TRILOGY OF TERROR 1975

Spoiler Alert: Crucial plot points are revealed in the interest of critical analysis and discussion

An unforeseen dividend in being a movie fan “of a certain age” is living long enough to see what films end up being the legacy benchmarks in the careers of actors I grew up watching. There’s something democratically perfect about the idea that no matter how accomplished, acclaimed, varied, or lengthy a career, no actor gets to decide what movie will "stick"...be the one they’ll most be remembered for. 

It can be a film that kickstarts a career (flying in the face of the accepted dictum that this is just a taste of things to come, often it turns out to be their finest career hour): Mia Farrow (Rosemary’s Baby) and Liza Minnelli (Cabaret). Or a movie of such nagging popularity that even a career's worth of an actor’s best efforts fails to diminish its influence: Patty Duke (Valley of the Dolls) and—Bless her heart—Faye Dunaway (Mommie Dearest). 

If internet saturation is any indicator, Breakfast at Tiffany’s has been branded Audrey Hepburn’s official signature motion picture. I've seen almost everything Jane Fonda has ever done, but she will always be first and foremost my Barbarella psyche-della. And when I think of Shelley Winters, my mind zips right past Lolita, A Patch of Blue, and The Diary of Anne Frank only to land squarely on the deck of the S.S. Poseidon. Go figure.

Time becomes the great leveler. The public, the ultimate determiner of what film in an actor's resume has left the most indelible impression.

The Day of the Locust - 1975

No one symbolized the cinema of the 1970s for me quite like Karen Black. One of the more prolific and visible actresses of the decade, Black was a true original whose every virtue embodied the iconoclast spirit of Hollywood’s new wave of filmmakers (indeed, seeming to be everywhere at once and in every new movie that came out, she was like the Jack Carson of the New Hollywood). 

I first saw Karen Black in Francis Ford Coppola's coming-of-age comedy You’re a Big Boy Now (1966) when it was shown on TV in 1969. I didn’t know her name then, but as the unglamorous “good girl” waiting on the sidelines for the hero to notice her (a type she was never cast as again), she radiated such a sweetness and oddball vulnerability that I was drawn to her character immediately. Later that same year when I saw Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda's Easy Rider (1969) at the theater, I didn't even recognize her (even after sitting through it twice) as the long-legged, scene-stealing New Orleans prostitute. So thoroughly has Black transformed herself from the soft-spoken love interest in Coppola's film, she was like a different person. 

SF Examiner Sunday, March 9, 1969
That's actually not-yet-famous Karen Black all but obliterated in the grainy photo
promoting the television broadcast premiere of what was her first feature film appearance 

By 1970 the chameleonic character actress was being earmarked for major stardom after her breakout, Oscar-nominated, Golden Globe Award-winning supporting performance in Five Easy Pieces (1970). Between 1971 and 1978 Karen Black appeared in 18 feature films, and I tried to see as many as I possibly could. Karen Black had become my new favorite...a kind of Stateside Glenda Jackson when it came to glamour-free fearlessness and risk-taking...and I was certain there was no one else quite like her in the movies.  

Five Easy Pieces - 1970

To me, Karen Black's particular gift was her emotional authenticity and talent for making her characters relatable. She made the arcane and artificial “establishment” standards of beauty that once defined what movie stars looked like seem obsolete. She always seemed to “be” who she was playing, and the lack of self-consciousness in her acting style had a way of granting even the most extreme characters a personal dignity.

Although Karen Black's tenure as a mainstream, A-list star was surprisingly brief (she didn’t get first billing in an American movie until 1976’s Family Plot, and by 1977 she was appearing in stuff like Killer Fish), but during that period she had the great good fortune to have appeared in what are currently recognized as some of the most iconic, influential, and enduring films of the decade: Easy Rider–1969, The Great Gatsby–1974, Airport 1975–1974, Nashville–1975, Family Plot–1976, Burnt Offerings–1976, and my personal favorite The Day of the Locust–1975. 

