook County Jail from the courthouse.
Sabella’s story actually has a happier ending than Chicago’s Hunyak. Attorney Helen Cirese took up Sabella’s case and filed the appeal. She visited her in jail every week, and made sure she was given a makeover, and taught English. The next time Sabella appeared in court, it was for joint hearings with “stylish” Belva Gaertner and “beautiful” Beulah Annan, who were both waiting for the start of their own trials. They all had a nice photo shoot with the press, and everyone was impressed by Sabella’s transformation. In the end, a higher court overturned her original verdict and the charges were later dismissed.
Sabella’s story is important because that stigma she carried with her is still present in today’s world, as are a lot of themes in Chicago, which is why I think so many people still relate to the show. On one hand we are being entertained with catchy jazz tunes, dancing, spectacle, and funny one-liners. On the other hand, I think by recognizing that Roxie & Velma are duping everyone, we are perpetuating the hope that the piece “might have an effect on the conditions [that it] ridicule[s]”, as Maurine’s Yale drama professor, George Baker, once said.
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