Chicago

About Chicago

Chicago is a 1927 American silent crime comedy-drama film produced by Cecil B. DeMille and directed by Frank Urson. The first film adaptation of Maurine Dallas Watkins' 1926 play of the same name, the film stars Phyllis Haver as Roxie Hart, a fame-obsessed housewife who kills her lover in cold blood and, after trying to coerce her husband into taking the blame, is put on trial for murder.

Overview

Chicago is a 1927 American silent crime comedy-drama film produced by Cecil B. DeMille and directed by Frank Urson. The first film adaptation of Maurine Dallas Watkins' play of the same name, the film stars Phyllis Haver as Roxie Hart, a fame-obsessed housewife who kills her lover in cold blood and, after trying to coerce her husband into taking the blame, is put on trial for murder. Plot The plot of the film is drawn from the 1926 play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins which was in turn based on the true story of Beulah Annan, fictionalized as Roxie Hart (Phyllis Haver), and her spectacular murder of her boyfriend. The silent film adds considerably to the material in Watkins' play, some additions based on the original murder, and some for Hollywood considerations. The murder, which occurs in a very brief vignette before the play begins, is fleshed out considerably. Also, Roxie's husband Amos Hart has a much more sympathetic and active role in the film than he does either in the play or in the subsequent musical. The original ending is altered to have Roxie punished for her crime, in keeping with Hollywood values of not allowing criminals to profit too much from their crimes. Cast Phyllis Haver as Roxie Hart Victor Varconi as Amos Hart Virginia Bradford as Katie Robert Edeson as William Flynn Eugene Pallette as Rodney Casley Warner Richmond as Asst. District Attorney T. Roy Barnes as Reporter Clarence Burton as Police sergeant Julia Faye as Velma May Robson as Matron Mrs. Morton Viola Louie as Two Gun Rosie

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Notable quotes

“It's every man for himself in this hired air. / Yet once you've come to be part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.”
— Nelson Algren, Chicago: City on the Make (1951)
“This is virgin territory out here for whorehouses.”
— Al Capone, referring to suburban Chicago, as quoted in The Bootleggers and Their Era (1961) by Kenneth Alsop
“Why stay in Chicago; what did the town have to justify its existence? One decent boulevard, one decent suburb to the north, priced for the rich, two universities and a lake. As for the rest, endless miles of depressing, dirty streets. The town was one big stockyard.”
— Robert A. Heinlein, The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (1942)
“I don't know what hell is but it ain't worse than Chicago.”
— The character Clive in 1923
“I have struck a city — a real city — and they call it Chicago… Having seen it, I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages.”
— Rudyard Kipling, From Sea to Sea - Letters of Travel
“I tried not to make judgments. These people were doing something important, all of them. They were testing ways whereby people didn’t have to live in Chicago. That was a wonder to me. I had thought Chicago was inevitable, like diarrhea.”
— John Varley, The Persistence of Vision in Nebula Winners Fourteen, p. 4

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.