Comeback
The end of the '70s signaled the end of Karen Black's mainstream ascendence. Before her latter career became subsumed by the horror genre (a term she resisted), Black made a brief return to her glory days in Robert Altman's Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean giving one of her career-best performances

When Karen Black died on August 8, 2013, the films obituaries singled out as her most memorable were: her vulnerable waitress in Five Easy Pieces, the pathetic Myrtle in The Great Gatsby,  Nashville's country singer Connie White, and the plucky Nancy ("The stewardess is flying the plane?!") Pryor of Airport 1975. No argument from me.

But I'm sticking to my guns when I contend that when the respectability smoke clears and the prestige-impressed voices of the critics and cineastes die down, the first movie that comes to mind when the average person thinks of Karen Black is 1975s Trilogy of Terror...arguably the most widely-seen and most well-known of all of her films.

Woman Times Four

In the ‘70s, the division between movie star and TV star was far more pronounced than it is today, so it was big doings in the Anderson household (my corner of it, anyway) that THE Karen Black was starring in a made-for-TV movie; a genre that, to my mind, had heretofore been the near-exclusive domain of Donna Mills, Kay Lenz, and William Windom. It was especially notable because career-wise, Karen Black was mainly a cult-popular actress who was just starting to make a mainstream name for herself. 

Trilogy of Terror aired just a couple of months after Black was awarded the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for The Great Gatsby. In fact, both Gatsby and Airport 1975 were still playing in theaters when the TV-movie was broadcast. Adding further to the feeling that 1975 was The Year of Karen Black was the fact that all over town and everywhere you turned you were confronted with ads, articles, and posters heralding Black's forthcoming summer releases—The Day of the Locust in May, Nashville in July. 

Airport 1975 - 1974

Hotly anticipated by yours truly, Trilogy of Terror was broadcast Tuesday, March 4, 1975 at 8:30 pm as one of the last entries in the final season of the immensely popular ABC Movie of the Week series that began in 1969. Directed and produced by Dan Curtis of Dark Shadows fame, the trio of terror tales making up this anthology are all based on short stories by Richard Matheson (Die! Die! My Darling! – 1965). William F. Nolan (screenwriter for that other Dan Curtis/Karen Black collaboration Burnt Offerings) wrote the teleplays for the first two, and Matheson himself adapted the iconic final episode.

TRILOGY OF TERROR

Based on the short story: The Likeness of Julie - 1962

The male gaze is given a (Karen) black eye in this first tale of “terror” which casts Ms. Black as a buttoned-up, dressed-down English Lit teacher who finds herself the target of the abusive sexual attentions of a student (Robert Burton, then Mr. Karen Black).

Karen Black as Miss Julie Eldridge

Robert Burton as Chad Foster 

JULIE is my second favorite story in the trilogy. Not least in part due to its singularly emphatic kink factor, and for its devilishly clever affiliating of the proprietorial dominance of the male gaze (a form of presumptive access to, and ownership of, the female body) with voyeurism, scopophilia, date rape, and sexual exploitation. A psychological thriller with a touch of the occult/ supernatural, JULIE is a fine work of feminist horror and made me think of Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives.

Hot for Teacher

Of course, Levin’s contemporary gothics were at the forefront of my mind back in 1975 because the movie version of The Stepford Wives had opened in theaters just a month before Trilogy of Terror aired. In fact, the darkly satirical horror of The Stepford Wives…an ideal distillation of post-Women’s Lib male panic…felt in parallel with JULIE’s use of the micro-inequities of day-to-day male/female sexual politics as the springboard for a horror story centralizing what we now understand to be the hidden-in-plain-sight atmosphere of harassment and potential violence women are exposed to on college campuses (well, everywhere, honestly). A point emphasized in the opening sequence where self-styled campus Casanova Chad and his buddy Eddie (Jim Storm) voice their toxic opinions while engaged in the “harmless” act of girl-watching: Chad -“God, have you ever seen so many dogs in one place?”

The Objectifying Gaze

With the villain early-identified and the story’s rising mostly the intensifying degrees of Chad’s abuse, dramatic tension becomes largely of the pressure-cooker variety; Julie will either break or break free…but something’s got to give. And it does. Rather effectively, I must say, in a nifty twist ending I did NOT see coming at the time. 

Though the most heavily populated of the three stories—affording an almost orgasmic parade of outré ‘70s fashions—JULIE is essentially a two-hander. Robert Burton makes for a convincing chauvinist sleazeball (coyly alluded to as being a natural talent by Karen Black on the DVD commentary, perhaps explaining why their 18-month marriage had already dissolved by the time the TV movie came out), but it’s Karen Black’s show all the way. 

Chad blackmails Julie with obscene photos he took of her when she was unconscious.
 Thanks to this nanosecond blooper reveal, it looks like his fetish
was dressing Julie up to look like Charles Foster Kane 

Black is always fascinating to watch and never less than believable in depicting Julia’s trauma. But it’s only after I saw the entire vignette and the twist was revealed that Black’s traditional, almost cliché characterization of an “academic” (precise diction, books clutched to the bosom, mainspring-tight hairdo, owlish spectacles, soft voice) struck me as being perhaps the “performative” display I think it’s intended to be. Until the very last scene, Julie is more or less “acting” the part of the meek bookworm.

By the way, double kudos to whoever’s idea it was for Julie to keep her spectacles on during the film’s big “reveal” scene. 

The framing of the final sequence emphasizes Julie's physical dominance over Chad

After decades of women whipping off their suddenly-useless glasses after letting their hair down, Julie exercising her power while wearing glasses (this is a woman who doesn’t care if men seldom make passes) is an almost Hitchcockian touch (apropos that director's well-known fondness for women in eyewear). Particularly in a story about the power of the gaze.

Based on the short story: Needle in the Heart - 1969

“There are just some people who’ll come to any [movie] with story overviews. It’s nothing to do with the acting or with the writing at all. It’s just that . . . they say, ‘well if the story’s going this way, a great ending would be this. And if a  story’s going that way, the surprise would be that.’”

That’s Karen Black on the Trilogy of Terror commentary track explaining to teleplay writer William F. Nolan her insightful theory on why Millicent & Therese, the trilogy's second terror tale, is so often dismissed with the claim of being predictable. Black is correct in recognizing that when a viewer is presented with something as overworked as the “good twin-evil twin” trope in a horror movie, it takes no great feat of cleverness to guess that if there's going to be a twist ending, that twist will reveal the twins (who are never shown occupying the same frame) are the same person. 

Karen Black as Millicent Larimore

Karen Black as Therese Larimore

But I don't think surprise twists are essential to a good horror story. Sometimes the surprise of a performance that makes the familiar seem new can be very satisfying. Millicent & Therese, the story of two identical twins (moral Millicent, amoral Therese) engaged in an antagonistic battle of wills is so slight as to be little more than a sketch, so even as a teenager, I guessed the “twist” of its plot (linked to my obsession with the 1971 novel and subsequent film version of Tom Tryon’s The Other - 1972). 

But what made the whole thing seem new was the hinted-at cause of Millicent/Therese’s split personality. Behind the genre trappings of voodoo, witchcraft, and demonology is a poignant story of ongoing childhood sexual abuse and how the victim dealt with her trauma by slipping into a catastrophically extreme form of dissociation. A splintering off of her psyche to protect herself from dealing with what is happening (and, in the matter of the death of her mother, what she has done).

Significantly, it's the death of the father that precipitates the showdown between the two sisters. The child is at last "safe" but too many years of identity suppression has clouded the awareness of which personality was genuinely that of the child and which developed as a defense mechanism.  

It's nice seeing Dark Shadows' John Karlen as Mr. Anmar, one of Therese's lovers 

Despite its dark overtones, Millicent & Therese is actually the most fun of the three episodes. Even if sometimes unintentionally so. For instance, the comically broad-stroke visual shorthand used to distinguish the personalities of the two sisters has Black dressed alternately like the illustration on a pack of "Old Maid" playing cards, and a Party City Halloween costume labeled "peroxided trollop."

But when it comes to acting, Karen Black transcends the obvious and gives two rather terrifically realized, distinctly separate performances. Veering effortlessly between compelling and camp, Black gives what amounts to a “best of” performance medley of the quirks, idiosyncrasies, and unique talents that made her one of the most intoxicatingly watchable actresses of her time.

Based on the short story: Prey - 1968

A woman spends a nightmarish evening fighting for her life after inadvertently releasing the spirit of a Zuni warrior encased in an ancient fetish doll. 

When the topic turns to Trilogy of Terror, the now-iconic AMELIA episode is what everyone thinks of exclusively. And for good reason. Even after all these years, the idea of an ankle-high, razor-toothed, knife-wielding Zuni warrior speeding at you across the wall-to-wall carpet is still pretty hair-raising shit. Coupled with Karen Black’s glass-shattering screams, frequent falls, and oh-so-relatable shock reactions; there can be no mystery as to why this memorable horror vignette has achieved the status of kindertrauma klassic.

Karen Black as Amelia

I was a senior in high school when Trilogy of Terror aired, so while the widely-watched TV movie was all any of us could talk about at school the following day, it was never the stuff of nightmares as it was for so many who have claimed it as their seminal childhood freakout. 

(Curiously enough, my own kindertrauma moment was a different teleplay written by Trilogy of Terror’s Richard Matheson. It was that 1961 episode of  The Twilight Zone titled “The Invaders.” It starred Agnes Moorehead as a woman alone in a deserted farmhouse terrorized by ankle-high, knife-wielding spacemen.)

Karen Black’s performance in this episode is the jewel in the trilogy’s crown. It’s a one-woman show-stopper (she should have been Emmy-nominated for the self-penned phone monologue sequence alone) that sees Black’s wholesale commitment to her character and Matheson’s fantastic premise saving the whole thing from slipping into macabre silliness.

Playing on primal fears and familiar phobias, AMELIA is a “fun” scare all the way, allowing the viewer to jump in surprise, squirm at the suspense, giggle at their own jitters, and yell at the screen “Don’t open that suitcase!” Best of all, Amelia is a character we really root for. So much so that the film’s literal killer ending is hard not to be perceived as a triumph for Amelia, for she is at last in a position (a warrior’s crouch, in fact) to have the last word with her mother.

Burnt Offerings - 1976

Although it’s well-known that Trilogy of Terror was a movie Karen Black initially had no interest in making and that she perhaps ultimately regretted the role the film’s popularity played in pigeonholing her as a Scream Queen and taking her career into a direction she hadn't intended. But as a Karen Black fan who has always been a little bit frustrated by how little camera time she has in some of her most famous supporting roles, I’m grateful as hell for Trilogy of Terror. Not just because it represents some of her best work, but because it's a stellar, front-and-center showcase for a brilliant actress who too often had to shine from the sidelines.

Sweet Dreams

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2022

CHICAGO 2002

For me, the history of CHICAGO  has always been inextricably linked with that of A Chorus Line. CHICAGO premiered on Broadway on June 3rd, 1975; A Chorus Line, six weeks later, on July 25th. CHICAGO opened to mixed reviews and struggled at the boxoffice; A Chorus Line was met with raves, won the Pulitzer Prize, and was nothing short of a cultural phenomenon. CHICAGO was nominated for 11 Tony Awards, won 0; A Chorus Line was nominated for 12, won 9.

CHICAGO and A Chorus Line also happen to be linked together in my memory. Certainly, I remember that day in August of 1975 when I went to The Gramophone, a gay-owned and operated record store on San Francisco's Polk Street, and purchased the Original Broadway Cast Recording LPs of both shows. Although I hadn't yet heard a single note from either score, I was so fired up from consuming all the After Dark Magazine-fed hype surrounding the opening of each production (that invaluable, homoerotic, national entertainment magazine being my sole West Coast pipeline to what was happening on Broadway), that I was almost smug in my confidence that my two blind purchases were far from being a gamble. 

August 5, 1975 - $4.88 each
Both were single LPs in glossy gatefold jackets loaded with photos & liner notes

Given that Broadway musicals don't crop up with the regularity of movies, the appearance of the highly-anticipated shows was quite a big deal to me. Before CHICAGO & A Chorus Line captured my imagination, the last Broadway cast album I'd purchased was Sondheim's A Little Night Music, a musical meal I'd been dining out on since 1973. Having committed every note and melody of that splendid score to memory by then, I could scarcely believe my good fortune that 1975 held forth the promise of TWO major Broadway musical releases I could submerge myself in. 

Back in the day, all the smart money was on CHICAGO. The only familiar names A Chorus Line boasted were composer Marvin Hamlish, then all but unavoidable after his recent Oscar win for The Sting (1973), and director-choreographer Michael Bennett, whose name was familiar to me from the liner notes of the library-borrowed cast albums of Company and Follies. CHICAGO distinguished itself as the musical with the Broadway heavy hitters and showbiz pedigree. It marked the Broadway musical return of Gwen Verdon (her last Broadway musical was 1966's Sweet Charity)! The professional reunion of husband & wife collaborators Verdon & Fosse! The reteaming of Fosse with his Cabaret and Liza with a Z collaborators: the composer-lyricist-writing duo of John Kander and Fred Ebb! And best of all, CHICAGO marked the first-time pairing of two genuine Broadway legends…Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera!

Illustration by Sam Norkin -1975

Wanting to start with the "sure thing," I listened to the CHICAGO album first, which became one of those rarer-than-rare occurrences where one's extraordinarily high expectations are met and exceeded. Hearing that incredible score for the first time...every single song a showstopper...not a clunker in the bunch...was such a thrill. The songs and their often hilarious lyrics set my imagination on fire... I could practically see the entire production in my head. I was instantly attracted to the storyline--the phoniness of show biz reflecting the phoniness of the American legal system. And if the cynicism at CHICAGO's core struck me as caustic and pessimistic, consider that I was just 17 at the time (sarcasm and snark are like crack cocaine to a teenager) and that it was the summer of '75. The summer that saw the dynamic downer duo of Nashville and The Day of the Locust released to movie theaters just weeks before. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. CHICAGO was simply riding the crest of the zeitgeist. 

May 6, 1976

That's Jane Fonda speaking at a Tom Hayden rally in Sacramento and 18-year-old me in this, the only photo I have of my beloved official CHICAGO T-shirt I wore for years until it disintegrated. An image captured mere moments before Ms. Fonda graciously signed the Barbarella photo I've got secreted away in the book you see tucked under my arm (The Busby Berkeley Book). The memo is an affirmative reply to my written request to NY's 46th St. Theater inquiring about the possibility of purchasing a CHICAGO T-shirt (mail-order Broadway merchandise was yet to be a thing). It cost a whopping $5 plus $1 shipping. 

Next, I listened to A Chorus Line, optimistically resigned to the certainty that it couldn't match my CHICAGO experience. Jump ahead several hours. Me on the floor in front of the family stereo, headphones on, in a theater geek's state of transcendence, eyes red and nose runny from listening to A Chorus Line three times in a row and bawling my eyes out. 

And there you have what was then, and continues to be, the essential link in my relationship with CHICAGO and A Chorus Line. They're culturally joined at the hip for me. Iconic templates of a particular time and place in my life--I'd graduated high school in June, I'd been "out" to myself for about two years (4 more years to go for family), it was the summer of Jaws, it was the summer of my independence. And these two shows, listened to as regularly and relentlessly as though they were on a loop, were the soundtrack of my adult-adjacent freedom. 

June 7, 1976
I saw A Chorus Line when the National Company came to San Francisco's
 Curran Theater in May. Ever the autograph hound, my friend and I became
stage-door Johnnies for the show's entire run

But CHICAGO was always the diamond…sharp, dazzling, and cold, while A Chorus Line was always the heart (a vision of Lauren Bacall singing "Hearts, Not Diamonds" in The Fan just popped into my head). To me, A Chorus Line was a dark, almost melancholy show... a Follies for theater gypsies...but unlike CHICAGO, it was humane and compassionate. And that made listening to it a poignant and exhilarating experience—all goosebumps and waterworks. Each musical, reflecting as they did, opposite yet equally valid faces of our culture (post-Watergate disillusionment & "Me Generation" introspection), also appealed to the contrasting sides of my own nature. CHICAGO and A Chorus Line complemented one another. 

It wasn't until 1992 that the opportunity arose for me to actually see a production of CHICAGO on stage for the first time. The Long Beach Civic Light Opera put on a fabulous, faithful-to-the-original production starring Juliet Prowse and Bebe Newerth, utilizing Tony Walton's original set designs, Patricia Zipprodt's costuming, and featuring two members of the original 1975 cast. It was astoundingly good. This may explain why I was never very fond of the pared-down, anachronistically costumed look of CHICAGO's phenomenally successful 1996 Broadway revival. An antipathy reinforced when I saw a 2012 production starring Christie Brinkley (by this point, stunt-casting was the only teeth the show had left).

Since 1975, A Chorus Line's cultural grip has weakened a bit. Thanks to a monumentally mishandled 1985 movie adaptation and the musical's once-innovative confessional format feeling almost quaint in the modern climate of social media oversharing. Meanwhile, CHICAGO, a show once criticized for its relentlessly downcast gaze into life's sewers, has hung around long enough for its down-in-the-gutter perspective (I hear Candy Darling in Women in Revolt "Too low for the dogs to bite!") to be precisely eye-level with what mainstream American culture has come to normalize, reward, and elect.   

And something happened that, for the longest time, I had given hope of ever seeing...after decades of false starts and empty rumors (Liza and Goldie! Goldie and Madonna!), and against impossible odds (non-animated movie musicals were given the death knell) CHICAGO, at last, had been made into a movie. Twenty-seven years after its Broadway debut. 

Renee Zellweger as Roxie Hart

Catherine Zeta-Jones as Velma Kelly

Richard Gere as Billy Flynn

Queen Latifah as Matron Mama Morton

John C. Reilly as Amos Hart

CHICAGO, the Bob Fosse/Fred Ebb/John Kander musical vaudeville about two amoral, overaged, gin-soaked jazz babies on murderers' row, desperate to parlay their 15-minutes of criminal infamy into show biz careers, was made into a $45 million major motion picture. Who was the director tasked with reviving the viability of live-action musicals? None other than Rob Marshall, the Tony Award-nominated choreographer-director of that 1992 Juliet Prowse/Bebe Neuwirth Long Beach production that knocked my socks off.  

It's impossible to overstate how excited I was that Friday morning in December of 2002 when my partner and I, returning home from a Christmas trip, stopped off at our place just long enough to drop off our luggage so we could hightail it to Century City and be among the first audience to see CHICAGO on its December 27th opening day in LA. When the film was over and we were handed our evaluation cards by anxious-looking marketing people (the film wouldn't open wide until January), I thought I had died and gone to stage-to-screen heaven. We were both so euphoric over what we'd just seen, after exiting the theater, we swiftly got right back in line to see it again.

Chita Rivera as Nickie
Broadway's original Velma Kelly makes a cameo appearance as a Cook County Jail inmate.
Her name is a nod to the character she played in Fosse's 1969 film Sweet Charity.

Rob Marshall and screenwriter Bill Condon avoided several pitfalls from the outset by not trying to reimagine the show for the screen. Instead, they came up with a device (the musical numbers erupt out of Roxie's fevered fantasies) that made the highly-stylized, stage-bound show more cinematic. Boasting spectacular cinematography, a sensational cast, and dazzling choreography, they succeeded in bringing the CHICAGO I loved to the screen. (It had been my gravest fear that the "Victoria's Secret meets International Male" Broadway revival version of  CHICAGO would be the only surviving template for future generations.) 

The film became a major boxoffice and critical hit, garnering a whopping 13 Oscar nominations that year, winning 6, among them Best Picture. CHICAGO revitalized the movie musical.

Taye Diggs as The Bandleader

Christine Baranski as Mary Sunshine

But writing this now, in 2022, it's clear my once all-encompassing ardor for CHICAGO has cooled a bit over the years. After the dust of anticipation settled and I was able to breathe a sigh of relief that the screen adaptation wasn't a botch job like A Chorus Line: The Movie, only then did I notice that somewhere along its 27-year path to the screen, CHICAGO had become neutered. 

When I look at CHICAGO today, the film's black comedy subtext targeting the institutional corruption of the media, penal system, politics, and law, doesn't hit nearly as hard as how sympathetically Roxie and Velma are portrayed. 

Gwen Verdon & Chita Rivera gave us a Roxie and Velma who were genuinely "...older than I ever intended to be." The undeserving pair's hunger for vaudeville fame was a last-gasp act of desperation and resentment after a lifetime of failure and rejection. The Roxie and Velma of the film are both so young and beautiful (and talented) that we're left with the impression that life, indeed, has been unduly dismissive of them. Each suffers so many humiliations, setbacks, and exploitations that by the finale, we're rooting for them and have forgotten (or stopped caring) that they are remorseless murderers. This is obviously the whole point, and the film stays true to that notion... academically. But rather than leaving the audience with a bad taste in its mouth for its complicity in the amorality, I know I was just happy to see these two exploited sad sacks seeing their dreams come true. It was a feel-good ending passing itself off as hard-knock cynicism. 

Fosse/Verdon (2019)

Bianca Marroquin and Michelle Williams

CHICAGO rehearsals 1975

Bob Fosse: "And I'm saying that it would be better for the show if the…."

Gwen Verdon: "Better for the show? Oh, really? Better for the show… Is that really what you think? I'll tell you what would have been better for the show: opening four months ago with a director who wasn't hellbent on turning it into two hours of misery for the audience."

The above exchange may be fictional (from the splendid miniseries Fosse/Verdon), but it reflects a genuine issue that plagued the original production of CHICAGO from the start: concern that Fosse had simply made the show too bitter and misanthropic for its own good. 

Hollywood had no such concerns. When the time came for the film adaptation, far too much Hollywood money was riding on CHICAGO for the studio to even consider taking a chance on having another Pennies from Heaven on its hands (1981's mega-depressing megaflop about another amoral character who uses musical fantasy to escape reality). Miramax insured its $45 million investment by making sure that with this CHICAGO, a good time was going to be had by all. Even if it was a musical about murder, greed, corruption, violence, exploitation, adultery, and treachery--all those things we all hold near and dear to our hearts.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

No one can say Rob Marshall didn't understand the assignment. He was hired to deliver a hit movie musical, and he did. Brilliantly. It really wasn't his fault that the CHICAGO he (and I) fell in love with back in 1975—labeled by many critics at the time as mean-spirited and ugly—had long given way to the forget your troubles, c'mon get happy crowd-pleaser CHICAGO of today. The revamped 1996 Broadway revival of CHICAGO turned Fosse's 1975's ambivalent success into the 2nd longest-running musical in Broadway history. And it didn't accomplish that by making visiting tourists and blue-haired theater parties uncomfortable. It became a hit by submerging the show's unsavory attributes under layers of glamour, sex, and style. Yes, with nary a trace of irony or self-awareness, CHICAGO had become Fosse's "Razzle Dazzle" number.

CHICAGO's themes remain relevant, but its contemptuous 

view of America and humanity no longer discomfit

PERFORMANCES

Casting a movie in ways that invite comparisons to a show's original cast can be problematic. Since there IS no other Roxie Hart for me but Gwen Verdon, I was actually pleased that the film went with an entirely different take on the character. I hadn't seen Renée Zellweger in anything before, but her Roxie has a Glenda Farrell quality—tough, quirky, wisecracking—that feels both period-perfect and suits the film's concept. Catherine Zeta-Jones is dynamic as Velma Kelly, but the lovely woman hasn't a coarse bone in her body. The "foul-mouth broad" part of her performance never convinced me. It's impossible to take your eyes off of her when she's onscreen, but when she tries for Velma's lowbrow vulgarity, the best you get (and here she isn't alone) is Damon Runyon-esque posturing of the Guys and Dolls sort. The entire cast of CHICAGO is exceptionally good, Richard Gere--the most animated I've seen him onscreen since Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)--being a particular delight, displaying even more playful showmanship at age 52 than in that online clip of his 1973 appearance in Grease.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The thrill and terror of seeing any movie adaptation of a favorite show is discovering what they did with (or to) the songs you loved best. Sometimes your favorites don't even make it into the finished film (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever's baffling decision to excise its sole lively production number "Wait Till We're Sixty-Five"). Other times you'll wish they hadn't (don't get me started on A Chorus Line: The Movie again). From the very first time I listened to the CHICAGO Broadway cast album, "Funny Honey," "The Cell Block Tango," "Roxie," and "Nowadays" became my favorite songs in the show. How did their transfer to film rate? 

"Funny Honey"-    B

The movie goes for a sultry, torchy interpretation of this number and scores high points for how it cleverly establishes the film's visual vocabulary for Roxie's fantasies. It only earns a "B" grade because as good as Zellweger is, she simply can't touch Gwen Verdon for comedy delivery. An observation that's less a jab at Ms. Z than a tip of the hat to Verdon.  

"The Cell Block Tango"-  A+

Every detail about this inspired fever dream of a number works magnificently for me. I especially love that Marshall includes the "victims" in this death tango, and the way the prison reality is intercut with the fantasy. The number is theatrical, it's cinematic, it's a scarlet wall of women behind bars. My favorite number in the movie.

"Roxie"-  A+

Roxie is a singular sensation to herself in this narcissist's anthem that becomes a terrifically glossy and stylish production number in the style of the classic Hollywood musicals. It's deliciously old-fashioned, and Zellewgger shines in it. Literally. 

"Nowadays/Hot Honey Rag"- A+

Gangbusters! Because "Hot Honey Rag" wasn't on the OBC album, I only became aware of it when Verdon & Rivera performed it on variety shows, and then I think it was just called "Keep It Hot." Anyhow, it's now a standard part of revival recordings and a "new" favorite for me. "Nowadays" is given its due as both a solo & duet, and the electric staging of "Hot Honey Rag" had me thinking of the flappers in Thoroughly Modern Millie. And seriously, the lyrics to "Nowadays" are out of this world.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

In spite of that dreadful, written-for-the-film, Oscar-bait song "I Move On," I'll always enjoy the movie version of CHICAGO. It's an incredibly well-crafted musical that I credit for rescuing the genre from animated singing teapots, and I genuinely think it deserves all of its success. (Though Marshall revealing in the DVD commentary that personal fave-rave Toni Collette was almost cast as Roxie was a bit of "what if?" news I didn't need. OMG...can you imagine?! Be still my heart.)

But through no fault of its own--after all, the movie didn't change, I did--CHICAGO just doesn't stand the test of time for me as what I might consider a classic musical. When I revisit Cabaret (1972), even after all these years, it's a film that continues to offer me a full-course meal. Rewatching  CHICAGO recently was like having a sorbet dessert...thoroughly delightful and pleasant, but there wasn't anything for me to chew on. 

I told you that CHICAGO and A Chorus Line are eternally linked for me. Here it is 2022; both shows have been made into films, yet when I really want to have my best experience of either and both...I still go back to listen to those original Broadway cast records I purchased in August of 1975.

BONUS MATERIAL

There's a wealth of material about CHICAGO on YouTube and throughout the internet. You can see clips from the original production, the 1992 Long Beach production, the 1996 Broadway revival, and the deleted "Class" musical number from the motion picture. Any footage you can catch of Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivers performing is guaranteed to be pure magic. 

Also available on YouTube (for the time being) is the silent film version of Chicago (1927)
 and the Ginger Rogers remake/reworking of Roxie Hart (1942) - Thanks, Cinefilia

My favorite curio is an audio track from the 1975 Philadephia tryouts that features cut songs and the original lyrics to "The Cell Block Tango" (wherein we discover "Lipschitz" initially referred to Jacques Lipschitz, the cubist sculptor). Listen to it HERE.  

"Minsky's Chorus" by Reginal Marsh - 1935
The painting that inspired the original CHICAGO poster art

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2022